Building of the new City Creek Center in downtown Salt Lake City took a significant step forward March 15 as crews poured more than 15,000 tons of concrete over a 15-hour period to form the foundation of the first of six residential towers to be built there.
City Creek Center, the Church's 22-acre building project that covers nearly three blocks south and southeast of Temple Square, is slated for completion by 2011 and will include a mix of retail outlets, business offices and residential towers like the one now under construction. Until October, crews were mainly concerned with clearing demolition debris from the Crossroads and ZCMI Center malls as well as the former KeyBank tower, which was imploded Aug. 18.
"This is a big step forward," said Grant Thomas, director of construction services for City Creek Reserve Inc. He said that the concrete pouring is the first major step in the "build back" process.
Known to construction workers simply as "Tower One," the 32-story building will offer 185 residential units and will stand at 370 feet on the corner of West Temple and South Temple. Pouring the concrete base needed to be a continuous process and lasted roughly 15 hours requiring six pumping machines, 120 trucks delivering 850 concrete loads with 75 workers on site at all times.
According to Mr. Thomas, several "innovative but proven engineering approaches" will be used in the construction of the high-rise, including a new mixture of concrete made to protect the foundation from groundwater. Additionally, he said a method known as performance-based design will incorporate advanced seismic protection measures.
"Performance-based design is really the newest thing in designing buildings to withstand an earthquake," said Dave Kasteler, site superintendent for Okland Construction. He said "there is a very complex program that actually puts the building through computer-generated stresses — the stresses you would see in an earthquake — and sees how it performs." He said once the results were clear, changes were made in the design before it was ready for construction.
The building project also has the goal to salvage or recycle more than 50 percent of the demolition debris. "As of today, we're over 60 percent in salvage and recycling," said Mr. Thomas. "Some of the reinforcing steel that we're using in this project actually came out of the old KeyBank tower that we imploded last August."
Construction on the next project, two 11-story residential towers, is scheduled to begin March 29, to be completed by the end of 2009.
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