Brooklyn’s proposed $2.5-billion arena project, if built, would take the urban sports village to new heights, depths and lengths. The phased, 7.7-million-sq-ft megadevelopment in the New York City borough would not only have four office towers as tall as 60 stories clustered around the arena, it would contain 4.4 million sq ft of affordable, moderate-income and high-end housing in about 4,500 units, 300,000 sq ft of retail and six acres of recreational parkland. Much of the 24-acre complex would be built over unsightly rails yards in a near-derelict swath of terrain that would connect to the city’s third-largest transit hub
Three years after the opening of a football stadium and a ballpark, the strategy to revitalize Pittsburgh’s North Shore is beginning to bear fruit. When complete, the $240 million of construction, planned and in progress, will add 1.2 million sq ft of office and retail space and 4,200 permanent jobs, says Stephen Leeper, executive director of the Sports and Exhibition Authority, owner of the two stadiums. Five years ago, the Stadium Authority created a 25-acre development zone, defined by the ballpark and stadium, the Allegheny River and an elevated highway. The authority owned the new facilities’ predecessor, the multipurpose Three
SAN DIEGO (Photo by Michael Goodman for ENR) Score one for the urban sports village. City boosters have finally figured out that these "reality" theme-parks-plus, with no price of admission or lock-out gates, are more than magnets for living, working and watching basketball, baseball or football. They are a quick creation of address cachet in blighted areas. Deliberately using sports venues as "locomotives to create a sense of place and destination in a no-man’s land" is "revolutionary thinking," says Marc Salette, a partner in Gehry Partners, Los Angeles, master planner and architect for a proposed $2.5-billion, mixed-use arena village in
Many people familiar with the dramatic changes taking place in work trucks powered by diesel engines are groaning, grumbling and complaining about what those changes are doing to their businesses. Federal air-quality regulations for new highway trucks, the latest round in effect since January, are driving engine manufacturers to add on complex emissions reduction and electrical systems that also must protect power, torque and fuel economy. What’s more, petroleum companies are reformulating lubricants to match the new engines’ needs and truck manufacturers, dealers and body fitters also are working to offset the added repair and component costs of these vehicles
One day last August, a 22-year-old apprentice lineman named Matthew Walker Johnson went to work near Frisco, Texas, not far from Dallas. He had been a lineman for two years and loved the job. This day, he was part of a four-man crew sent to repair a line belonging to another utility that accidentally had been cut the day before. In the afternoon, Johnson climbed a pole to move a pulley that would hike up a wire, says his father, Teddy C. Johnson. ON THE LINE Apprentice Matthew W. Johnson loved this job. (Photo courtesy of Cheryl Ann Johnson) What
ARRIVED China is first to build commercial maglev trains; U.S. engineers want to emulate. China’s bold move to build 30 kilometers of magnetically levitated high-speed guideway between Shanghai and its new Pudong Airport in three years has resulted in a system of trains moving up to 431 km per hour. It is being hailed as a success, but with engineering challenges that U.S. proponents are taking to heart. Chinese officials took the giant step to build the world’s first commercial application of the technology after a 2000 visit to Transrapid International’s test track in Bremen, Germany. Shanghai Maglev Transportation Development
(Photo by Michael Goodman for ENR) The flashy silver "lion" with an unruly mane enthroned in Chicago’s $475-million Millennium Park is the city’s first Frank O. Gehry structure. And the "newbies" chugging along the yellow brick road toward completion of the avant-garde music amphitheater by architecture’s Wizard of Oz are exhausted by the $45-million job’s sundry twists and hairpin turns. A learning curve is just about the only thing missing from the long and winding road to complete the king of all beasts in the 24.5-acre park. "This experience is collectively grinding on all of us newbies," says James Conrath,
(Photo by Michael Goodman for ENR) School construction, spurred on by a surge in student enrollments, has been one of the industry’s strongest markets over the last decade. While state fiscal problems are expected to slow the double-digit growth of recent years, the underlaying demographics will keep the school building market going strong for years to come. Over the next 10 years, enrollment in K-12 schools is expected to increase an average of 5% a year, says Richard Branch, an economist who tracks the school market for McGraw-Hill Construction Analytics, Lexington, Mass. While this is down from the 20% annual
Washington’s Tacoma Public School District has become a reluctant pioneer in the slow-but-steady paradigm shift toward computer-aided design and construction, thanks to a convincing argument from the design team to help meet an aggressive construction schedule for a 279,000-sq-ft high school. By allowing the structural engineer to preorder and detail Mt. Tahoma High School’s 1,900 tons of primary steel, taking on risk typically the contractor’s, TPSD set in motion a chain of events that has sliced at least three months off construction. The strategy has paid off. The $77.7-million school is on course and budget for substantial completion June 11.
Perth Amboy may be a typical old-line industrial town in New Jersey, but town officials are hardly using a traditional approach to build a new $100-million high school. Eager to move away from the status quo in school architecture, they have launched a design competition that has already brought in top names to the pool of competitors and jurors. While some question the economics of such a complex process for a school, organizers hope it will jump-start a needed urban revitalization in 286-year-old Perth Amboy, New Jersey’s first incorporated city. Although the existing Perth Amboy High School building is less
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