Seeing the Light

New 30-Story Medical Plaza Completing With Placement of 60-Ft. Lantern

by Bruce Buckley

Soon, anyone looking for the Texas Medical Center can follow the light.

Construction crews at Houston's 30-story Memorial Hermann Medical Plaza are putting the finishing touches on a 60-ft.-tall lantern that will top the $200 million building.

The steel-structured lighting feature draws attention to an already prominent addition to the city's skyline. The building, which will feature 500,000 sq. ft. of clinical, office, retail and commercial space as well as a 1-million-sq.-ft. parking garage, is the largest vertical commercial construction project currently under way in the city.

The new building sits at the edge of Hermann Park - bordered by North Macgregor Drive, Fannin and South Main streets - and will welcome visitors to the medical center's northern entrance.

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"The owners [Mischer Healthcare Services] saw this building, along with the existing Herrmann Memorial Hospital across the street, as forming a gateway into the medical center," said Bob Inaba, project designer with Houston-based architecture firm Kirksey.

The lantern is constructed around four 30,000-lb. columns that crews had to lift in one pick and put in place. Four white panels are set at 45-degree angles from the top edges of the structure, sloping in toward the penthouse. LED lights will shine on the panels, reflecting the light into the skies above the medical center.

The project, which broke ground in October 2004, is scheduled for completion in mid-December.

The lantern is the final piece of an all-around challenging project, said Kelly Hall, senior project manager with Houston-based D.E. Harvey Builders, the general contractor on the job. The company is constructing the building on a $155 contract.

"This is a zero-lot-line project with 30 stories going up over two of the busiest streets in Houston," he said. "The logistics alone have been tricky."

Memorial Hermann Medical Plaza, designed by Kirksey and built by D.E. Harvey Builders, both of Houston, will form a gateway to Houston’s Texas Medical Center. (Photo courtesy of Geoff Lyon Photography.)

From the Ground Up But before the building could start going up, the challenges began on the ground. An existing skybridge stretched from the hospital, across Fannin Street and through the medical plaza site before connecting to the neighboring Memorial Hermann Professional Building. Crews had to create supports for the skybridge and demolish the portions that cut through the construction site. Once the building came up, the skybridge was tied into the new medical plaza.

Crews excavated the nearly 3-acre site to accommodate two below-grade levels of parking. While in the ground, crews experienced the wettest November and wettest February on record in the city. Although it caused some delays, the rain was often a benefit, said Jon Dell, project manager with D.E. Harvey.

"We were fortunate to have made a good access into our site, so when other projects in the city were unable to get trucks into their sites, those trucks could come over and haul out more of our dirt," he said. "Those were some of our most productive days."

Crews used a soldier-pile retention system. Piers were driven up to 110-ft. deep.
Nearly 1 million lbs. of reinforced steel were placed into the 7,000-cu.-yd. concrete mat foundation in one week.

A 60-ft.-tall lantern will top the building drawing attention to an already prominent addition to the city’s skyline. (Photo courtesy of Geoff Lyon Photography.)

Many Different Levels Once out of the ground, the concrete-structure building began to take shape with the construction of a 1 million-sq.-ft. 2,400-space parking garage on the first 11 above-ground levels. The ground level and second floor also include retail space facing the street.

The first level serves as a center of vehicular circulation. Kirksey worked with traffic engineers to design circulation that would allow vehicles to drive in and out of the building from two facades, giving them access to the garage as well as drop-off points for patients. There is also a service dock area.

The core of the building includes six banks of elevators that service different circulations. One bank services the ambulatory care center, which is located above the garage. Another bank services the garage levels. Two banks offer access to office space located above the ambulatory center.

Doctors have a dedicated elevator that offers access from their parking area in the basement to the offices. The final bank is a service elevator.

Designers created two lobbies to help improve access to the retail areas as well as the elevator banks. The two-story north lobby also creates a link to the skybridge.

As the building came out of the ground, logistics got more complicated, Dell said. With no laydown area, D.E. Harvey had to order materials as needed and kept focused on getting them there on time.

"While we were doing our steel work, we didn't have anywhere to tie steel to get ahead," he said. "So we pre-tied columns over at our steel provider. We built the slab there. When we needed it, we'd ship that in and fly it directly from the truck. An hour later we'd be pouring concrete on it."

Above the garage levels, which are approximately 87,000 sq. ft. each, the tower narrows to 50,000-sq.-ft. levels. The 12th level houses the building's central utility plant, which was built there, in part, to keep it out of flood danger. Crews used three tower cranes to lift 4,000 tons of cooling equipment for the mechanical systems.

Directly above the utility plant is the two-story ambulatory center. Because of the proximity to the mechanical systems, special attention was paid to structural and acoustical engineering to make sure there were no noise or vibration issues between the central utility plant and the ambulatory center.

Above the ambulatory center, the tower floors reduce to 25,000 sq. ft. and house medical offices all the way up to the roof lantern.

The exterior of the parking garage features glass-punched windows and precast concrete finished to look like limestone. Above the garage, the structure is clad with aluminum-framed, unitized curtain wall of approximately 4,000 panels.

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