PIER POUNDING FOR THE COSMOPOLITAN TO BEGIN WEDNESDAY
By: Mike Baird
Friday, February 28, 2014
CORPUS CHRISTI — The sound of progress will get louder downtown beginning Wednesday as 490 piers are pounded into the ground for The Cosmopolitan.
Demolition of the former Lichtenstein Department Sore building, built in 1941, is complete and site utility installation is being finished at the first of the week, officials said.
“It will be as loud as pile driving and will create some vibration,” said Project Manager Robert Howe, with RealTex Development Corp., based in Austin.
The $29 million mixed-use development between Chaparral and Mesquite streets at Lawrence will include a 160-unit residential tower and more than 6,000 square feet of street-level retail space.
Hundreds of truckloads of concrete, steel and demolition debris has been removed, and the ground grated.
The piles being installed 18 to 24 feet deep are called Geopiers. They are a rammed aggregate material pounded into drilled holes by a hammering machine, Howe said.
Work will be 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Mondays through Fridays, but will stop on Sundays, he said.
“We don’t want to make tenants’ lives any more disrupted as possible,” Howe said. “Once this process starts, the pace will pick up drastically and a month from now you will see the structure coming out of the ground.”
Steel reinforced concrete footings are poured onto the top of the Geopiers, then columns will be installed on the footings to support the next level of the buildings’ garage. Cables are then placed as the concrete starts to harden for additional reinforcement, making what’s called a post-tension deck, Howe explained.
The same process is repeated to make a second story. The garage roof becomes the first floor of the apartments and also the deck of the center courtyard. Its swimming pool will be on the roof of the garage.
“When you look down from upstairs, you’ll just see the water, but the garage will be under it,” Rowe said. Then the framing will begin, expected to start about the end of July. That’s when the pounding of more than 100 carpenters’ hammers and air-powered nail guns will frame four floors of residential space.
“We’re pretty excited,” Rowe said. “Everything’s running along as scheduled, and we didn’t find any surprises underground, so we’re rolling full steam ahead.”