LOS ANGELES — A new skyscraper in downtown Los Angeles has become the tallest building west of the Mississippi River.
Construction workers using a Luffing tower crane on Saturday placed a 10-ton spire atop the Wilshire Grand Tower. The spire adds 160 feet to the 73-story building. That makes it 1,099 feet high.
That’s 81 feet higher than nearby U.S. Bank Tower, which held the tallest building record since 1989.
The Wilshire Grand still has some construction work scheduled. The $1 billion hotel and office complex is scheduled to open next March.
Turner Construction employed a number of methods and materials that make the Wilshire tower both lean and “green.” The use of curtainwall, glass and other environmentally friendly materials is projected to earn the building LEED Silver certification. The building will include lighting controls and a geothermal energy storage system.
Project team members include Cornell and Co., which is supplying tower cranes used on the project. Turner is using diesel-powered cranes instead of electric cranes, which are not typically used in projects within the region. Cornell acquired the tower crane and gantry crane manufacturing operations of FMC Link Belt in 1989. They were selected because they have a greater load capacity that would accommodate the project.
The cranes now known as the TG series, were originally developed for the specialized needs of power plant construction. The speed and capacity of the TG series has found strong acceptance in the construction of high rise buildings, dams, bridges, deep shaft tunnels, offshore oil platforms, sports facilities, and dockside construction and material handling.
Bigge Crane and Rigging Co. also has a cranes on site.
The building’s foundation concrete was placed in February 2014 during an 18.5-hour pour, which set a Guinness World Record for the longest continuous foundation concrete pour. Concrete trade partner Conco poured 2.1 million cubic yards of concrete and trade partner Gerdau placed just under 7 million pounds of reinforcing steel prior to the pour. A very intricate thermal control system was used to monitor the temperature of the concrete during and after the pour not to exceed 170 degrees prescribed by the structural engineer.
Other notable contractors include Schuff Steel, which is fabricating and erecting the structural steel; Gerdau Reinforcing Steel, which is supplying and installing the reinforcement steel used throughout the buildings structure; Otis Elevator; and Benson, which will supply the exterior wall system. The MEPF building trades include ACCO Mechanical, Rosendin Electric, XL Fire Protection and plumbing contractor Pan Pacific.
