Construction project update: busy season at urban and rural job sites.

• Author: Harrington, Susan
• Position: SPECIAL SECTION: Building Alaska

The constant sound of heavy equipment, whether beeping reverse (safety first) or growling going forward and the twenty-four hour roar of trucks hauling gravel and various building materials has many Alaskans longing for the quiet fall of snow before the icy roads are too slick for summer tires. All along the coastline and everywhere in between, construction contractors and crews have been busy putting things together for a better Alaska. We offer a tiny slice of all the work done over the summer and into the fall in this review of construction projects.

Anchorage

For those wanting to see an impressive construction project in Anchorage, the new University of Alaska Anchorage sports arena, named the Alaska Airlines Center, which occupies ground beside the eastern edge of the Providence campus in the Anchorage U-Med district is a good one to drive by and see. It's a beautiful building.

Cornerstone General Contractors was busy working on the Alaska Airlines Center this summer. By the end of September, the building was basically all enclosed, the roof was on, a lot of the curtain wall was glazed. Crews were prepping for finishes in the basement and doing the metal flaming. The hanging of gypsum wallboard was progressing on the first floor, balcony, and mezzanine. The company added an Elmore Road roundabout this summer. They have turned on the boilers for heating the building and were testing the heat as well as other permanent mechanical items, which were being turned on.

Much of the exterior zinc siding was up and being completed in early fall. The beautiful profile metal siding is one of the big ticket items for the arena.

Contractors will be completing interior finishes through the winter and into the spring, at which time they will be looking to start some of the commissioning, along with paving the parking lots and landscaping. Estimated completion date is in July of 2014 for this $109 million project, for which construction began seventeen feet below ground level. As big as it looks--and it looks enormous--it is even larger than it appears. Seawolf fans will be able to enjoy basketball games and many other activities there; however, hockey will still be played at the Sullivan Arena.

Also under construction at the UAA campus this summer is the new Engineering & Industry Building, going up south of the UAA Bookstore. Neeser Construction, Inc. began work on the building this summer. Structural steel started going up in mid-August. A sky bridge across Providence Drive will connect it to the UAA Health Sciences building. The four-story building is expected to cost nearly $80 million will add 81,500 gross square feet of teaching and laboratory space to the School of Engineering. Twenty-four labs, two eLearning classrooms, five seminar and breakout rooms, more than forty offices for faculty and staff, a commons with coffee shop, and a high-bay project design and assembly area are planned with completion expected for summer 2015. It is half-funded.

Across from UAA, Davis continued work on the $150 million Providence Tower M, part of the multi-phase expansion on the Providence Hospital consisting of an eighty-two thousand-square-foot extension of the existing hospital and sixty-eight thousand square feet of hospital remodel, including two patient care floors to house a sixty-six bed neo natal intensive care unit, thirty-one bed mother-baby unit, fourteen bed prenatal unit, ten labor delivery rooms, and ten triage rooms along with a basement and third floor mechanical penthouse with a medical gas bottle room. The project is 75 percent complete with core and shell plus the mother-baby unit and a portion of labor delivery completed in October 2012. The forty-two bed portion of the NICU was completed in April 2013...