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West Point, Ga.-based Batson-Cook Construction is building the Wachovia Corporate Center, a new headquarters building for Wachovia Bank, in Charlotte, N.C. The $500 million project will consist of a 48-story office building sitting above an eight-level underground parking garage. The project will encompass more than 2.4 million square feet and is aiming for LEED Gold certification, Project Executive Randy Thompson says.

The first level will be Wachovia’s main lobby and elevators, and the second floor will house the bank’s server room. The third floor will serve as training areas during the day and classrooms at night. Wachovia will share the space with Wake Forrest University, located in Salem, N.C., which has an education branch that provides nighttime MBA courses.

Specially Designed
For floors four through seven, Batson-Cook is constructing a specially designed area for the bank’s trading activities, which will encompass about 45,000 square feet and house approximately 750 traders per floor.

“They will have 20-foot floor-to-floor heights, which is unusual in an office building,” Thompson notes. “There will be a lot of open spaces – wide column spacing – which makes it a much more expensive structure to build. The structural system for the office tower is a tube design, where there are no sheer walls, even though it’s a tall building.

“The columns around the perimeter are located on a 10-foot centers with deep spandrel beams,” he explains. “All of the seismic and wind loads are taken in these columns and deep beams. Since there are no shear walls, the core of the buildings for mechanical and electrical space, toilets and elevators is very efficient because it’s very small. Consequently, there is more rentable square footage on each floor.”

Unusual Concrete
The building is a combination of poured-in-place concrete core and perimeter and precast double tees, a structural component often used in parking decks. The double tees span between the poured-in-place core and perimeter systems, Thompson says. “There are not many buildings that use them, but in this particular case – and after evaluating all of the different structural types that we could use – that turned out to be the most cost effective, and it minimized the schedule,” he adds.

Because of the tower’s design, Batson-Cook asked a local concrete supply company to create high-strength concrete mixes. “We’re using 18,000 pounds per square inch concrete for our columns and some of the beams,” he says. “In most areas of the country, the highest strength concrete available is 12,000 pounds per square inch; but this building is so big and tall, to keep the column sizes down, the concrete firm developed this concrete especially for the project.”

A Second Tower
Wachovia, in partnership with the city of Charlotte, is investing more than $1.2 billion overall to develop the two towers, parking deck and several art facilities on the site.

These include a 1,200-seat performing arts center called Knight Theater and the Bechtler Museum, which will house a private collection being donated to the city. Batson-Cook was selected to build the new Afro-American Cultural Center for the city.

The company will also construct a 42-story mixed-use tower next to the Wachovia office building. Six stories are allocated to an art museum called The Mint Museum, 35 levels will house more than 300 condos and the street level will be house retail, Thompson says.

‘Major Excavation’
“The site, with the office building and condo tower, occupies an entire city block, which is about three acres of real estate,” Thompson notes. “We’ve had to do a major excavation across the main streets in Charlotte. We had to support all of the utilities and provide a temporary bridge for the street, while we excavated an 80-foot tunnel down to the bottom level of the garage. Fifty-five feet of it has been granite, so we’ve been drilling and blasting since early 2006. The site looked like a rock quarry for a long time.”

He says the excavation has been completed, and Batson-Cook is now on the ninth floor of the office tower. The concrete work for the parking garage and underneath the mixed-use condo tower is just beginning. The company will begin construction on the four-story Afro-American cultural center next month and turn it over in spring 2009. Thompson says the Wachovia office tower will be finished by June 2009, and the mixed-use tower will be completed by the end of 2010.

‘LEED’ing the Best
To achieve LEED Gold status, the two towers will incorporate water-saving plumbing devices and a water storage system that will treat rainwater to be used for cooling tower make-up water. “Below the parking levels (100 feet below the street), there is a 22-foot-deep hole that will house several storage tanks – among those, vaults to store the rainwater in – which will encompass 30,000 square feet,” Thompson says.

Batson-Cook is recycling the rock it blasted for the parking structure by hauling it to a local quarry, where it will be crushed for gravel. “Wachovia has a commitment that they’ve made to the community that they would be a leader in LEED and also a leader in assuring that minority [firms] are able to do business for the bank,” he states. “There will be a minimum of 90 percent minority participation in the project.

“As a matter of fact, we have joint-venture partnerships with R.J. Leeper Co. for the construction of the parking garage. For the office tower, our joint-venture partner is H.J. Russell & Co. And then for the Afro-American Cultural Center, both Leeper and Russell are partners with us.”