West Palm Beach Fire Station No. 4

Project summary provided by submitting company.

The City of West Palm Beach Fire Station No. 4 project scope included demolishing the existing building and replacing with a new 11,300 square foot state-of-the-art fire station. The two story facility is built with a category 5 structural design, and also to achieve Silver LEED certification. Its art deco design was created at the request of neighboring residents, and reflects the style of many of the historic homes there. The station consists of three drive-through apparatus bays, living quarters and administration areas for the fire staff, medical/general storage rooms, a decontamination room, and a generator room. The WPB fire Station project is a true re-design-build. Originally designed as a conventional structural system of CMU block and cast in place columns and beams, our customer, being familiar with what we can do with Tilt-Up, approached us to inquire if the Tilt-Up system would be feasible for this project, we replied “let’s try it”‘! (Although we probably should not have…) So the Design Build process was started. With almost zero area on site to cast panels, the construction and sequencing proved to be very challenging. With almost 21,300 net square feet of panel, and only 8,800 SF of building footprint, all available site was filled with panels on temporary casting slabs, including the building’s footprint. The sequencing and erection process required two full mobilizations to complete. Tilt-Up was also utilized for all the exterior walkways, handicap ramp walls, stair walls, elevator shaft as well as the interior load bearing walls that support the mezzanine level. This project shows that indeed small buildings can utilize the Tilt-Up system effectively! The building’s art deco/Mediterranean design is governed by its surrounding neighboring community of older historic residential structures, and blends well. During re-design of the project to Tilt-Up, the designers took the opportunity to utilize the tilt-up system to achieve status to resist category 5 winds from hurricanes that are inherent to Florida’s coastlines, enabling the structure to become an official hurricane shelter for the neighboring community. The project also achieved LEED Silver status.