Already marked with a plethora of high-rise superlatives, Austin’s evolving skyline is poised for another milestone early next year with the scheduled completion of 415 Colorado, a 465,000-square-foot tower designed by Ziegler Cooper Architects that will combine 110,000 square feet of office space with nearly 330 apartments and ground-floor retail. Standing 640 feet from the corner of Jackson Street and Fifth Avenue, 415 Colorado will be the fourth tallest residential tower in Texas.
Acquiring the 0.51-square-acre site at a downtown intersection in September 2020 was something of a coup, says Will Jenkins, a partner at Austin-based developer Stonelake Capital Partners.
The roughly half-acre enclosed building site was one of the biggest overall challenges of the project.
Photo courtesy of Harvey / Harvey Cleary Builders
“Austin is one of the most dynamic downtowns in the US, which makes it very difficult to find good places,” he says. However, for all its attractive attributes, he adds, the location still presented “all the typical problems associated with large construction in the downtown area: access and egress, space limitations and demolition of existing structures.”
In the months since the project broke ground in January 2022, general contractor Harvey | Harvey Cleary Builders has made the most of the limited elbow space in the closed package.
The 415 Colorado project, which began in January 2022, is expected to be completed in early 2025.
Photo courtesy of Harvey / Harvey Cleary Builders
The effort began with the navigation and realignment of both known and undocumented utilities to prepare for the installation of more than 80 5.5-foot diameter drilled piers from 85 to 100 feet deep, finished with 3,200 m3 of concrete to form a 98 feet by 80 feet. pier head foundation/mat to support two central shear walls.
Harvey | Harvey Cleary project manager Michael Bassila says the massive concrete characteristics of the 13-foot depth of the large carpet foundation required measures to ensure sufficient strength while minimizing internal heat generated during the curing process ; not an easy task for a pour that had to be carried out in mid-July.
“We finally found a concrete supplier that had the right mix design and chilled water capacity to run our carpet pour,” says Bassila.
415 Colorado is one of several additions to the Austin skyline.
Photo courtesy of Harvey / Harvey Cleary Builders
Up and up
Over the past two years, the on-site structure with its curtain wall, window wall and prefab metal panel exterior has risen to an elevation of 584 feet. From there, an additional 50-foot-tall, glass steel frame. -A closed “crown” was erected to hide the mechanical equipment and the maintenance unit of the building.
Unlike office and residential floors, where the 16-foot, 4-in. Floor-to-ceiling windows could be installed from inside the building, Bassila says the crown glass units had to be placed with the help of the tower crane. Level 3, which houses the building’s double helix garage, features the largest units in the project’s 230,000 square feet of glass, measuring 20 feet by 5 feet.
With each new floor added to 415 Colorado, Harvey | Harvey Cleary gained much needed storage space. To avoid potential shortages and mitigate cost escalation caused by the post-pandemic construction boom and the start of the Ukraine-Russia war, the project team opted for early procurement whenever possible.
“The materials were in high demand, had longer lead times and were getting more expensive.”
—Michael Bassila, Project Manager, Harvey l Harvey Cleary Builders
“The materials were in high demand, had longer lead times and were getting more expensive,” Bassila recalls. “With warehouses full at the time, we had to store a lot of material on site and manage it for the duration of construction.”
When situations arose where the owner requested early construction or wanted to use storage areas for something else, Harvey | Harvey Cleary workers would have to move this material to another location, sometimes more than once.
“It was a constant process of consolidation and reconsolidation,” adds Bassila.
Getting these construction resources to the site presented another set of challenges.
“With only one delivery lane, we had to be very strategic about getting material into the building so the next truck could come in,” says Harvey | Trey Baker, Director of Field Operations at Harvey Cleary. Project management software helped automate both delivery bookings and material hoists, while off-site prefabrication of the exterior metal panels also helped mitigate site constraints.
View of a spilled night mat.
Photo courtesy of Harvey / Harvey Cleary Builders
One aspect in which the timing was fortuitous for the project was finding sufficient craft labor in a market that had been further strained by intense construction activity in Texas and other parts of the U.S. After starting with the which Baker calls “a terrible labor crisis,” 415 Colorado. he was able to attract workers as other projects were completed.
“We ended up in a good place after starting with a struggle,” he says. “We’re glad it didn’t happen the other way around.”
Entering the final months of the project, the 415 Colorado construction team has already delivered the lower 30 floors of the building and is now focusing on finishing exterior work while installing interior finishes, appliances and amenities . Residents will enjoy a state-of-the-art fitness center, dog run and pool on the 19th floor, while office tenants will have access to an exclusive, separate amenity level, as well as a outdoor collaboration and a conference center.
A look at the earlier stage of the project shows the difficult site conditions the contractors faced during construction.
Photo courtesy of Harvey / Harvey Cleary Builders
lessons learned
Bassila praises Harvey | Harvey Cleary’s experienced and production-driven superintendents to help minimize the effects of these and other challenges and sustain 415 Colorado’s ambitious program.
“They have built several buildings similar to this throughout their careers and are dedicated to pushing submarines to stick to the schedule,” he says. “If someone is late with a delivery, they come up with solutions to make sure we stay on track.”
Still, he adds, the past three years of work at 415 Colorado have produced “pages of lessons learned” that can be applied to the next challenge. At the top of the list, he says, is embracing the growing range of construction design and management technology.
“We used 3D modeling for the building infrastructure and facade systems, which required a lot of initial input, but saved a lot of struggle at the end of the installation,” he says. “That helped us keep working.”
For Jenkins, getting a construction partner on board as soon as possible is proving increasingly beneficial, especially for endeavors as complex as the 415 Colorado.
“It’s an advantage that increases over the course of the project,” he says. “We had a great team, from the owners and finance to the individual subcontractors.
Baker agrees. “We’re smart enough to know we can’t do it ourselves, and our office put together a pretty strong team,” he says. It’s pretty amazing what these guys can do in a short amount of time.”
