The new $25,700,000, 332,279-square-foot, design-build parking structure for the Rady Children’s Hospital and Health Center was recently completed. The roof of the parking structure will serve as the foundation for the planned new Ronald McDonald House.
The project was completed nearly two weeks earlier than the estimated completion date, a remarkable feat considering the hurdles along the way.
“We were supposed to gain permanent power the day the fires began in San Diego, but considering the damage incurred to the electrical systems serving people’s homes, SDG&E understandably put a three-week hold on any new service installation,” said Robert Betz, senior project manager for McCarthy. “The parking structure had to be completed before the hospital expansion could begin, so we re-grouped and re-focused our strategy, leaving the fire/life safety pre-testing, testing and inspections for very last, but obtaining all other city sign-offs prior. As a result, we were able to turn over the parking structure to the owner on November 30, almost two weeks earlier than originally scheduled and more than a month earlier than scheduled with the incurred delays.”
With future expansion of the hospital, the parking structure will help accommodate the influx of new patients and visitors. What makes this project especially interesting is that the top-level podium of the parking structure has been engineered to support the new Ronald McDonald House, to be constructed at a later time.
“It was a challenge coordinating the unknowns of a future project for one that had to be built now,” said Betz. “The future House infrastructure wasn’t a part of the original job, so we collaborated with the architect for the Ronald McDonald House to find out what we would need to do to ready the facility for service hookup.
The Ronald McDonald House site preparation involved the coordination and installation of more than 600 sleeves for future plumbing systems that haven’t been installed yet, a high bay condition versus the normal floor-to-floor height, a flat non-ramped surface, beams and girders that were twice the normal size, and super congested post-tension concrete reinforcing.
“McCarthy did a great job preparing our site, taking us one giant step closer to achieving our dream of building the new facility,” said Bill Lennartz, president and CEO of the Ronald McDonald House Charities of San Diego, Inc.
Situated on the side of a hill, adjacent to the I-805 freeway, the new parking structure encompasses one floor built above street level, and five floors built below ground. The structure incorporates cast-in-place columns and post-tensioned concrete decks, and features a split-faced, block exterior façade.
Building the structure into the hillside was another challenge of this project, according to Ron Hall, executive vice president of McCarthy. More than 65,000 cubic yards of soil were excavated, and a 780-linear-foot soil nail wall reaching up to 50 feet in height was constructed against the embankment.
Walker Parking Consultants served as architect for the project, with IDS as structural engineer and Project Design Consultants as civil engineer and landscape architect. Randall Lamb Associates was the electrical engineer and Shadpour Consulting Engineers, mechanical engineer.
About McCarthy
McCarthy Building Companies, Inc. is one of the nation’s oldest and largest commercial construction companies and has been one of the nation’s leading parking structure builders since the advent of the modern parking structure in the 1960s. The company has delivered nearly 400 parking facilities throughout the United States, with parking spaces for more than 70,000 cars in California alone. The firm offers general contracting, construction management, program management and design/build services for parking structures; healthcare, educational, mixed-use, laboratory, biotechnical, retail, entertainment, industrial, multifamily and microelectronics facilities; green buildings; office buildings; tenant interiors; and bridges and highways. McCarthy is 100 percent employee owned. More information about the company is available online at www.mccarthy.com.
