Featured Projects
Outdoor Education Center – Mine Project Abstract
The Boy Scouts of America–Orange County Council, owners of the Outdoor Education Center, wanted to create an experience for the youth of Southern California that was exciting and educational. The Mine Project allowed them to inject the suspense and mystery of a dark cave – a mine tunnel—into what would otherwise be rather dry lessons on geology and the importance of mining in the early history of the county. Making this attraction safe and permanent led them to concrete. Making it feasible and safe to build led them to tilt-up. This project is worthy of consideration for an award for the following three reasons.
This project is noteworthy because it is not an obvious candidate for a tilt-up solution. Poured-in-place is the obvious choice for an underground tunnel and was indeed the engineer’s first choice. It took imagination to see tilt-up as the best possible solution when no one else even saw it as a possibility. The willingness to think outside the box, so to speak, to expand the possible uses of tilt-up into non-traditional applications is a defining and noteworthy characteristic of this project.
Not only did tilt-up provide the customers with an imaginative solution to their construction problem, it also made it easier for them to add the educational features they desired. The dirt cast tilt-up panels made it very easy for them to install various simulated rock formations into the walls. It the dark cave provided the excitement needed to attract the young people to this attraction, the ability to include numerous geological features in the walls of the cave made its educational value all the more impressive.
The significant gain in jobsite safety that tilt-up provided maked for the third, and in many ways most impressive, feature of this project. The engineer’s initial design called for poured-in-place walls to be cast against unshored dirt embankments to achieve the desired look. Tilt-up allowed the desired features and textures to be achieved without exposing workmen to this obvious risk.
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Irvine Valley College Performing Arts Center
The Performing Arts Center was built to serve the students’ theater, music and dance programs. Replacing the Irvine Valley College’s 1,594 square-foot Forum Theater, which at the time seated only 63, the new center now seats 400 in the main theater with a single-level balcony that wraps around the orchestra pit, creating a close audience experience. There is also the Studio Theatre, which seats 200, will have a more intimate setting for plays and small concerts.
The facility includes an additional small music hall, dressing rooms, costume shop, design scene shop, green room, box office, design lab and music lab. Positioned for maximum visibility from the main intersections of the campus, the Performing Arts Center will be the Irvine Valley College’s brightest star.
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Waremart – Oregon Food Distribution Center
Location: Woodburn, OR
Size: 1,000,000 sf
Architect/General Contractor: The Facility Group
The Waremart – Oregon facility features about 1 million square feet of food distribution and storage space, including 250,000 square feet of freezer space that is kept at a constant minus 10 degrees. We provided the structural concrete work for this project in two major phases.
Our work included a unique combination of poured-in-place concrete walls, tilt-up demising walls, and conventional footing systems. The freezer area required mud slabs, insulation, and special trap rock finished slabs to satisfy the needs of Waremart in the very cold and heavily used freezer environment.
Our scope also included freezer curbs, loading docks, equipment pads and out buildings.
As an out-of-town contractor we needed to quickly establish relations with the local material suppliers and building inspectors. Coming from southern California, we also had to come to terms with some weather that was unfamiliar to us. Our team was able to meet these challenges and go on to deliver a quality product on time.
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Waremart – California Food Distribution Center
Location: Ceres (Modesto), CA
Size: 780,000 sf
Architect/General Contractor: A. Epstein & Sons
The Waremart – California facility, much like the one in Oregon, included a special combination of structural concrete systems, including poured-in-place walls , specialty floors, and tilt-up panels, that Prizio is uniquely qualified to handle. The project featured a large freezer, cool storage, and dry storage areas, plus security and vehicle maintenance buildings, all of which needed to be completed on a very tight schedule. Inclement weather rivaling what we had experienced in Oregon added to the pressure, but with hard work and good planning the Prizio crews once again delivered a quality product on schedule for an important client.