|
|
 |
SACRAMENTO: Marriott Courtyard Hotel, Los Altos, California
|
|
|
|
Limited site accessibility makes a tight squeeze for construction of a Marriott Courtyard Hotel.
OWNER: Four Seasons Associates, LLC
ARCHITECT: Law Kingdon
|
|
|
|
|
|
The Project
$19.8-million project with a 101,200 square-foot wood-framed hotel and 76,000 square-foot parking garage. Project included:
- One-story underground parking garage
- 76,000 sf post-tensioned podium deck with planters, trees, and two pools
- Three-story wood-framed building constructed over post-tensioned concrete deck with 4,500 embeds on each level
- Full kitchen, restaurant, library, exercise room, and office space
The Challenges
How do you shoe-horn a building surrounded by two busy streets, a retirement home, and a mere 15-foot-wide easement for utilities, complicated by moisture-sensitive clay?
1. Moisture-sensitive clay. By cement treating the soil, we were able to continue footings and the cast-in-place columns despite a wet winter that shut down other projects in the area.
2. Site accessibility. Necessity is the mother of invention. We brought in an over-sized crane to simplify placing materials for subcontractors. We were able to frame the hotel in 4½ months, shortening the schedule by 2 months.
3. Narrow easement for utilities. If you haven't got the width, try depth. We stacked the utilities-storm, sewer, fire, phone and gas.
4. A busy highway and big concrete pour. An irregular-shaped deck required three 700-yard to 1300-yard pours. One pour was 19 hours long, the other two were 15 hours. Logistics involved managing 50 to 60 concrete trucks and staging off a state highway.
The Result
A lesson in how good site analysis and pre-planning can make the difficult look easy.
|
|
|
