Bear habitat
Project team endures 110-hour weeks, windstorm at FedExForum site

By C. Richard Cotton

It has been centuries since grizzly bears made their home in the habitat of west Tennessee's wooded hills. Come next fall, though, today's Grizzlies - two-legged, basketball-wielding athletes - begin their tenure in a new habitat.

Speeding along on a fast-track construction schedule, the $225 million FedExForum will become the new home of the Memphis Grizzlies when it opens this fall. The National Basketball Association team moved from Vancouver, British Columbia, to Memphis for the 2001-2002 season and played in the city's landmark Pyramid, but the building was deemed inadequate for the new big-league team.

From the first shovelful of dirt removed June 18, 2002, from the 13.8-acre site adjacent to the Beale Street historic district downtown to today, the project has been a giant one for Memphis. And few American cities have seen a project of this magnitude constructed in the timeframe FedExForum has come out of the ground.

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"We put in some 110-hour weeks to get the excavation done," said Adam Farrell, project manager for L&T Construction Inc., the Hernando, Miss., firm tapped for the arena excavation.

A disastrous windstorm last summer that destroyed millions of dollars worth of property in Memphis halted work while a damaged crane and other equipment and materials were removed, repaired or replaced.

"The storm in July cost a good bit of time for construction," said Joe Hall, spokesman for the New Memphis Arena Public Building Authority, owner of the facility that will also be home to events and sports other than just pro basketball.

Allen Troshinsky, project manager for lead contractor M. A. Mortenson Co. of Minneapolis, said the project includes the 800,000-sq.-ft. arena, a 550,000-sq.-ft. parking garage and a 50,000-sq.-ft. administration building.

The arena is Mortenson's job.

"Based on billings, we were 70 percent complete as of mid-February," Troshinsky added. "With five months remaining (on the contract), I feel we're in good shape."

Troshinsky recently walked to the middle of the arena, where all 650 workers gathered for the project's monthly after-lunch safety meeting, and watched as Mortenson project superintendent David Mansell pointed out areas where more caution was needed.

For 20 minutes, the arena was as quiet as it gets during a day's work. The only sound in the 18,000-seat building was Mansell's voice.

Within moments of the meeting's end, however, the air was cloudy with dust from hundreds of tradesmen back at work.

The roof installation was completed Jan. 17; the building was enclosed and heated by Feb. 4.

Troshinsky said 150 Mortenson workers performed the $20 million worth of early concrete work, including construction of foundation, columns and slabs through the upper-terrace level during a seven-month period from November 2002 through May.

Today, Mortenson maintains a workforce on the job of about 20 to 40 construction workers and 20 management staffers and superintendents.

The remaining 600-700 workers onsite are employed by hundreds of subcontractors and suppliers.

With that kind of crowds at work every day, Troshinsky said communication, from penciling the earliest drawings to today's advanced stage of construction, has been the key to moving the construction forward. "To sit in a vacuum and think any one of us could have done this alone (is foolish)," he added.

Above the concrete arena structure is structural steel framing covered with composite sheeting. The parking garage is made of pre-stressed concrete slabs and the administration building is a steel frame with masonry exterior.

Except for the west end of the arena's interior, which features telescoping seating moveable for hockey games or concerts, seating is mounted on pre-stressed, permanently placed concrete stadium panels.

Troshinsky said savings in the design-engineering phase allowed for more investment "in what the owners call the 'wow' effect."

For example, more efficient construction of building systems resulted in enough money saved to add $1.5 million worth of terrazzo flooring. Rather than being installed only on the main entrance concourse, it now is also on the upper terrace level.

Mortenson was awarded an additional $14 million contract at the arena to furnish and install the scoreboard, exterior marquee and LED fascia lighting on two levels along the perimeter of the bowl interior:

Besides the Grizzlies' state-of-the-art locker room, a number of auxiliary locker rooms will accommodate multiple teams for events such as college tournaments. Multiple restaurants are also part of the FedExForum bill of amenities.

Owner spokesman Hall admitted the fast-track construction method "is an uncommon way for a municipal project" to be run.

And Jeff Richerson, secretary-treasurer and project manager for electrical contractor TAM Electric of, said, "It has been quite an in-depth effort to stay on track." He added that two meetings are held with all the subcontractors each week to coordinate scheduling.

"It has been a challenging job for scheduling and working simultaneously with other trades," said Tim Howell, general manager of John W. McDougall Co. Inc. of Nashville, supplier of the exterior finish panels.

The headaches of a major project running at high speed every day have been eased somewhat by the Grizzlies team, Troshinsky said.

"The Grizzlies gave four game tickets to every employee out here," he added. "That's at least the third time they've done that. They had 765 ticket packets and they were all gone (at the end of the day)."

Useful Resources:

For more information about the FedExForum project, go to:
http://www.nba.com/grizzlies/fedexforum/