Biggie Size

World Market Center Does a Mammoth Expansion

by Tony Illia

Las Vegas does things big and bold, and its buildings are no exception. The World Market Center, for example, currently has a $550 million, 2.1 million-sq.-ft. expansion underway at the northwest corner of Grand Central Parkway and Bonneville Avenue in downtown Las Vegas. (That's roughly the same size as the Empire State Building.) The 18-month-old furniture and design showroom complex only stays open two weeks a year, making such a sizeable addition seem like madness. Yet the home furnishings business is a $120 billion a year industry.

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"The third building marks the milestone in our race to fulfill the vision of World Market Center as the predominant international market for the industry," said Shawn Sampson, the center's co-founder and managing partner.

World Market Center LLC of Las Vegas, and its co-developer The Related Cos. LP of New York, have ambitious plans for a $3-billion, 12 million-sq.-ft. home design and furnishings campus on 57 acres in the heart of Las Vegas.

Phase one consisted of a $230-million, 10-story building with 230 showrooms and 1.6 million sq. ft. of permanent exhibit space. It opened in July 2005.

Phase two is a $345 million, 16-story building with 300 showrooms and 1.6 million sq. ft. of exhibit space. It's scheduled to open this month. Whiting-Turner Contracting Co. of Baltimore is the general contractor for both phases.

But phase three is the center's largest undertaking to date, bringing its total size to 5 million-sq.-ft. Roughly 1,000 employees will occupy building three when it opens in June 2008.

PENTA Building Group of Las Vegas is the general contractor for the 16-story steel framed building atop a 27,000-cu.-yd. concrete mat and footings foundation. Designed by Jerde Partnership of Venice, Calif., with Las Vegas-based JMA as architect-of-record, the 280-ft.-tall structure has a 550,000-sq.-ft. facade consisting of a combination of EIFS, glass and metal paneling with a signature 80-ft.-wide faceted triangular glass wall entrance.

"Building three came across as a skyscraper laid on its side," said Eduardo Lopez, Jerde's senior designer. "They wanted something that big, so it has an elongated look. We tried to keep it very simple, still adding a couple of architectural moves to make it interesting."

The structure measures 250 ft. wide by 700 ft. long and covers eight acres.

The building uses no shear walls but instead relies on pipe cross-bracing and bolt plate girders for structural support. DeSimone Consulting Engineers of Las Vegas is the structural engineer. The method is expected to save time by eliminating concrete form work.

The building, as a result, uses a whopping 17,500 tons worth of steel. SME Steel Contractors, West Jordan, Ut., is the steel erector and fabricator.

"Everything about this building is big," said Justin Ritz, PENTA's project engineer. "Each floor, for instance, is roughly 3.5 acres in size."

The structure features a concrete-over-metal-decking flooring system with a 150 lb.-per-sq.-ft. live load rating. The building will have 34 escalators and 16 elevators and require 1,200 heat pumps, four air handlers, eight cooling towers and a central plant to keep things cool during the summer.

Las Vegas-based Quality Mechanical is doing the mechanical work, and Dynaelectric Co. is handling the electrical portion.

Phase three also entails construction of a seven-level, 4,487-space parking garage directly north of the new building. Bomel Construction Co. of Anaheim, Calif. is the contractor for the cast-in-place structure that's expandable up to 14 levels.

Concurrent construction of the garage and building around two pre-existing buildings with a combined 2,000 employees hasn't been easy.

"The toughest part of the job is logistics and coordinating subcontractors and material deliveries," said Steve Stutzman, PENTA's project superintendent.

The project will use three gantry tower cranes provided by Jake's Crane and Rigging of Las Vegas to pick and place building materials. An estimated 550 workers will be onsite during the height of construction activity.

Building three will connect with its neighbor, building two, using glass railing pedestrian breezeways at each level. It will additionally tie into the campus with a landscaped plaza of stamped and colored concrete.

It will represent $1.1 billion investment to date. World Market Center, when fully developed, will have eight separate buildings all connected by sky bridges.