EASTERN CONSTRUCTION.
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fic with 24 stories of hotel cantilevering
above, supported by transfer beams incor-
porated in two floors of hotel shear walls.
“It was quite an exercise, to say the least,
as the congestion of rebar demanded each
bar be accurately placed to allow proper
placement and consolidation of the poured
concrete,” Tacconelli says.
Another unusual feature is found in the
Caesars Windsor’s entertainment center,
Colosseum. The multipurpose space dou-
bles as a convention center, and 2,600 of
the 5,000 seat are retractable, clearing the
way for 40,000 square feet of trade show
space. The floor is a suspended concrete
slab that was constructed to tight flatness
tolerances necessary for the free move-
ment of the retractable seating, which is
30 rows tall and 200 feet wide.
Construction Challenges
Tacconelli says some of the unique chal-
lenges presented included the foundation
– a single raft footing consisting of 10,000
cubic yards of concrete.
The hotel portion was approximately
5,000 yards and had to be poured mono-
lithically and in a timely fashion to
ensure consistency. This was achieved
by utilizing four large concrete pumps
and scheduling the pour on a Friday
evening so two dedicated concrete plants
could supply the concrete. The pour was
completed in 24 hours.
The entertainment facility was con-
structed as a structure within a structure.
As ballrooms and meeting rooms are locat-
ed above the entertainment facility, the
designers were challenged by the acousti-
cal and vibration issues associated with
the respective facilities and how they inter-
acted with each other.
The solution was to support the ball-
rooms and meeting rooms above on the
base building primary structure that
consists of 250-foot-long, 25-foot-deep
girders spanning the entertainment
facility and then construct an independ-
ent mirror structure with separate gird-
ers and columns to support all the
entertainment facility’s specific equip-
ment and devices.
Within the primary girders, an
acoustical barrier of multiple layers of
drywall board and acoustic insulation
was constructed to isolate the entertain-
FEBRUARY 2009
ment facility from the ballrooms and
meeting rooms above.
Another hurdle Eastern Construction
and OLG encountered was renovating
and rebranding the existing gaming floor
facility – a 24/7 operation – with mini-
mal impact to patrons and operations.
The solution was the implementation
of a carefully laid out plan that was
developed with OLG and casino opera-
tions. One hundred thousand square feet
of the gaming floor was divided into a
series of small projects that connected to
one another and allowed the necessary
movement of construction activities to
and from the work area without overlap
of patrons or operation.
The casino never had less than 75 per-
cent of the gaming floor operating.
“When you’re working with a 24/7
facility, renovations take on a different
meaning,” Wayow says. “You want to
make the least impact on customers.”
But Wayow says no complication was
too great during the construction process.
“Challenges were overcome by everybody’s
positive outlook of getting the end goal
done,” he says. ■
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