The Hub on Causeway (née TD Garden Towers) | 80 Causeway Street | West End

I'm still not totally clear on the phasing of this. Is the core going to continue up into the residential tower or are they going to stop at the podium for now?
 
Justin7 said:
I'm still not totally clear on the phasing of this. Is the core going to continue up into the residential tower or are they going to stop at the podium for now?
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As far as we know, the concrete core will go to full height, including the residential tower. The steel will stop on the right side at podium height. The entire podium will be built out and opened as construction is ongoing on the residential and hotel towers. The office tower will come later.
 
JumboBuc said:
As far as we know, the concrete core will go to full height, including the residential tower. The steel will stop on the right side at podium height. The entire podium will be built out and opened as construction is ongoing on the residential and hotel towers. The office tower will come later.
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This is correct (& well summarized).
 
JumboBuc said:
As far as we know, the concrete core will go to full height, including the residential tower. The steel will stop on the right side at podium height. The entire podium will be built out and opened as construction is ongoing on the residential and hotel towers. The office tower will come later.
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And the top five floors will be made of pressed wood. (jk ;-) )
 
mass88 said:
How is all of the steel for a project like this sourced? Is is it produced here in Massachusetts? Or is imported from another country on a container ship?
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I don't know, but your list should probably include a middle options of:
- Shipped by land from Canada or Mexico
- Produced in US state that isn't Mass (such as likely choices PA, OH, or WV where recycled materials and cheap fracked energy keep them competitive )
 
^ Yeah, fun fact: Contemporary US structural steel is made with about 90% recycled content.
 
JumboBuc said:
^ Yeah, fun fact: Contemporary US structural steel is made with about 90% recycled content.
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True. And fascinating history associated with the "mini mill" technology that arose in the late '70s/early '80s in the U.S....this was the disruption that essentially killed Big Steel in the rust belt.

Mini mills are small, flexible, and use almost entirely recycled scrap to produce structural-grade steel. Previously smelting scrap was unable to produce the quality necessary for structures, but this new tech solved that. It allowed for a distributed network of minimills rather than only a few huge integrated steel mills...it cut logistics costs, labor costs, etc.

(Of course there were all kinds of laborforce/industry altering ripple effects)

http://www.nytimes.com/1981/09/23/business/the-rise-of-mini-steel-mills.html
 
JumboBuc said:
As far as we know, the concrete core will go to full height, including the residential tower. The steel will stop on the right side at podium height. The entire podium will be built out and opened as construction is ongoing on the residential and hotel towers. The office tower will come later.
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Thank you.
 
Amazing to think that we've been staring at that blank party wall on the side of the garden for the last 20+ years and now it's finally going to disappear. What a vast, bleak expanse there was between the old garden lot (vip surface parking!) and width of Causeway street for two decades.

One thing for sure: this area will very soon feel much more urban. It will be changed forever.
 
BeeLine said:
https://flic.kr/p/XMtbas
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Hey so I'm a long-time frequenter of this site but an almost-never poster (as you can see from my post count). I've seen quite a few of these construction photos now and I am wondering about those long cylindrical horizontal steel structures that they always seem to put in first on these projects. What is their function and how do they work? Just curious. Thanks.
 
They are there to keep the wall from collapsing while they dig the foundation.

I'm sure that there is a more technical explanation, but that's the quick answer.
 
crispino said:
Hey so I'm a long-time frequenter of this site but an almost-never poster (as you can see from my post count). I've seen quite a few of these construction photos now and I am wondering about those long cylindrical horizontal steel structures that they always seem to put in first on these projects. What is their function and how do they work? Just curious. Thanks.
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statler said:
They are there to keep the wall from collapsing while they dig the foundation.

I'm sure that there is a more technical explanation, but that's the quick answer.
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That's true. Also, it's to prevent the weight of everything from behind the foundation walls from spilling into the development site. Think of it like you're digging a hole at the beach in the tidal zone--as the sand around the hole you've dug gets more wet and deep, the walls around the hole start to collapse into themselves. And they also compromise the support of anything above the outlying perimeter.

Those long horizontal steel cylinders are what keeps the TD Garden, the Tip O'Neill Federal Building, and multiple buildings along Causeway street from collapsing into the Hub On Causeway construction site.
 
dshoost88 said:
Those long horizontal steel cylinders are what keeps the TD Garden, the Tip O'Neill Federal Building, and multiple buildings along Causeway street from collapsing into the Hub On Causeway construction site.
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..and they're common where you're building in fill and don't have rock to tie the retaining walls into (if the stuff behind the wall were stable enough, you could've drilled into it and used a tie back). Big Dig used a lot of this to hold the slurry walls in place before the tunnel roof and floor took over that job.

...or when you could do tie backs (which is not the case here), but don't want to have to drill holes in your retaining wall (a source of water leaks in the long run)

Causeway St is on the ocean side of the old Mill Pond Dam on the north side of the Bullfinch Triangle below and everything in this whole area is fill
Bulfinch_Triangle%2C_Boston%2C_in_1880_on_map_showing_original_shoreline.jpg
 
Thanks everyone for the explanations; much appreciated. So do the cylinders get worked into the floors underground somehow?
 
crispino said:
Thanks everyone for the explanations; much appreciated. So do the cylinders get worked into the floors underground somehow?
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The bracing is removed incrementally as the substructure get's built.

If you look closely in this photo by davec, towards the middle you can see the bottom bracing almost completely removed. Scroll forward from that post approximately 10 pages and you can see the progression of the below grade construction.
 
crispino said:
Thanks everyone for the explanations; much appreciated. So do the cylinders get worked into the floors underground somehow?
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bobthebuilder said:
The bracing is removed incrementally as the substructure get's built.

If you look closely in this photo by davec, towards the middle you can see the bottom bracing almost completely removed. Scroll forward from that post approximately 10 pages and you can see the progression of the below grade construction.
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Aha! I get it. Very interesting. Thanks for helping me out.
 
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