San Diego, Calif., Sept. 19, 2012
When a Southern California developer needed a general contractor to perform a challenging addition to one of its parking structures near San Diego International Airport, it chose the largest concrete contractor in the state for the job.
Anaheim Hills-based Bomel Construction, builders of parking structures throughout the West since 1970, has completed the complex expansion of the Aladdin Development-owned parking garage at the intersection of Laurel Street and Kettner Boulevard, adjacent to Interstate 5 and about three miles from the airport.
Bomel was charged with adding 502 stalls to a 30-year-old structure with 1,542 stalls. The expanded garage has three levels above grade, two below grade and three entrance and exit points.
Joining the structures together required extensive retrofitting and excavating a site that had been home to a foundry and a variety of manufacturing businesses during the last 100 years.
“We had to upgrade the shear capacity of a 30-year-old structure,” said Adam Perrington, Bomel’s project manager. “We had to correctly tie the new structure into the existing building without compromising its integrity. Re-bar placement codes are much more stringent now than they were when the garage was built in 1982.
“To tie into the existing structure, we had to grab more of the existing slab with our method of attachment to add a shear wall. But we had to phase construction in a manner so that at no point was the public in danger.
“Nowadays, you can’t have a shear wall made out of concrete block. The new structure has a solid, one-foot-thick concrete wall that ties into the slab at eight-inch curbs on the outside of the existing structure.”
At about 155,000 square feet, evenly distributed among all five levels, the Bomel-built part of the garage is about a third of the size of the original 435,000-square-foot garage.
The site of the expansion was the original home of Barth Foundry and Machine Works, established in 1913 by William G. Barth and sold in 1947 to Steelcraft Manufacturing Co. A number of other electrical and light industries occupied the site since 1950.
Bomel’s first order of business involved the demolition and removal of the slabs and footings of three vacant buildings, an extensive phase due to existing contaminants and artifacts found in the soil.
“Grading took a year because of the hazardous materials––lots of heavy metals––that were found,” said Perrington. “We also unearthed old artifacts such as bottles, a train wheel, railroad spikes and small shellfish fossils.
Other contaminants on the site included lead-based furnace slag, dismantled furnace and building bricks and miscellaneous metal fragments courtesy of the Barth Foundry.
Agencies and stakeholders overseeing the project included the California Coastal Commission, San Diego Natural Museum of History and local Indian tribes.
Perrington said the city of San Diego requested that the expanded structure be designed to look like two different garages. Space for community artwork was made available along Kettner Boulevard.
The architect for the $7.5 million expansion was Irvine-based Innovative Design Group. The structural engineer was BPA Group, also of Irvine. Beverly Hills-based Aladdin Development owns the parking structure.
The new parking garage is about three miles from the new airline terminal under construction, part of the $1 billion Green Build program, the biggest expansion in the history of San Diego’s largest airport. Green Build consists of a 430,000-sq.-ft. terminal building with 10 gates, a dual-level roadway separating arriving and departing passengers, additional security lanes and an expanded concession area. The project will be completed in the first quarter of 2013, with the new terminal opening soon thereafter.
Earlier this year, Bomel Construction completed Green Build’s structural concrete phase, a $9 million project that included a 700-foot-long, below-grade baggage-handling tunnel; metal decks covered in poured-in-place concrete; slab-on-grade for the new terminal; and 10 exterior architectural columns––each 56-feet tall and erected at a 14-degree angle.
About Bomel Construction Co.: Established in 1970, Anaheim Hills, Calif.-based Bomel Construction had $100 million in total revenue in 2011, ranking it as one of the largest general and specialty contractors in the U.S., according to McGraw-Hill Construction. The design-build contractor has completed parking structures and performed structural concrete work for municipalities, casinos, stadiums and large-scale commercial, retail and institutional projects throughout the western U.S. Bomel recently completed a $24-million design-build parking structure complex with a rooftop athletic field for the University of California, San Diego, and a $14.5-million parking structure and pedestrian bridge at the Fullerton Transportation Center in Orange County, Calif. Bomel was recently awarded a design-build contract for a parking structure at Bob Hope Airport in Burbank, Calif., and a contract to construct a seven-level, $17-million parking structure at Loma Linda University in San Bernardino County, Calif. In addition to the corporate office in Anaheim Hills, Bomel has regional offices in Carlsbad, Calif., and Las Vegas.
