New federal courthouse will be something; for now, 2 giant cranes at the site double as downtown weather vanes

Maybe the two giant cranes that now tower over First Street SE will get the public to finally notice.

That's the thought, anyway, of Brad Thomason, who is heading up the Ryan Companies US Inc. team that is building the $160-million federal courthouse - what will be an eight-story edifice faced with stone and then glass that will stretch as wide as a football field from the Cedar River to Second Street SE between Seventh and Eighth avenues SE and look toward the core of the downtown.

Like Thomason, David Sorg, a principal with project architect OPN Architects Inc. of Cedar Rapids, scratches his head. He says he runs into people all the time who have yet to grasp what he says is the magnitude, beauty and importance of the coming courthouse. When complete and ready to open in the fall of 2012, the 330,000-square-foot building will stand a little taller than the nearby Great America Building.

“I don't think people understand the scale of this building in its context here,” says Sorg. “… I just don't think people can comprehend because it just doesn't happen in Cedar Rapids, a building of this size.”

After a tour of the construction site this week, on which about 40 workers were on the job, Thomason reported that the project - the ribbon-cutting was in late April - is on schedule and on budget. As many as 300 workers will be at the site at its busiest.

Within 30 days, crews should complete the building's foundation, which has included pounding H-shaped steel pilings into bedrock to depths from 30 to 80 feet below the surface of the site. The amount of steel in the pilings stretches over five miles and weighs 2 million tons. About 4.5 million pounds of concrete also are part of the foundation. On Dec. 2, steel for the building's columns will begin to arrive on the site, and the steel should be in place by August.

Thomason and Sorg note that the building will consist of two halves, with courtrooms on the right side, offices on the left and an eighth floor spanning the entire building to house judges' chambers. A glass atrium in the building's middle will sit where First Street SE between Seventh and Eighth avenues SE once was at.

It's a great time to build, they say, because the slow economy has meant better prices for materials and from subcontractors. Steel alone in the building will cost $2 million less than what had been budgeted for, Thomason says.

He reports that 70 percent of the labor on the project will be performed by workers in the Cedar Rapids and Iowa City area with another 15 percent of the work done by Iowans farther from Cedar Rapids.

One example of the competition to get a piece of the project, Sorg and Thomason say, was the battle over stone for the face of the building. There was stone from quarries in Maquoketa, Anamosa, Idaho and Jerusalem in the competition, with the Maquoketa stone prevailing.

Thomason calls the building “very complicated structurally” because of standards put in place for security and blast protection since the 1995 courthouse bombing in Oklahoma City. The building will sit one foot above the crest of the June 2008 flood and six feet above the 500-year flood plain, he says.

The building also will incorporate “green” elements so it meets a silver level of LEED - Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design - certification as mandated by federal rules for federal buildings. (The LEED rating system has four tiers, certified, silver, gold, platinum.)

For instance, the building will save 31 percent more energy and will use 50 percent less water than the building code standards. The latter will be achieved, in part, with a rainwater capture system for irrigation.

But Sorg says it will be the arcing stone face of the building covered by glass, 100 feet tall and 300 feet wide, that will make people's jaws drop.

A week ago, the toppling of a mobile crane caught some attention though caused no injuries at the site. The mobile crane put the two giant cranes on the site in place, and it is those that will do the captivating in the months ahead, Thomason thinks.

When idle, the crane booms, he notes, are designed to float freely like giant weather vanes in the wind.

Just look at the direction the long end of the crane booms are pointing when idle and you'll know which way the wind is blowing.