Masonry Magazine March 2008 Page. 30
CASE STUDY #2 >>>
Ameristar Casino/Hotel
Vendor requirements were enhanced and expanded to make this project even more secure.
BY TOM INGLESBY
T. CHARLES, MO., IS THE PLACE WHERE THE LEWIS & CLARK EXPEDITION STARTED ITS TREK IN 1804, and it served as the first capitol of the new state of Missouri from 1821 to 1826. But being right on the river has its problems. In 1993, due to continuous heavy rains, the Missouri River was above flood stage for 94 days at St. Charles, leading to tremendous damage throughout the region.
One area of concern in high-rise building is meeting strict seismic codes. As recently as 1968, an earthquake centered in southern Illinois with a magnitude 5.5 shock caused damage in St. Charles and nearby St. Louis. The potential for earthquakes and the sometimes unpredictable weather along the river make St. Charles and the St. Louis area in general a challenging place for builders.
When the Ameristar Casino in St. Charles planned to expand with an upscale, 400-room hotel, the lead architect, PGAV in Kansas City, Mo., added an exterior wall consultant, Heitmann and Associates from St. Louis, to the team to assure the plans would prevent future problems.
Geoff Hart, project director for Heitkamp Masonry, the MCAA member company in Ellisville, Mo, that did the work, recalls the project. "It was a massive masonry job: a 26-story high-rise with a large footprint, almost 300 X 100 feet, utilizing approximately 600,000 utility-size bricks and approximately 75,000 square feet of glass fiber reinforced concrete.
"Due to seismic requirements that the building had to be able to move one inch in each direction, at every building corner we couldn't use brick or pre-cast because it was too heavy," Hart says. "We had to use glass-fiber reinforced concrete, which had an expansion joint on either side of the building comer. This was two foot each direction by nine-foot-four tall, and at the ends of each two foot section, you had a 3/4-inch expansion joint and a two-inch expansion joint running the height of the building."
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