Clarendon Construction - September 2010, part 2

Since January 2008, more or less, I've been following construction progress on the buildings that are going up around my office in Clarendon.  The two main buildings I've been focused on are Clarendon Center, which has a south and north tower, and lately I've been watching what I call the "airspace" building that will use the site of nearby Clarendon Church while retaining architectural elements of the church itself.  We're up on the 8th floor here and have a great view of the construction sites, so I've pretty much been able to watch the entire process from demolition to build out.

Well, the big south tower of Clarendon Center is getting very close to completion.  I still see workers focused on a few exterior details, but most of the work has moved inside.  They have completed the sidewalks and planted street trees, and now they've moved a temporary office there to handle leasing out the residential part.  I have a photo of the building here, taken on a rainy morning last week - this will be my next to last post on this building, I'll dedicate an entry to it next month to close out my reporting on this one.

Meanwhile, work continues on the north tower.  It has some interesting points of its own - the builder committed to restoring the old storefront facades at street level on both the Wilson and Clarendon sides of the buildings, and these elements are finally between built.  Also, there are two towers on the east and west corners of the building that will add decorative elements; work goes on here on a one day per week pace.  So with this building there is a lot of progress to observe at this point, even though the majority of the structure is completed.

On the last of the three buildings, the airspace building at the church, site work continues.  They nearly have the hole cleared for the parking structure, and are working on shoring up the excavation.  The dewatering continues (you can see a couple of pumps in barrels at the front of the church).  They've installed some tiebacks (look for the orange paint along the wall at the back of the hole) into the soldier beams/lagging.  Look carefully to the left side of the excavation and you can see the drill rig that is used for the tiebacks. 

(Please note, Blogspot has changed the photo interface again and it's more difficult to position them now.  I think I've got these into positions where they are close to their associated text!)