Columbus City Services Center

Columbus, GA

Mason Contractor: Jollay Masonry Contractors
Architect: Hecht Burdeshaw Architects, Inc.; 2WR Architects
General Contractor: Brasfield & Gorrie General Contractors
Suppliers: Boral Bricks ; Miller Mize Precast ; Block USA ; Superlite Block, Inc. ; Lafarge North America
Owner: City of Columbus

Project Description

Design Goals

The City Services Center in Columbus, Georgia, is a three-building complex for the City of Columbus government. In an attempt to better serve the citizens of Columbus, the city government decided to consolidate their facilities around the city into one office complex. The 64,000 SF office building houses many of the government departments most frequented by the citizens. The 54,000 SF natatorium houses a 680,000 gallon, 50-meter Olympic-size swimming pool and a smaller warm up/cool down pool that will be used for physical therapy and exercise. On the second floor of the natatorium, there is a viewing mezzanine with seats for 900 spectators. The third building of the City Services Center is a 370-space parking garage where city employees as well as citizens visiting government offices or attending swimming competitions in the natatorium are able to park.

Primary Details and Features and Advantages of Using Masonry

Masonry was selected as the primary skin material for the office building and the parking garage due to the durability of masonry as well as to match the surrounding buildings, while the natatorium veneer was split between masonry and metal panels. There were a total of 500,000 modular size brick from Boral Building Products used. The natatorium had approximately 10,000 polished ground-face block from Trenwyth on the exterior. Precast concrete was utilized on all three building, with the office building having approximately 4,000 pieces of vibrant dry-tamp cast stone that were utilized in the veneer at the base, column caps, bands, copings, large entrance columns, soffits and fascia pieces, while the parking garage utilized wet-pour architectural precast concrete for the 4,000-5,000 lb. precast sills/copings at the 2nd level and 3rd level.

Unique or Special Circumstances

The office building utilizes masonry in some very unique designs. In order to eliminate the steel lintels over the first floor windows, the double soldier courses were designed with a suspended soffit brick arch. Above this, there was a distinctive serrated brick panel with the brick installed on a 45-degree angle stack bond. Architectural jack arches were installed above the second floor windows, with the suspended soffit brick arch design. The design of the brick over the first and second floor windows presented some challenges with how to suspend the brick without having an exposed angle. Working closely with the architect and general contractor, we were able to come up with a way to make this work by building the arches ahead of time at on offsite facility and installing them as a single precast brick arch.

The attachment of the entrance columns, soffits and fascia at the north and south entrances was a challenge, since the architect would not permit wet-pour precast. Since embeds could not be installed in the large cast stone pieces at the entrances, we worked closely with the precast manufacturer and their engineer to come up with alternative attachment details.

The success of this project is attributed to the close relationship between the architect, the general contractor and the masonry contractor to ensure the intent of the architect’s design of masonry could be built correctly.

Date of Project Completion: June 2013

Photography by Scott Wang