Los Angeles-based Tower General Contractors will begin renovating the historic LAX Theme Building, a 1961 Los Angeles landmark structure, next month and expects to have work completed in August 2009.
Over the years water intrusion made its way through the lath and plaster that covered the steel structure until pieces of metal mesh began to fall off the building.Los Angeles World Airports, the agency that owns the structure, took emergency abatement measures and stripped the building to its steel superstructure.
More than 1,000 pieces of 1/8th-inch-thick metal plates—10 tons, or 3,000 linear feet, worth—will be placed over the legs and welded together to form an exterior metal skin, Alex Guerrero, executive vice president of Tower tells Globest."The eyes of all of Los Angeles are on this project," he says.
After the steel skin is applied, contractors will cover the structure with lath and plaster, as well as adding a 1.2-million-pound tuned mass damper to serve as a counter weight to minimize structural movement caused by seismic activities, Guerrero says.
Some describe the distinctive white building on top of 35-foot-high parabolic arches as a flying saucer that has landed on four legs. It was designed in 1961 by a team of architects and engineers headed by William Pereira and Charles Luckman, that also included Paul Williams and Welton Becket, at a cost of $2.2 million as part of an overall $50-million "Los Angeles Jet Age Terminal Construction" project that began in 1960. A restaurant once provided a rotating view of the airport is suspended beneath two intersecting arches, and the Los Angeles City Council in 1992 designated the building a cultural and historical monument. The building can be seen in the background of myriad films, including "Starsky & Hutch," and it also appears in two of the Grand Theft Auto video games.
In another LAX development, the Los Angeles Board of Airport Commissioners this week approved the coverage of an estimated $1.8 billion of certain upcoming projects in the first phase of LAX's Capital Improvement Program under LAWA's Project Labor Agreement.
"This agreement will ensure that construction projects can proceed quickly using a highly qualified workforce," Los Angeles Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa said in a statement. "The agreement will also make sure that our multi-billion-dollar construction program at LAX will provide high-quality job opportunities for local residents."
The project labor agreement was negotiated with the Los Angeles/Orange County Building and Construction Trades Council and their affiliated local unions, the Building and Construction Trades Department of the AFL-CIO, the Building and Construction Trades Council of California and signatory craft unions.
The agreement currently covers the on-going $723-million Tom Bradley International Terminal Interior Renovation Program.LAWA's existing 10-year project labor agreement was signed in 1999 and extends through Dec. 31, 2010. There is a provision for a one-time extension not to exceed 10 years that must be approved by the end of next year.
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