ANAHEIM, CA—The new 68,000-square-foot Anaheim Regional Transportation Intermodal Center here is both one of the most complex structures to be built and one of the most beautiful, Bruce Gibbons, a principal with structural engineer firm Thornton Tomasetti, tells GlobeSt.com. ARTIC, which debuted this week, is a LEED-Platinum-certified building that aims to become the gateway to all transportation in Orange County, providing multimodal transit services for rail, bus and roadway throughout the county. The building features an intermodal terminal and a Metrolink/Amtrak concourse bridge and will house a grand hall as well as ticketing and retail space beneath an open structure.
Thorton Tomasetti served as the structural engineer-of-record for Phase 1 of the project and provided façade consulting services during the design competition and early architectural design phases. GlobeSt.com caught up with Gibbons to discuss the project and what makes it unique.
GlobeSt.com: What was most unique for you about working on this project?
Gibbons: Its unique shell-structure form. We had to expend a lot of effort to come up with something efficient. The ground space is beautiful, but the structural members are actually very small. It has a long span—180 ft.—and as a structural shell element is an interesting and efficient form. It's unusual in building construction in that the structural elements are exposed—you don't usually see the structure in most buildings, but here you see everything. There's also a high level of accuracy and elegance in the detailing.
GlobeSt.com: What do you think it will do for Orange County's infrastructure?
Gibbons: It's an iconic project to get people to use public transport and a source of connectivity in Anaheim.
GlobeSt.com: What else should people know about the project?
Gibbons: It's been designed to some very high seismic standards. There's been a lot of analysis of the seismic behavior of the project to make sure it's going to perform well. Also, the ground is interesting—the site itself is prone to liquefaction, so some ground improvement had to be carried out to improve the soil quality. We effectively dropped these big weights from a crane over and over again, so that means a lot less settlement on the site in the case of an earthquake. Structurally, it's about the form and working closely with the architects to come up with a beautiful aesthetic and finely detailed center that people will appreciate.
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Carrie Rossenfeld
Carrie Rossenfeld is a reporter for the San Diego and Orange County markets on GlobeSt.com and a contributor to Real Estate Forum. She was a trade-magazine and newsletter editor in New York City before moving to Southern California to become a freelance writer and editor for magazines, books and websites. Rossenfeld has written extensively on topics including commercial real estate, running a medical practice, intellectual-property licensing and giftware. She has edited books about profiting from real estate and has ghostwritten a book about starting a home-based business.
