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The McCormick Place® Convention Center, located in Chicago, Illinois, is the largest exhibition facility in the Northern Hemisphere. Earth Tech provided construction management services for the 2001 McCormick Place expansion that included the addition of 2.9 million square feet of exhibition space at a cost of $675 million, renovation of existing space at a cost of $78 million and approximately $120 million of street and highway relocations to allow for the expanding facility, including two vehicle bridges over an existing interstate highway. The project also included management of all phases of the design-build project for the $161 million, 800-room, Hyatt Regency hotel, with its connecting 600-car high-rise parking facility, meeting space, a corporate center and a 3,000 space parking facility
The project’s total roof area is over 1.2 million square feet and contains nearly 3,000,000 square feet of building area. The completed facility features the largest continuous exhibition space in the country, with more than 80,000 square feet dedicated to food service areas. The indoor registration area and pedestrian concourse is large enough to house four football fields.
The building was erected over six active railroad tracks that handle both commuter and freight lines. The railroad enclosure covered four Metra commuter lines as well as two main tracks for Illinois Central Railroad for both freight and Amtrak passenger service. Work included a fully enclosed commuter rail passenger station, able to serve 25,000 boardings per hour. The project met full compliance with Metra safety, Illinois Central, Amtrak and FTA requirements and was completed without any service interruption. Other transportation elements of the project include bridge, highway and ramp work for Interstate 55 and relocation of Lake Shore Drive.
Site preparation required demolition of a 26-story hotel, a 5-story masonry office building, a 5-story concrete office building, a 300,000-square-foot exhibition hall and 10 other buildings. The project covered more than 59 acres and included 11,000 steel reinforced caissons, 145,000 cubic yards of concrete, more than 40,000 tons of steel, more than 252,000 square feet of glass, 1,894 miles of wire and cable (power only), 32,000 light fixtures, five miles each of bus duct and cable trough and 1,800 electrical floor ports.
Earth Tech services included advising the owner and staff on management of engineering and construction of the project, reviewing design work to ensure compliance with owner requirements, developing estimates the owner could compare with bids from the contractor, developing schedules and monitoring contractor schedules.
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McCormick Place® is a registered trademark of the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority, Chicago, IL
