PROJECT PROFILE
INNOVATION IN HARMONY: The AdventHealth Innovation Tower and the Collaboration Behind Its Creation PHOTOS COURTESY OF BATSON-COOK CONSTRUCTION
The Batson-Cook tradition of building a strong relationship with their clients is well expressed in their relationship with AdventHealth. Over the past few years, the two companies have completed nearly a dozen projects throughout the Central Florida region, including several offsite emergency rooms. One of the larger projects they’ve collaborated on is the AdventHealth Innovation Tower in Orlando, Florida. This new, 12-story, 330,000 SF medical office building on a fiveacre site next to I-4 in downtown Orlando will provide several health services to the community. The facility hosts a brain health institute, AdventHealth Innovation imaging center, ancillary specialists, Orlando specialties, research administration, rehab center, conference center, retail pharmacy, and shell space for future tenant development. The Innovation Tower exterior can be split into three sections, a concrete center in between two concrete shells. The concrete center has gray metal panels with vertical glass windows in a checkered pattern that runs up the middle of the building. If the concrete trucks used for the building were lined up end-to-end, they would stretch 11 miles. Approximately 95,000 SF of glass was installed in the building. The site is also in a tight space, surrounded by I-4, an occupied apartment complex, and an 11-story parking garage constructed at the same time as the tower. The team took precautions to minimize the impact on their neighbors during the construction phase of the project. Additionally, HuntonBrady designed the exterior façades to evoke the feeling of movement with the shift and flex of the building’s appearance, inspired by the orthopedic services inside the building. Those unique angles made installation of exterior finishes on the façade challenging. The east and west sides of the façade are angled two degrees in opposite directions, creating an approximately seven-foot difference between the bottom and top of the building’s precast. This required using a special counterweight sled to place the material during installation. As with most large-scale construction projects, there were several logistical challenges the team had to consider and overcome. One was the large parking deck. The Batson-Cook team provided the building pad for the parking garage, then turned that portion of the site over to the parking garage general
18
BUILDING Central Florida 2023 - OCTOBER
Central Florida Chapter MEMBERS Acousti Engineering Company of Florida Boys Electrical Contractors, LLC BrightView Landscape Development, Inc. Century Fire Protection Coastal Mechanical Services, LLC Collins Construction and Company, LLC David Allen Company, Inc. Fabco Metal Products LLC Gate Precast Company Hartford South, LLC Hudson-Everly Commercial Flooring, Inc. Interior Specialties, Inc. Mills & Nebraska Percopo Coatings Company, LLC SMI Cabinetry, Inc. Smith Fence Company Spectra Contract Flooring The Stowell Company, Incorporated Tri-City Electrical Contractors, Inc.
