A different animal

Massive concrete press table provides centerpiece of newspaper facility

By Angelle Bergeron

When The Lemoine Co. LLC of Lafayette began construction of the $18.5 million production facility for Baton Rouge's daily newspaper, The Advocate, it was obvious that the design of the project was unlike any other in the area.

"A newspaper production facility is essentially the production equipment with a building wrapped around it," said Richard Shurley, chief technology officer and director of facilities and planning for The Advocate. "The building is centered around the equipment and it is designed to enclose and protect."

The centerpiece of the production facility is a German offset press that requires an "extremely precise structure called a press table to mount on," Shurley said. The press table is a freestanding component of the building that resembles a huge, long, narrow table, with columns supporting the table top, he said. The press will be assembled on the top part of the table.

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The press table, which was formed and poured independent from the rest of the building structure, is 147 ft. long by 23 ft. wide, said Joe Ponthier, superintendent with the general contractor, The Lemoine Co. LLC of Lafayette.

"The table is elevated 15 ft. above the first floor and the building height is 70 ft., just to accommodate the press," Ponthier added. The table is all poured-in-place concrete with numerous rough-outs.

"So much form work had to be done with blockouts and recessed forms," said Michael Seal, vice president of sales for Heck Industries of Baton Rouge, the concrete supplier on the job. "It's a 5,000-psi special plasticized mix."

The real support for the press comes from the 200-yd. base mat, which comprises the foundation for the table, and a high concentration of pilings underground. Of the 350 timber piles and 200 prestressed piles driven by Boh Bros. Construction of New Orleans to accommodate the 117,000-sq.-ft. building, 100 were beneath the press table, said Fred Fuchs, project manager for Boh's pile driving department.

"The real challenges are for the finishers because the engineer is worried about shrinkage," Seal said. One of the requirements was to keep the foundation covered with a tarp to reduce shrinkage and cracking.

"And we installed a bond breaker of polyethylene sheets, 160 mils thick, between the foundation (for the table) and the rest of the floor to reduce vibration," said Jeff Cherry, project manager for The Lemoine Co.

The Lemoine Co. began site clearing in the spring and construction was rolling along smoothly until Hurricane Katrina made landfall.

"We had some problems getting materials right after Katrina," Cherry said. The rebar was already fabricated but there was difficulty getting it shipped from Slidell, he said.

"Our pilings came out of Wiggins, Miss., so we had some delays on the last four or five truckloads being delivered."

The delivery delays forced Boh Bros. to work longer hours to keep on schedule.

"We had started driving piles before the storm, so all of our equipment was on site," Fuchs said. "However, most of our staff lost their homes in Hurricane Katrina, so we had to find them hotel rooms, trailers or someplace else to live so they could work."

Seal said the gasoline prices and restrictions were an obstacle for Heck in the initial wake of the hurricane, but things seem to have leveled off.

The project is on schedule for completion in October, Cherry said. By early fall, Boh had driven all of the piles and Lemoine was roughing in and pouring slabs for the precast exterior cladding.

The building has an exterior cladding that provides the structural integrity and architectural flair of the building.

"The owners chose a particular look of precast metal panels and tilt-up concrete walls based on the designer's recommendations," The Advocate's Shurley said.

Through October, Lemoine was busy framing and pouring the 96 panels that would comprise the side and rear tilt-up concrete exterior.

"We actually cast the panels on ground," Cherry said. "The heaviest is about 140,000 lbs.

"We lift each panel with a big crane, set it in place on the structural steel and attach with welding clips," he added. "Once it's all in place, it becomes a unified structure. In some cases, the walls actually support the roof with no columns. It's a little different."

The front of the building will be adorned with architectural metal panels supplied by National Panel Systems, a Pennsylvania-based company that specializes in high-end, architectural, commercial and industrial metal wall systems.

Although the panels aren't common in south Louisiana, the company already has an order for the lightweight, structural product to be used on the Fort Polk aviation hangar next year, said Rob Medlin, National Panel Systems representative.

"This particular product is designed to be installed right over the steel and has a very high insulating value," he added.

The inside of the panels are finished with a core foam and the exterior is sealed with a 20-year finish.

For The Advocate facility, National is supplying roughly 30,000 sq. ft. of the metal paneling, which comes in modules 3 to 30 ft. wide.

The new facility is replacing The Advocate's production center on Bluebonnet Boulevard, which houses presses that are more than a half-century old, Shurley said.

"We were recently audited and told that our presses probably wouldn't last another five years," he added.

The Advocate took the opportunity of replacing the presses to re-configure their entire operation. Instead of the paper coming off the press complete as it does at the current operating facility, the new production facility will make it possible to pre-print components and ship them to five different distribution facilities, where they will be combined with the main sheet.

"The main sheet is the late-breaking news," Shurley said. "This new facility will make it possible for us to give customers a better-looking product, better news and more options."