A Trip Back in Time
By K. Robert Wendel

At one time, the Tucson train depot was where locals said goodbye and welcome to loved ones.

Of course, air travel and improved roads changed everything, and the 29,000-sq.-ft. depot built in 1907 ultimately grew quiet.

Today, life is once again buzzing at the station.

The city of Tucson, which owns the depot, is completely renovating it and plans to turn it into a centerpiece development featuring offices, dining and retail.

"Everybody talks about the old depot and everybody has a story," said Brad Lloyd, a project manager with Tucson-based Lloyd Construction Co., general contractor on the $4.8 million hard-bid project. "Lots of people used it before the airplane because it was the only way to get anywhere."

Crews from Lloyd Construction are aiming for a February completion on the job, which began last February.

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When the old depot project is completed, the city will lease the space to businesses.

"I think this is a really cool project and it's going to anchor the east end of downtown," said architect John Mirto of Tucson-based Poster Frost Associates, the project architect. "It's been a lot of hard work, but you don't see a lot of projects like this. This is a one of a kind structure."

Crews began the project with an asbestos abatement, but the biggest environmental problem was the extensive lead paint throughout the structure. While workers were able to strip away much of the old paint, there were concerns about how to remove the paint from the window frames, which the city and architects wanted preserved.

"The lead paint was really the battle on this job, especially on the exterior," Mirto added. "The whole building was covered with lead paint that we just sandblasted off.
On the wood it was a much bigger deal, because it was one of the historically defining features of the building.

"One of the battles we are struggling with is balancing the historical considerations with the financial and practical considerations of getting the project done."

The architect and contractor teamed to develop a solution to strip the paint off the windows after a chemical stripper proved to be too expensive. Using pulverized walnut shells instead of sand, workers removed the frames and bead blasted them with the soft, ground-up shells, keeping the wood intact while removing the lead paint.

The demolition process also turned up many interesting and exciting finds for the construction crew. Underneath some 70s era shag carpeting, crews discovered an exquisite terrazzo floor, along with custom art house tiles used as wainscotting. The city and the designer strived to recreate >> the depot as it was in 1941, the last time it was remodeled. They relied on old photos and train buffs to historically recreate the depot .

The old depot's location in the hub of Tucson meant the site was crisscrossed with new and old utilities, which presented problems when contractors began adding a whole new set of utilities for the remodeled depot.

"The digging has been really slow," said Mike Gilbert, a superintendent for Lloyd Construction. Crews from the Tucson office of Dar Hill Corp. performed the earthwork and underground work.

Although the building was in decent structural shape, engineers and designers stiffened the it to the latest earthquake codes. Crews from Tucson-based Steelcon Inc. erected a rigid steel moment frame in the center of the building that supports and transfers the roof loads to the load-bearing brick walls.

"It's a little scary for steel work with the torches and the welding in a wood building and it's been a little thrilling at times, but we had no incidents," said Jeff Thomas, vice president of Steelcon Inc. "Planning was the key on this job, along with a lot of fire extinguishers and buckets of water."

The moment frame created a new space and allowed the installation of a new mechanical suite on the second floor., eliminating the need to tie-up rentable building space or construct a new mechanical building. The space also allowed for HVAC ducting and other mechanical and electrical runs.

The old depot got some new concrete floors, with crews from Tucson's Prairie Concrete pouring more than 1,500 cu. yds. in a variety of patterns including 2-ft. by 2-ft. squares. There also is some colored concrete and some with exposed aggregate.

"We like the challenge of doing something like this, versus going out and doing a Walgreen's Store," said Duane Skalsky, owner of Prairie Concrete. "This is different and exciting."