Trumping Las Vegas

Gold-Tinted Condo/Hotel Towers Above the Strip

by Scott Blair

Many thought it was inevitable that real estate mogul Donald Trump would build in Las Vegas. "For ten years there's been speculation that Mr. Trump would come out here to Las Vegas," said Jack Christie, vice president of sales and marketing for Trump International. "But what really caused him to come here was Donald coming together with Phil Ruffin." The $370 million, 64-story Trump International Hotel and Tower will be built on land owned by Ruffin as part of his New Frontier site on the Las Vegas Strip.

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The gold-tinted tower broke ground in July 2005 and is being constructed by Phoenix-based Perini Building Company.

Each unit has a kitchen, ample built-in cabinetry and comes furnished. The property will be managed as a hotel/condo development so each unit can be placed into a rental pool and used as a hotel room if desired.

The 3.5-acre site is situated on a former parking area for the Frontier. The foundation is comprised of 296, one-meter diameter caissons. "We had an eight-ft. water table but we dug down 20-ft. for the caissons," said Guy Shuman, project superintendent with Perini. Excess water was filtered and removed from the site.

A parking structure comprises six levels of the 622-ft. tall building and is situated above the lobby level. The first level of residential units actually starts 110-ft. up. "Years ago a developer colleague of mine told me, 'If I could figure out how to build a condo without the first six floors, I would be a genius,'" said Joel D. Bergman, AIA, president of Bergman, Walls and Associates, the Las Vegas-based architect on the project, referring to the challenge of selling the lower condo units. "Well, I'm not saying I'm a genius, but I never forgot what he said. By doing what I did, I eliminated the first ten floors, so every single unit has a view. We turned what might otherwise have been a liability into an asset."

The cast-in-place concrete tower and parking garage are being constructed on separate foundations at first, with the tower actually three-in. higher than the garage.

"We have to get to the 40th floor before we are sure that any differential settlement which takes place between a very tall building and a relatively short one has evened out, and then we'll tie the two together," Bergman said.

The project will use 103,000 cu. yds. of concrete. "We are using as much concrete in the vertical walls as we do in the horizontal deck," Shuman said. "Typically you'll have half as much in the vertical." The sheer walls are 24-in. thick, while the core is 36-in.

Perini utilized a self-climbing concrete forming system supplied by Des Moines, IA-based EFCO for the core walls. "We pour the deck early in the morning and then come back that same day to pour the core walls and half the vertical on the east side," said Tom Svetz, the project's structural engineer for Perini. "The following day we start jacking the system up and get set for the next pours. We modified it so the concrete pump is located on the core system and actually moves up along with it at the same time." The tower will be the tallest habitable building in Las Vegas upon completion, according to Bergman. "There was a time when we couldn't get seriously high-strength concrete in Las Vegas, but because of improved technology and better aggregate sources, we are able to get higher stresses," he added. "As a consequence, we can build a taller building with columns that are relatively small."

All but 72 units have been sold to date, despite an initial offering price averaging $1,000 per sq. ft. "There were people in this town that thought we were crazy," Christie said. However, this allowed Trump to get the project out of the ground despite the run-up in materials costs that have grounded many other Vegas condo developments recently. "We were fortunate to satisfy the presale requirement and we got our price, and of course now $1,000 is more the norm than anything," he added.

Key Players
Owner: Trump-Ruffin Tower 1, LLC
General Contractor: Perini Building Co.
Architects: Bergman Walls and Associates
Engineers: John A. Martin & Associates of Nevada;
FEA Associates; RHR Consulting Engineers
Electrical: Fisk Electric
Mechanical: Hansen Mechanical Contractors
Glazing/ Curtain Wall: Enclos Corp.
Steel: Century Steel

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