A Stadium Grows in Brooklyn
Prep work and demolition is well under way for Atlantic Yards—the $4 billion project to revitalize downtown Brooklyn with housing, retail stores, office space, and the new home of the Nets basketball team.

Designed by architect Frank Gehry and developed by Forest City Ratner Companies, Atlantic Yards will include 11-million square feet of floor space consisting of 17 office towers, 6,400 residential units, parking garages, and an 800,000-square foot, 22,000-seat arena which will be the future home of the National Basketball Association's Brooklyn Nets.

Currently the New Jersey Nets, the team was recently acquired by Forest City CEO Bruce Ratner. The Nets plan to move to Atlantic Yards' new Barclays Center for the 2009-2010 season— the first time that Brooklyn has hosted a professional sports team since the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles in 1957.

Aside from revitalizing Brooklyn, the project hopes to ease the area's housing crunch by adding 6,430 new units of mixed-income housing. Of the total, 1,930 units are market-rate condominiums and 4,500 are rental units, 50 percent of which will be set aside for middle- and low-income families. The site plan includes 8 acres of public space.

In addition to Gehry Partners of Los Angeles, project principals include landscape architect Laurie Olin and structural engineering firm Thornton-Tomasetti. The project will consume an estimated 240,000 tons of cement.
More at www.atlanticyards.com
Contact Mike Mota

As part of the celebration of its 125th anniversary, FLSmidth hosted technical seminars and outings for executives of the cement industry throughout the world. The event for the Americas was held near Miami in Key Biscayne, Fla., on May 16-18.

The seminar’s content provided an overview of historical, international, regional, and future perspectives of the cement industry. PCA Chairman Charlie Sunderland (Ash Grove) presented "The Regional Perspective: Visions for the Development of the Cement and Building Materials Industry in the Americas."

Founded in 1882, FLSmidth provides equipment, systems and services for the cement and minerals industries. The firm is an Associate Member of PCA and serves on the Manufacturing Technical Committee.

Code Hearings Net Positive Changes
The cement-based products industry scored numerous victories at the final code change hearings for the International Code Council (ICC), held May 21-26 in Rochester, N.Y.

Among the notable successes:

• Defeat of several code changes to the International Energy Conservation Code and the International Residential Code that would have placed more stringent insulation requirements on basement walls and above-grade walls constructed of concrete or masonry.
• Approval of a code change proposal submitted jointly by concrete-related associations to the International Residential Code that removes unjustified excessive anchoring requirements for the tops of concrete and masonry foundation walls to floor framing.
• Approval of a code change that requires most buildings more than 420 feet in height to be provided with one additional egress stairway. The additional stairway will allow the fire department to carry out its operations without reducing the required exit capacity. Notable with approval of this change was the willingness of the code officials to support numerous other code changes that strengthen the fire safety requirements for tall buildings. All of the changes were based on recommendations in the NIST Final Report on the World Trade Centers disaster.
• Final approval of a PCA-sponsored code change to revise the interior plaster and exterior stucco provisions in the International Residential Code to permit the use of masonry cements, mortar cements, blended cements, or plastic cements in addition to portland cement-lime plasters.

Contact Steve Skalko or Jim Messersmith

Results from Last Week:
Affordable Housing, Safety, Address Social
Side of Sustainable Development
Experts characterize sustainable development as having a triple bottom line: environmental, economic, and social responsibility. How should the construction industry address the social side of sustainable development? (1 = most important; 5 = least important)

• Initiate programs to build affordable housing and
  improve housing for in-need populations (2.37)
• Promote safe work practices (2.40)
• Make fair-trade labor practices part of the sustainable
  development criteria for building products (2.49)
• Get involved in educational and community
  relations programs that advance sustainable development (2.49)

Notable Comments

"I live in a community where I have the opportunity to promote sustainable development and building design, both because I believe in it and am educated about it, every day as a professional in the construction industry. The attitude, however, of some outspoken residents and business owners of this community is that if the state or federal governments are not mandating the triple bottom line of sustainability, why should they bother to do it until made to do so? It can't be that good or important if there isn't someone forcing them to do this. It would help to have the construction industry participating in education and community relations to turn this around in all communities."

"Cement and concrete companies must be seen as fair companies that contribute to society—not just with good building products, but with deep-seated ethical commitments to their communities, workers, and society as a whole. Real on-the-ground contributions and not just platitudes."

Take the current PCA Poll