Aertson Midtown Nashville

High-Rise, Tight-Site Experience Conquers Urban Challenges for Mixed-Use Aertson Midtown

When Buckingham Companies decided to build the $100 million urban, mixed-use Aertson Midtown — unlike anything the company had done before — they knew it was important to partner with a general contractor they could trust.

Our experience with high-rise concrete structures on tight jobsites enabled us worked directly with the development and design teams to understand constructability and add value to the project from conceptual design throughout the construction process. Our relationships with local authorities and subcontractors also were valuable assets during the project.

Aertson Midtown was built on two acres on a busy corridor next to Vanderbilt University in Nashville’s Midtown District. The urban development includes a boutique hotel, apartments, street-level retail and private and public parking.

“Throughout the entirety of this project, Crain Construction’s impeccable commitment to reliability, safety, quality, teamwork, and schedule proved instrumental and is the reason they are highly respected in their line of work. They have far exceeded our expectations and we look forward to working with them again.” — Sherief Elfar, Principal, Torti Gallas + Partners

Project Details

17 stories, 800,000 square feet

35,000 square feet of retail space

350 apartments

9 elevators

180-room boutique hotel

630 parking spaces

6,500 square feet of meeting space

Project Team

Developer: Buckingham Properties

Architect: Torti Gallas and Partners, Inc.

Contractor: Crain Construction Inc.

Concrete: Charter Construction Inc.

Challenges

The extremely tight urban site sits on a major corridor that runs through the university campus and into downtown.

It is bordered by a restaurant less than 24 inches away, an existing alley and a state highway with traffic restrictions. Vanderbilt University Medical Center, retail, restaurants and residences are just steps away. The incredibly tight site created delivery and access challenges.

Solutions

From the project’s start, we continually implemented a variety of creative solutions to minimize construction inconvenience to neighbors and keep the project progressing. Proactive and consistent communication was key to keeping neighboring businesses and residents informed about nighttime concrete pours and other activity affecting them.

To ensure access to the hospital and existing area businesses without disruption or congestion, just-in-time delivery was implemented for all materials, with most deliveries made between 4-5 a.m.

Early in the process, we used soil nail and gunite to shore up and stabilize the adjacent restaurant building and sections of the alley so foundation excavations could be installed and backfilled.

Aertson’s highly complicated structural concrete component included 36 sloping columns, multiple transfer beams and a concrete framed trellis at the top of the building. This requires approximately 30,000 cubic yards of concrete. We completed 93 nighttime elevated slab concrete pours, each averaging 30 truckloads of concrete for each pour. These late night into early morning hours concrete pours required unique noise-reduction techniques to lessen the disturbance for neighbors.

Working with our concrete subcontractor, Charter Construction Inc., our team fabricated and installed insulated “skirts” around the troweling machine blades and an insulated mobile wall panel system around the pump truck. Mufflers on the gas-powered machines were changed to reduce noise and back-up alarms were set at the lowest level allowed by OSHA.

Access around the building was a challenge due to multiple insets and different levels. To overcome this, we strategically installed two tower cranes to perform the concrete structure work. Scaffolding and mast climber platforms provided access for the exterior skin work.

Our ability to understand Buckingham Companies’ needs and represent them while maintaining open communication and a team approach with all parties — subcontractors, Metro and State permitting, suppliers, and retail and residential neighbors — resulted in a successful project awarded an Excellence in Construction from ABC Tennessee.

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