Best of 2005 Awards

Roosevelt Avenue-74th Street Subway Station Complex

Project of the Year: Mass Transit

The rehabilitation of New York City Transit's Roosevelt Avenue-74th Street Subway Station in Queens fit a lot onto an irregularly shaped site. It also required commuter-friendly designs, environmentally conscious engineering, and collaboration between several city agencies.

But the triumph of the $87 million renovation of the elevated station for the No. 7-IRT line and the underground station for five IND lines was in managing construction at one of the city's busiest hubs, with more than 160,000 daily commuters.

"Everything in Queens ends up there," one juror said.

The project, completed in August, had several features, including reconstruction of a bus station and construction of a new building linking the entire complex.

The main task was construction of a 6,000-sq.-ft. pavilion with 50-ft.-high walls incorporating glass, terra cotta, and steel. The work improved inconvenient transfer corridors and narrow stairs linking the subway lines and buses, while also making the complex compliant with the federal Americans with Disabilities Act.

The project team created a curved roof for the pavilion to fit the site's triangular shape. The roof uses 50-ft.-tall W24 columns and a system of girders curving in three dimensions - filled in with diamond-shaped steel plates - as support.

advertisement

Meanwhile, in order to widen an underground passageway connecting the two subway lines at 73rd Street from 12 to 26 ft., the team had to modify an existing 42-in.-diameter sewer siphon.

In the bus station, to allow for obstacle-free movement on its three lanes, the team removed columns and shifted the roof's load to two 8-ft.-deep girders, 85 and 120 ft. long, which support six triangular tubular trusses under the roof. The team also installed columns to create additional headroom needed for the city's newest buses. The team had to temporarily relocate the bus terminal during most of the work.

The project required extensive collaboration with entities such as Triboro Bus, the city's departments of environmental protection and transportation, Con Edison, KeySpan, and Empire City Subway.

The project was part of the transit agency's "Design for the Environment" program, which calls for maximizing the use of natural light and air circulation. The team also recycled 86 percent of demolition waste, used 15 percent recycled fly ash in the concrete, and installed 60 KW photovoltaic panels for the bus terminal roof and IRT platform's canopy.

"It was very impressive," one judge said of the final product.

Key Players

Owner: New York City Transit

General Contractor: Slattery Skanska; Gottlieb Skanska

Structural-Civil: Vollmer Associates

Architect-buildings: FXFowle Architects

Architect-IND-IRT rehabilitation: Domenech Hicks & Krockmalnic

Structural Steel: Helmark Steel; Michelman Cancelliere Iron Works

Roofing: High Performance

Electrical: Kleinberg Electric

Survey: Wang Engineering Services

Plumbing: WDF

Concrete: Best Concrete

Terra Cotta: Boston Valley Terra Cotta

Mechanical-Plumbing-FP: A.G. Engineering

Photovoltaic Design: Solar Design Associates

Photovoltaic Systems: SunWize Technologies