By Pepper Parr
February 6th, 2016
BURLINGTON, ON
The weather is working for them, the construction time line is a little ahead of schedule and Rodger Park is a happy man.
Trucks are rolling in with concrete and flatbeds haul rebar onto the site of the five tower Paradigm on Fairview right beside the Burlington GO station.
A full crew of workers is distributed amongst three of the towers at the back of the property where they are either digging into the shale, laying out rebar, doing concrete pours or stripping away the forms on concrete that has been poured.
Rigger Ryan Vandermeer maneuvers a cement bucket for loading.
Two cranes swing through their arc lifting a load of rebar rods or hoisting a big bucket of concrete. John Caronello is handling the big crane on tower A on the west side of the construction site while his rigger Ryan Vandermeer keeps in constant communication.
Some of the concrete mixing trucks carry 9 metres of concrete while others are limited to 8 metres – it is all subject to quality control testing. They don’t leave much to chance.
Wael Deiab scoots around the site with pails of concrete that he is testing for consistency, air content and compression. Nothing fancy about the lab he works in – outdoors where he pushes concrete into a cylinder where it will stay for testing – which gets done at the three day, seven day and 28 day time frames.
Wael Deiab pours concrete samples into canniters and tests it for consistency.
Deiab, who works LandTek, the company that does the concrete quality testing, drops in on a site and randomly chooses concrete that is being poured – fills his bucket and takes it away to a place out of the wind and starts his testing. Temperature of the concrete is included in the testing.
Concrete being loaded for a pour on tower B at the Paradigm site on Fairview
Tower A, on the west side of the site, reported to be sold out, has its two parking levels completed – they are now working on the ground floor.
Jason Park, who backs up his Dad, Rodger Park quietly checks on what is being done – he tends not to look you in the eye – he is constantly watching to be sure that things are going the way they are supposed to go.
How much concrete will be used in this five tower project – Jason doesn’t have a clue – he doesn’t care where it comes from either – just as long as it arrives on time.
Concrete can come from any one of four locations in the Burlington area – 8 to 9 square metres at a time
The concrete can come from any number of locations – the driver of the truck is the guy who cares about where he is going to be driving to next.
It’s a Friday, the site will shut down for the weekend – on balance it has been a good week.
The schedule is being met – three buildings all going up at the same time – each in various stages of completion.
It gets a little boring after a while said Jason – we put up forms, pour concrete, strip away the forms and move on to the next level he explains.
The elevator shaft for building A is coming together – one can get a sense as to where the front entrance to the building is going to be.
The three towers at the back of the property are works in progress – the thinking for the smaller towers at the front closer to the street are part of the project – when construction on those towers actually begins is a market research exercise.
Sales of the units in towers A, and B are going very well. What the Molinaro’s are doing is creating a new community of 2000 people. There will be changes in the way that part of town works. Will the Paradigm pull the downtown core right up to Fairview – what impact will all those people have on the commercial sector.
One can expect a least a couple of restaurants for all those people. There will be some commercial space on the second floor of the two towers that will front on Fairview.
The Molinaro’s built the condominiums that line Lakeshore Road – and in the process defined the downtown core we have today.
Will the same thing happen to Fairview?
