The $300-million new headquarters of LG North America-part of the South Korean global manufacturer of electronics and other products-survived a unique design challenge: a protracted three-year battle with conservation groups opposed to the building’s planned 143-ft height atop northern New Jersey’s iconic Palisades.
But once a negotiated deal and major design change finally led to an early 2017 start, the project team faced a far more down-to-earth struggle: having to blast, chop and haul out “some of the hardest rock known to man,” says one manager.
The 352,000-sq-ft building on a 27-acre site in Englewood Cliffs, N.J., topped out earlier this fall and is set for completion in late 2019. But unlike many office structures of its size, the building is longer than it is tall—thanks to the 2015 settlement that halved its planned height to 69 ft and shrunk its area from an original 490,000 sq ft. It is planned to consolidate six LG divisions and house up to 1,000 employees.
“It’s roughly 1,300 feet long end to end,” says Larry Borensen, construction executive at Turner Construction, the project’s CM. “You can actually lay the Empire State Building down in the footprint of this building.”
That greater length and reshaped massing for the structure meant more foundation area, with a lot more groundwork at the start since the project team needed 11 months to complete monumental rock removal effort. Crisdel Group was the main excavation and site preparation subcontractor.
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