Office of General Services Exposition Building
Organization Name: HBP Joint Venture (The Pike Company, Inc. & Hueber-BreuerConstruction)Project name: Office of General Services – Exposition Building
Project location: Syracuse, New York
Project Cost: $62.5 Million
Jobs Created/Jobs retained:
The project was designed with a Project Labor Agreement (PLA) to boost the local economy, HBP worked with the local unions and put over 900 tradesmen to work in the various construction disciplines, with approximately 840 from the local area. Approximately 60% of the materials used in the Exposition Center were purchased locally and much of that manufactured or fabricated in New York State. This represents millions of dollars invested in the local community and business.
Economic Impact:
Since the opening Exposition Center, which was completed in time for the 2018 Fair, it was used during the Fair as a showpiece for New York State tourism, as a sports activity center and is more than 70 percent booked for 2020 with privately-run non-fair events.
The impact is that attendance at all privately-run events held on the New York State Fairgrounds in 2018 rose above 1 million for the first time ever. Including the State Fair's record attendance of 1.27 million during its 13-day run, the total full-year attendance of 2,353,919 is 18 percent higher than in 2017. This growth coincides with the State's investment to modernize and revitalize the Syracuse-area Fairgrounds to boost the entire Central New York economy.
Organizations involved in project:
Owner: NYS office of General Services
Architect: QPK Design
Engineer: CHA Companies
John W. Danforth
AJay Glass & Mirror
Stonebridge Steel
Ridley Electric
Eli Smith Contractors
Summary of project:
HBP Joint Venture, a joint venture between Syracuse, NY based Hueber-Breuer Construction, Inc., and Rochester, NY based The Pike Company, Inc., provided design-build services for the construction of a new 136,000 SF Multi-use Exposition Center located on the New York State Fairgrounds in Syracuse, NY, home of the Great New York State Fair. This project was the 1st true design-build project for our client, the NY State Office of General Services (OGS).
The new Exposition Center features a 51,000 SF grass and tree plaza, and a bright and airy glass entry opens to an expansive lobby with ceiling height reaching more than 40 feet high. The first floor of the two-story concourse area includes open areas for guest seating, office space, ticketing offices, multi-use meeting, training, and conference space, as well as a full-service catering kitchen and two separate concession spaces. On the second floor, areas for entertaining include pre-event spaces, a VIP room with balconies overlooking the grand plaza and the Fairgrounds as well as the Exposition Hall.
The lobby concourse opens into the 110,000 SF Exposition Hall which is impressive both in size and in design. The hall is large enough to host a variety of events including equestrian events, concerts, monster truck rallies, motocross events, car and boat shows, and features an infrastructure that is able to accommodate over 530 individual trade show spaces. The size of the Exposition Center makes it the largest venue of its type north of New York City between Boston and Cleveland.
Building a project of this size and complexity requires a collaborative effort. The planning of this project and the coordination of the project components began prior to the project award with HBP reaching out to their best subcontractor firms to assist with the design and developing a very competitive estimate of the project costs. In December 2017, HBP prepared the site and began to build the foundation while the balance of the design was ongoing. January through March saw the most difficult of the steel erection through a bitter winter. Due to the amount of inclement weather experienced in January through early April, the project suffered an almost 16 day delay. Ultimately, HBP’s preventive risk planning allowed the team to make up that time and obtain substantial completion and the building ready for the Great New York State Fair which opened with a gala ribbon cutting on Wednesday, August 22, 2018.