New Westin office should enhance robust sales
Aggressive schedule keeps tallest building
Janet Dunphy
Inside Business - Hampton Roads
Monday July 31, 2006
Flying tables and tower cranes dominate the western edge of Town Center in Virginia Beach as the tallest building in Virginia takes shape.
The Westin Hotel and Condominiums has a $183.6 million price tag and a $98 million contract price for the builder, Armada Hoffler. It is due for delivery in late 2007.
The clients are Town Center Associates LLC, which includes Armada Hoffler and Divaris Real Estate, and the Virginia Beach Economic Development Authority.
Thanks to what the builder calls an aggressive construction schedule, the Westin is showing vertical progress toward the goal of
39 floors 
. One is poured per week with number 15 scheduled for Aug. 1 or 2.
The project includes retail, a conference center and parking. The hotel will be managed by Crestline Hotels and Resorts.
The flying tables on the upper reaches of the Westin are platforms that are moved along the outer edges of the building before a concrete floor is poured. The tower crane was just raised 100 feet to keep the process going.
“It’s a big expense, so it needs to go fast,” said Bernard Shumate Jr., a project executive with Armada Hoffler, the builder. “It took two years to get to this point.”
The topping out is planned for Jan. 31, 2007.
Sales have been robust for the 119 condominiums. Last week, 76 were under binding contract with 10 percent down and the sales office, manned by Rose & Womble Realty Company, didn’t even open until July 20.
Incidentally, it is located on the ground floor of the Dick’s Sporting Goods building – across from the work site – in space that has never been occupied. Streamlined models of the Westin’s 236 guest rooms will be constructed in more space next door to work out any bugs in the design and for Crestline marketing purposes.
The official opening of the sales office on July 20 included a hard hat tour that only a few people took. Bob Scott, director of the Virginia Beach Department of Planning, was one of them. Shumate and Phil Sheridan, Armada Hoffler’s site manager at the Westin, conducted the tour.
“It’s fascinating because it creates a brand new ID for the city,” Scott said.
“When we did the 21-story building, we were in brand new territory,” said Sheridan, referring to the Armada Hoffler Tower in Town Center.
The tour started on Commerce Street, which connects to Independence Boulevard, where the main entrance will be located. A restaurant, described as American Fusion by the hosts, will be to the left of the entrance.
The lobby will feature a glass stairway, a waterfall and a replica Fresnel Lens, a design originally developed for lighthouses. It’s all supposed to reflect a nautical theme. There will also be retail on the ground floor.
The second floor consists of the conference center and business facilities and the third and fourth floors are storage for the residences.
The days when the concrete is poured are intense. The crews start at 2 a.m. and stop at 7 p.m.
“It’s a long day, but it’s the only way we keep the cycle going,” said Sheridan, a former Navy Seabee who wants to make sure the superintendents – Mike Clifford, Keith Sanders and Dean Stacy – get credit for their roles, too.
Shumate said he and Sheridan helped create the construction schedule and then trimmed two months off of it.
“We tightened up the activities and there’s no time when we aren’t working on the critical structure,” Shumate said.
A pre-cast concrete site along Independence helped to speed the job along and also provided a lay-down yard for the subcontractor, Sheridan said. It butts up against the cast parking garage that wraps around a portion of the building.
The portable construction elevator runs up and down the side of the building all day long. Sheridan said it is tested with 8,000 pounds each time the project goes up six floors.
In the future, two more elegant versions from two different lobbies will run hotel guests from floors one to 15 and residents from floors one to 37, but the latter will not stop at the hotel floors, which are six to 16. There are 37 livable floors and two floors for storage and mechanical purposes.
The first stop on the tour was the fifth floor, the future fitness center. The pool and Jacuzzi have been poured. There are no outside walls, so a mesh fence serves as a temporary wall that can stop 200 pounds as a safety measure, Sheridan said.
While the concrete crews move upward, the poured floors begin to take shape. The electricity, plumbing and mechanical contractors move in. Sheridan can pinpoint each guest room or residence based on the pipes sticking up through the concrete or lining the ceiling above.
“These holes don’t happen by accident,” Sheridan said, indicating the places where pipes will run. “They have to be properly engineered. It doesn’t allow for a lot of hiccups.”
Safety, supplies, schedules and architectural questions are all reviewed in weekly meetings. Stakeholder meetings are held every other week.
According to Rose & Womble information, more than half of the 15 penthouse condos, from 2,800 square feet to 4,200 square feet, have been sold for amounts ranging from $1.5 million to $4 million.
So who wants to buy a condo in the heart of Virginia Beach?
“People that travel and are used to urban areas,” answered Frank Mageras, a Rose & Womble Realtor. “It’s very similar to what they were used to in previous experiences. Others have lived here before or have business interests or family here.”
He said the buyers start at about age 30.
The condos start on the 16th floor with the efficiency models, which are 700 to 1,000 square feet and cost $390,000 and $416,000. The two-bedroom models are 1,700 to 2,500 square feet and range in price from $624,000 to $1 million. The one-bedroom with a study at 1,500 square feet costs $602,000 to $702,000.
The two-bedroom model has been the most popular, but there are only three one-bedroom units left of 14, Mageras said. One selling point for prospective buyers is the hotel below where out-of-town guests can stay, he said.
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Several floors added since the last time I was in the area.
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