The first two tower cranes assembled to do the heavy lifting in the construction of the True North Sports and Entertainment Centre are now in place, operating and very visible on Winnipeg’s downtown skyline. They’re being used to move steel, rebar, concrete and pre-cast columns and other large heavy pieces of the building into place.
In the next two months, the number of construction cranes will grow to four with each machine capable of hoisting and moving loads weighing up to 27,000 pounds at a time. The cranes are placed close to each of the four corners of the True North site and vary in height from 108 feet to 188 feet above the event level of the facility. All of the machines are owned and operated by True North’s construction manager, PCL Constructors Canada Inc., and are each valued at close to $1 million dollars.
The scope of the construction activity on the largest downtown Winnipeg building project in several decades continues to intensify on several fronts. The excavation of seven to ten feet of earth from across the bottom of what will become the facility’s event floor is proceeding. More than 100 of the 221 caissons that will support to foundation have now been drilled and poured. Concrete work including the pouring of pile caps, the forming for stairwells, elevator pits and the exterior foundation walls along Graham Avenue is taking place.
Work is also nearing completion on the excavation for the 300-foot long ramp or tunnel which will start on Carlton Street and slope down under Hargrave Street to provide service access to the event floor. Once this ramp/tunnel is complete, Carlton Street will become the sole route for entry to (and exit from) the belowground floor of the entertainment centre event level for the remainder of the construction period.
[MTS Centre Construction Archive]
