CRESTVIEW PHARMACY SCHOOL ON TRACK FOR FALL 2012 CLASSES

Alatex renovations on track
FAMU’s pharmacy school should be finished next fall
By BRIAN HUGHES
Florida Freedom Newspapers

CRESTVIEW — With the clock ticking down toward its opening next fall, work continues on schedule to renovate the historic Alatex building. Workers for Peter Brown Construction are renovating the building to house Florida A&M University’s Rural Diversity Healthcare Center. “We’re working daylight to dark,” site foreman Bobby Kennedy said. “We’re finishing up the demo and getting ready to start the under-slab and MEP (mechanical, electrical and plumbing). We are on schedule.” Like many workers, Kennedy is a Crestview resident and proud to be working on a major project in his hometown. “We’re trying to keep it local,” he said. “It’s sometimes tough for local contractors when they come up against the state bidding process.” To prepare the building for its new life as a pharmacy school, the interior has been gutted, including the distinctive upside-down-peace symbol-shaped columns. (Some of the columns will be reused in the lobby.) But before gutting the interior, the exterior had to be stabilized. The outside has been braced by 2,000-pound steel flying buttresses against I-beam columns and temporary steel belts to hold the walls in place. Then off came most of the roof and out came the forest of support columns, interior stairways and what little other structures the original building had, revealing its spaciousness. “We could’ve knocked it all down and been way ahead, but we’re preserving the character of the building,” said Nolan Raybon, supervisor for Peter Brown Construction. Heavy equipment chugged around the building recently and holes and trenches began to appear in the floor to accommodate underground MEP services that will snake under the building. Ten-inch diameter PVC conduit was offloaded from trucks parked outside the buildinglastMondaymorning. W h e n t h e M E P i s “roughed in” under the slab, crews will begin pouring the top floor, Raybon said. “That’ll be followed by pre-engineered interior sections,” he added. “It’ll be assembled inside. It’ll be like watching a pre-engineered warehouse go up, except the exterior walls are already there.” Raybon said the interior modules are scheduled to be installed in the middle of December. The project is almost precisely on schedule, he said. “There’s always glitches, but we make up for it along the way.”