Moving On Up (And Over!): Historic Building Relocation

08/30/2022

In our line of work (heavy lifting), our job sites have included industrial facilities, bridges, ports, tunnels, oil rigs, and power plants. So, when the opportunity arose to work on a beachfront project in northern Miami, our engineers and technicians were all in!

When it was constructed in 1936 at 9149 Collins Avenue in Surfside, Fla., the Seaway Villas was the city’s first apartment building. In 2014 the building was deemed historically significant. Three years later, the two-story building gained two prominent neighbors: the Four Seasons Hotel and the Surf Club Four Seasons Residences, an 11-story luxury condominium.

The two-story historic structure that once hosted 28 villas will be transformed into two exclusive beachfront residences that are expected to list for $20 million. Each home will feature five bedrooms, six bathrooms and oceanfront views. However, before the massive renovation can begin, several actions were needed.

First, the roof and interior walls had to be removed, preserving the façade and exterior walls. This phase of the project began in the spring of 2022. Next, the structure had to be moved to the east to enable the construction of a below-grade parking garage and new foundation. Once those are completed, the building will be carefully moved to its final resting place.

As you can imagine, special provisions were in place to protect the historic building during the moves. That’s where Engineered Rigging’s experience and equipment came into play. Having moved a 900-ton, 209-foot-long bridge span, an 873,500 pound generator, and a 150-ton locomotive, our team is no stranger to extremely heavy and challenging heavy lifting projects.

Structural Builders and Restorations (S-BR) called upon Engineered Rigging to identify the best way to lift the building measuring approximately 90’ x 30’ off its foundation, move it 100 feet south and 9 feet east to the staging area, and then return it north to its final address. We had the pleasure of working in collaboration with Kline Engineering and Michael Veegh, PE.

The project proved to be the ideal situation to put our newly acquired Synchronous Lifting System (SLS) to work. Featuring a computer control system and powerful split flow pumps, the SLS’s uses sensors to precisely control the balancing and lifting of a heavy load to an accuracy of 1 millimeter. For the Seaway Villas, we implemented 10 lifting points, each powered by a 100-ton Enerpac HCL-lock nut hydraulic cylinder to lift the building weighing just over one million pounds.

Once the building was lifted to a height of 6” to clear the building foundation, Engineered Rigging’s technician, Scotty Havard, directed the S-BR team on insertion of a LH400 Low-Height Skidding Systems under the building and arranged 10 skid shoe beams and 98 pieces of skid track to form a 150-foot runway on the east and west sides of the structure. The extended length of the runways saved a significant amount of time and labor costs by reducing the need to leapfrog the track to reach the destination. Using four push-pull units the structure was moved 100 feet over the course of three days in July 2022.

In addition to contributing technical support on the lift plan, Engineered Rigging provided a variety of equipment rentals for the project including three LH400 Low-Height Skidding Systems consisting of, 3 split-flow pumps, 11 100-ton lock nut hydraulic cylinders, 6 skid shoe beams, 98 pieces of skid track, 6 push pull units, and one on-site equipment technician. The quantities were a bit higher than needed to ensure spares were on hand.

Engineered Rigging looks forward to returning to the oceanfront job site to return the Seaside Villas building to its original location.