King of Prussia Mall expansion making progress

An aerial of the King of Prussia Mall and an outline of where construction work is taking place.

The expansion of the King of Prussia Mall is a project of numbers and those figures add up to a development that is large, complicated and multifaceted.

Six cranes. Six trailers.

At any one time, 150 to 180 construction personnel are on site. Of that number, 20 are from IMC Construction, which was hired by Simon Property Group to oversee the project. At this point, just under 500 people have been registered to work on site but that doesn't mean they are all there are one time. Some come to do a particular task and move on to their next job site. When it's time to do the interior fit out of the new space, another 400 to 500 workers will mill in and out of there.

The mall's large parking deck between the Court and the Plaza is being dismantled and that is a big job in itself. It has 800 double-tee concrete planks, 1,200 precast concrete slabs and about 4,000 cubic yards of concrete that will get crushed and recycled.

A thousand micropiles were drilled down to rock to support the foundation for the new addition as well as a new parking deck. In all, 4,300 tons of steel will be used in the new structure that will be constructed and connect the two parts of the mall.

That part of Upper Merion is prone to sinkholes and so far 14 have been discovered.

Work officially began in November on the $150 million expansion that will total 155,000 square feet and take the 2.65-million-square-foot mall to 2.8 million square feet. All of the work for that addition will go on while the mall remains fully operational.

"It's a logistics operation," said Rob Cottone, president and CEO of IMC Construction of Malvern, Pa. "You have to keep the patient alive while they're having surgery."

That means making sure shoppers can shop. To that end, it's a task keeping traffic flowing safely through the construction site. It also means making sure all of the stakeholders are involved, updated on progress and apprised of what lies ahead. IMC meets with Simon officials, mall management and anchor tenants every two weeks. They look out six weeks to see what's on the horizon and what, if any, adjustments need to be made to basically keep everyone not only safe but happy.

Shoppers need to be able to get in and out. Deliveries to the retailers can't be disrupted.

It took a year of planning before work could begin and, even with all of that time and analysis, things change. A plan on the staging and sequencing of the construction has already gone through 80 different versions.

Even for veteran construction workers, the project is monumental.

"It's not what we're building but how we're building it," said Ted Jeffries, project director at IMC Construction who has been in the construction business for 37 years.

For him, this has been the most exciting project he's worked on.

"It's high profile. It's at one of the most recognizable shopping centers in the world," he said. "It's very complicated with a lot of moving parts and the involvement of so many shareholders. There's construction in the middle of an active roadway and two shopping centers and that makes it a daunting challenge for all of us at IMC. The amount and diversity of coordination is at all time high for us."

If all goes according to schedule, work will be completed August 2016.

Source: Philadelphia Business Journal