RSA Plaza Color Rendering
The State Building Commission approved our preliminary scheme on January 26, 1989.  Our relationship with that agency had gone surprisingly smooth considering the Building Commission’s prior relationship with the RSA.  Two months earlier, acting on instructions from Bronner, I had called on newly appointed “BC” Director Bob Crumpton (whom I […]

RSA Plaza – The Building Commission

Emory Folmar
Even before the Plaza work began, there was this feeling that Dr. Bronner and Mayor Emory Folmar did not get along very well.  They were like two boy dogs in the same yard.  Bronner continuously complained in print and in speeches that the city downtown appeared dirty, rundown and overgrown […]

RSA Plaza – Struggle With The City

RSA Plaza Drain Below
  As noted previously, the Plaza design included an elaborate landscaped roof deck opening from the glass enclosed restaurant on the 6th floor.  It offered a splendid view of the State Capitol and the remainder of the Capitol Complex.  We designed the roof patio area with 2-foot square granite pavers […]

RSA Plaza – Roof Drains Below

RSA Plaza Deck
The Plaza parking deck was a 2WR project, but it did impact the PH&J Plaza work.  Besides the terrible complexity of the junctures of the floor levels on every floor, there was the matter of the green roof.  We had cautioned 2WR to spec a custom green color for their […]

RSA Plaza – Parking Deck

RSA Parking Deck
Planning proceeded with all haste.  The Plaza parking deck (a 415 car deck, the one that started all this) would bid first, and the other three structures were to be bid slightly later in a single $50 million package.  Ever the financial wizard, Bronner demanded that all this work be […]

RSA Plaza – Chronology

RSA Plaza
Completed in 1990. The smallest and the first of the Retirement Systems rental office endeavors, but the one over which most of the wars were fought. Given how much RSA investments have improved our downtown, it’s hard to believe that this one was vigorously opposed by the Mayor, the Governor, […]

RSA Plaza

Elevator Clip Art
As the prospect of $100 Million in office building construction pervaded the elevator industry, all the major manufacturers began to scramble to be sure their product would be considered. Certainly the RSA Union and Tower together would be the most significant elevator work in Alabama for 1993.  I had been […]

RSA Union – The Elevator Ride

Brice
The low bidder on the RSA Union contract was Brice Construction Company of Birmingham, and I reiterate that they did an outstanding job.  The workmanship was excellent, the work was well coordinated, and no serious accident occurred.  Ron Blount, the owner’s representative, tended to disagree, and I spent a good […]

RSA Union – The Contractor Stands Tall

RSA Union and Deck
By almost any standard, the RSA Union was a huge building.  It was to be nine stories high (plus basement), with floor plates of 40,000 square feet.  That produces a building of 400,000 square feet of floor area.  It was 25-percent larger than the ACC, which previously was the largest […]

RSA Union – The Concept

Steve Timms
As noted in the outset of this section, 1992-93 was a depression era in the construction industry, and bids on The RSA Union office building and parking deck were taken on January 21, 1993, slap-dab in the middle of the economic recession that Bronner had predicted.  We received nine proposals, […]

RSA Union – Remarkable Bids

Union Clipping
By 1991 the success and acceptance of Dr. Bronner’s initial round of buildings, the RSA Plaza and the Alabama Center for Commerce, had completely changed the political chemistry of the city.  Governor Guy Hunt, who had previously fought with Bronner, now offered him the full support of the State.  Mayor […]

RSA Union – Political Deals

WSJ Clipping
Folsom and White David Bronner secured the support and commitment of Governor Hunt before he ever embarked on the RSA Monroe Street development.  Early on, every arrangement with the State ran smoothly.  The land for The Union Office Building was made available, and desirable state agencies were lined up as […]

RSA Union – Opposition Politics

Union Street Washers
Right up front I admit that our dealings with the City on this round ran much smoother than before, especially with our supposed champion and liaison, Roy Boudreaux, in the equation.  However, that does not say that things ran perfectly. Because the Union project was in the initial thrust of […]

RSA Union – Encounters With The City

PSC Commissioners
The array of state agency tenants in the Union was much more impressive than those in the RSA Plaza.  With the green light from the Governor’s Office, Bronner had little difficulty in lining up a stellar group.  Among the anticipated occupants were the State Purchasing Department, the State Comptroller, the […]

RSA Union – Impressive Tenants

Union Sign
Once David Bronner had made up his mind on something, he allowed nothing to get in the way.  He drove us relentlessly.  PH&J was never known for speed–care and thoroughness was our forte.  And this time we were facing $100 Million in the construction of two office buildings, both of […]

RSA Union – Beating The Schedule

Union Framed
With over $100 Million in construction in the offing for the Union and Tower, and with the Tower twice as high as anything ever built in Montgomery, Ron Blount and I decided that we needed to devise and implement a qualification procedure for general contractors, and it was necessarily going […]

RSA Union – A Prequalification Procedure

water works
In September of 1991, six months before the Tower epic began, my residence on Jasmine Road suffered a terrible sewage backup.  For two days the formidable Bradley Plumbing Company chased the problem and finally found it in the sewer lateral on the opposite side of Jasmine.  The stoppage occurred in […]

RSA Tower – What Goes Around Comes Around

Wayne Griffin
Any telling of Tower subs must also include the Wayne Griffin Electric Company, which had its headquarters in Massachusetts, but operated a branch in Birmingham.  In the late 1980’s, Griffin had done the electrical work on the huge Gordon Persons State Office Building, located just behind the State Capitol.  In […]

RSA Tower – Wayne Griffin Electric

ALDPH
The major tenant in the Tower was to be the Alabama Department of Public Health, a humongous State agency that was to occupy one-half of the available tenant space in the entire building.  Their space was reduced from 12 floors to 10 floors, but as a result of the business-like […]

RSA Tower – Vital Statistics at Risk

Tower Signed Beam
There are lots of traditions in the construction trades and probably most of them come from the romance of the iron workers.   These high-wire daredevils, who assemble the steel skeletons of high-rise construction, consider themselves the top of the social order of the building trades.  Everyone is familiar with the […]

RSA Tower – Topping Out

Brick Logo
One of the frustrating dictums/rules which Ron Blount, RSA’s Owner Representative, brought to our project was a minority participation program.  He held job fairs and stirred the issue across two states.  After bids were taken on the RSA Union, he coerced Brice Construction Company to release the competent masonry sub […]

RSA Tower – The Unhappy Mason

hunt logo
The prequalification procedure that Ron Blount and I employed to screen the bidders on the RSA Tower was an absolute disaster. Yet, the need to restrict the work to experienced contractors was obvious. Very few Alabama contractors had ever built a 12-story building, much less a 24-story structure. And few […]

RSA Tower – The Prequalification Disaster

alabama power
Big industrial giants in large cities usually have operations on several adjacent city blocks and consume much electrical power.  To insure that their electric utility rate is kept reasonably high despite the huge consumption, Alabama Power persuaded the Public Service Commission to issue a “Premises Rule”.  The rule stated that […]

RSA Tower – The Premises Rule

Tower Flood Barrier Hump
Coming Up Short Because of demands of the Chamber of Commerce, the 1000-car parking deck to serve the Tower was to be located diagonally across the street, connected only by public sidewalk, wind and rain.  Legally, additional parking capacity was to be afforded in the RSA’s Bainbridge Street Deck, three […]

RSA Tower – The Parking Area

Monroe Street
Monroe Street is only nine blocks long and early in the Tower development, we determined that the RSA was proposing to construct a major project on over half of the blocks which comprised its length.  That meant that the curbs and sidewalks on these five city blocks would be completely […]

RSA Tower – The Monroe Axis

Peking Theater
Probably few people remember the great commotion which the City and Mayor Folmar raised around 1990 to entice the State to construct its proposed new Supreme Court Building on Dexter Avenue, the downtown side of the State Capitol, rather than behind it as the State master plan decreed.  A deal […]

RSA Tower – The Little Matter

EDP Suite 3
In 1993, and probably to the present time, the primary industry-seeking agency in our State was the Alabama Power Company.  Its efforts in that realm overshadowed that of the State itself, as well as those of the various Chambers of Commerce of the larger cities of the State. Thus it […]

RSA Tower – The EDP Suites