GTECH Holdings Corp.’s future headquarters is looming large in downtown Providence these days. With the 10-story building’s steel frame intact, and several blue glass panes installed on the bottom floors, the building is about halfway done.
Providence’s Gilbane Building Co. began construction on the office building almost a year ago, in November 2004.
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On a sunny afternoon last week, work crews were installing the blue glass panes that will eventually encapsulate most of the 210,000-square-foot building. Bob Hunt, Gilbane’s senior general superintendent on the project, worked from an office trailer on the northeast corner of the 1.6-acre site, located across from Providence Place mall and at the corner of Francis Street and Memorial Boulevard.
“It’s going great,” Hunt said of the $80-million project, adding that the building is on schedule to be completed by late 2006.
Gilbane finished erecting the steel frame in early August, Hunt said. As of last week, workers had poured concrete slabs on all but the first floor, which will be left undone until the plumbing, electricity and drainage framework is installed.
About 250 workers have contributed to building the headquarters since the project began, Hunt said.
By February, all exterior construction is expected to be done. “For the next three months, all you will see are those blue glass panels going up,” Hunt said.
Above the street-level retail section of the building will be a 250-space parking garage from floors two to four.
The greatest challenges come with constructing a large building on a relatively small parcel at a city intersection, Hunt noted. Gilbane has sectioned off the outside lane on the westbound side of Memorial Boulevard, the only place where tractor-trailers can make deliveries. Yet because there is room for only two large trucks, the superintendent has every delivery scheduled to within hours on a large calendar hanging in his trailer office.
Lee Burneson, senior vice president of Providence’s Commonwealth Ventures LLC, one of the developers of the project, said the building will be ready for GTECH to move into by fall 2006. USAA Real Estate Co., headquartered in San Antonio, Texas, is the primary developer and owner of the building and Commonwealth is a minority owner, Burneson noted.
Richard Galvin, president of Commonwealth Ventures, said GTECH has agreed to occupy 110,000 square feet of the building on floors five through eight. The top two floors, consisting of 55,000 square feet of office space, will be leased to other tenants for $38 to $40 per square foot.
Galvin declined to disclose the terms of GTECH’s lease with the developers.
None of the surplus office space in the building has yet been leased, but developers are in discussions with several potential tenants, Galvin said. The same is true for the 55,000 square feet of retail and restaurant space on the street level. There is space for six to seven retail stores or restaurants, and the floor plans of the top two levels can be customized to fit tenants’ needs, he said.
Though none of the surplus office space had been leased, Galvin was optimistic about filling the vacancies. “The office vacancy rates are healthy,” he said, adding that Brown University’s purchase of the 121 South Main St. office building this summer will decrease the city’s supply of office space available for lease.
However, the 114,000-square-foot American Express building, just north of the new GTECH headquarters, has been vacant office space on the market for nearly a year.
Galvin acknowledged that the demand for large office space, such as in the American Express building, is limited. “There just are not that many GTECH-sized users in the market,” he said.
