Westmark Hotel
Fairbanks, Alaska

USKH provided engineering services for this hotel, providing structural, mechanical and electrical design for the new Westmark tower.  This project was a design/build, eight-story, 150,000 square foot addition to the existing Westmark Hotel in downtown Fairbanks.  This building now stands as the third tallest structure in the City of Fairbanks. The building frame features short floor-to-floor heights, which significantly reduces the overall cost of the project. 

The utilities are routed under the thin corridor floors, which are framed with 4-inch rectangular hollow steel sections.  The rest of the floor structures rely on composite steel beams to further reduce floor-to-floor heights. Wind and seismic forces acting on the building are resisted using “Special Concentrically Braced Steel Frames”; one of the first applications of this system in the Fairbanks area. The guests travel through the building on high-speed elevators.  These special structures require a greater control of construction tolerances and they also require large penthouses and massive slabs at the roof level for the elevator machinery. The building sits on a raft foundation system (deep interlocking grade beams) over poor load-bearing silty in-situ soils typical of the Chena River flood plane.

This significant project was completed in less than 24 months from inception to occupancy, all while the existing hotel remained in operation.  Occupancy occurred on the date promised, as identified at the beginning of the project; the total cost was approximately $34 million.

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