Slam Charter School at Citrus Park

Project summary provided by submitting company.

The SLAM (Sports Leadership and Management) Charter School in Tampa is a true Design-Build school project that brings a new concept to education. The student body will start off with grades 6 through 10, with about 500 students, and add 11th and 12th grade by 2019 that will increase enrollment up to 1500 students.

The innovative new concept incorporates sports programs into the traditional curriculum, and affords students opportunities in career exploration and internships through the following career academies in the sports leadership and management arena:

• Sports Medicine
• Digital Media and Sports Television Production
• Sports Marketing, Entertainment, and Management

The project incorporates a diverse combination of structural systems that accommodate unusual uses of space, including an elevated gymnasium over a ground level parking lot, three story classroom and administrative offices with double tilt wall exterior providing covered walkways around three sides of all three stories, a covered and protected student drop off drive through at the front of the building that accommodates a high traffic flow within limited site conditions.

The basis of the structural design concept is load bearing Tilt-Up utilizing a composite structural steel system for the floor framing and steel bar joists at the roof level, with precast double tees at the second level over the covered parking area that supports a full gymnasium with 110' long clear span joist girders at the roof level. The concrete topping applied after the double tee installation provides for a solid, stable surface for the wooden gymnasium floor assembly.

The focal point of the project is in the frontage of the building where the outside Tilt-Up wall section in its final position actually leans outward onto the main roadway by almost five feet! See pictures that illustrate this feature. This was probably the most challenging aspect of the structural design, both from an in-place final position of stability, as well as from a constructability standpoint. The Tilt-Up process required very creative bracing designs during the construction, where we used temporary concrete bracing structures that were actually cast in the turn lane of the adjacent roadway.

The design included efficient use of Tilt-Up to create covered walkways on three sides of the building at ground level as well as at the elevated floors.

The SLAM School concept was very well received in the community and the first phase of enrollment was filled to capacity even before construction was completed, and with its popularity, ownership plans on duplicating this product in several cities throughout Florida.