Hollywood always conjures up images of the red carpet walk and lots of glitz. While you won’t need a tux or evening gown if you’re stepping out for a night of fun at the Hollywood Park Casino, you will be impressed when arriving at the main entrance. That’s thanks to the beautiful execution of the geometric black and white design created by Southern Californian architectural concrete specialists, Trademark Concrete Systems.
The casino is part of the 300-acre development where the new Los Angeles Stadium, home to the Los Angeles Rams and Los Angeles Chargers, will be completed in time for the 2019 season. The new casino replaces one that had to be demolished for the stadium project. Needless to say, the casino was a fast-track project that had to be completed by the fall of 2016 in time for the stadium groundbreaking ceremony.
Kyle Boyer, project manager for casino project, and Chris Wolf, project superintendent, say Trademark is accustomed to delivering high-quality projects on a tight deadline. Trademark has built a strong reputation by delivering high-end decorative concrete projects at world-class resorts and hotels, museums, entertainment centers, major universities, office buildings and retail centers. The company’s community involvement is evident through the decorative work done at parks, schools, street improvements and churches.
The architect, Mia Lehrer & Associates, specified the cast-in-place banding design of the vehicular portico emphasize a strong contrast between the black and white colors simply be requesting the white to be as white as it can be and the black to be as black as it can be. White aggregate, white sand and white cement were used for the white bands, while a Davis Dark Gray 860 integral color and a Charcoal color hardener were used for the black bands. The most significant challenge on the project was matching a reverse of the pattern in the lobby area.
Project execution
So how do you begin executing a 12,000-sq. ft. intricate design – with a 6-by-6 foot black square? With that in place and through a series of 12 different pours, the Trademark crew working on the project began placing 6 ft. wide bands outward, only placing two sides of each concentric box in a pour to avoid corner cracking. Each pour was saw cut the following day with a single 1/8 in. wide blade to control cracking, before the adjoining sides of each square were poured. Once all the black banding on the exterior of the entrance was completed, members of the crew repeated the process with the white banding.
Once the exterior white banding was completed, crews used a 3/16th in. wide blade to double cut the initial joint cuts to achieve a clean and crisp line between the color bands.
Completing the interior portion of the entrance concrete banding was delayed a couple of weeks to allow a lighting contractor time to hang at intricate chandelier in the lobby. Trademark did not want heavy lift equipment being used on a fresh pour, so decided to wait for the lighting contractor to finish.
The challenge inside was matching the saw cut lines on the reversed pattern with the exterior portion of the project, which was separated by the 6-in. wide entry wall. As Wolf points out, “It was pretty typical project for us, one that required us to make sure the layout was correct before beginning, especially when it comes to lining up the saw cuts on the other side of a glass wall. It would be very noticeable if those cuts didn’t exactly align.”
Waiting for other subcontractors to complete their work reduced Trademark’s time to complete the front entrance portion of their work down to three weeks.
Some basic good work
Along with the intricate detailing of the casino’s grand entrance, Trademark installed an additional 15,000 sq. ft. of natural gray Eco cast-finished decorative concrete around the perimeter of the casino, which took approximately six weeks to finish based on when areas of the project were ready for sidewalks to be installed.
When completed, both portions required three-miles of saw cuts with the initial single cut and final double cut, but again the deadlines and adjustments the Trademark crew had to meet was typical of most projects, according to Boyer. “We exceeded the expectations (of the general contractor) by delivering our project ahead of deadline, even while accommodating the needs other contractors working on the project,” Boyer notes. “That’s how we approach and deliver every project we work on and that’s what we’ve been doing since 1997.
