EDINBURG — Hidalgo County celebrated the completion of the structural components of its new courthouse with a topping off ceremony Tuesday, with representatives from construction manager-at-risk Morganti Texas Inc. noting that the project was 50% complete and on track to be finished on schedule.
Construction workers, county officials and guests had the opportunity to sign the final beam for the project before it was hoisted to the top of the building and added to the structure.
“Soon our residents will have a state of the art building where they can conduct their county business for decades to come,” County Judge Richard F. Cortez stated in a release about the ceremony. “I am proud of all the work our county officials, departments and construction partners have done to get us to this historic day.”
According to the release, all seven concrete floor decks and the roof deck have been constructed, with crews continuing to work on the curtain wall system installation and wall framing, as well as construction of mechanical, electrical and plumbing systems.
Speaking at the event, Morganti representative Paul Kummer noted that the building contains over 30,000 cubic yards of concrete and totals 370,000 square feet.
“We’re approximately 50% done with construction; opening in the fall of 2021,” he said.
Kummer said that Morganti had a tree on hand Wednesday, which is customarily hoisted to the top of a building in a multi-story construction project during a topping-out ceremony.
“We’ll have a tree, which is a tradition for the topping-out, and it’s an orange tree,” he said. “Historically this area had significant orange groves, so that was a consideration as to design. We picked an orange tree to symbolically represent that.”
The topping out ceremony was sponsored by Morganti.
