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Week-by-week, Protogroup tower rises on Daytona Beach horizon

DAYTONA BEACH — If you’ve noticed that the 28-story South Tower of Protogroup’s planned 501-room Daytona Beach Convention Hotel & Condominiums seems to be growing by the week, you’re exactly right.

“We’re working at a pace of about a week per floor,” Mike Zehe, general superintendent of the mammoth construction site at the intersection of State Road A1A and Oakridge Boulevard.

“This morning, we just poured the 23rd (floor) deck. It tops out at 28,” added Zehe of Yates Construction, the project’s general contractor. “Right now, we’re in the first sequence in a two-sequence deck for the 23rd level. We’ll top off the building by the end of November.”

When it’s completed in 2020, the Convention Hotel & Condominiums’ taller North Tower will rise to 380 feet, making it the tallest building in Volusia and Flagler counties. To the South, the second tower will rise to 330 feet. With a price tag of $192 million, the project also will be the most expensive hotel/condo development in the area’s history.

Earlier this month, construction progress was reported to be on-time for the projected completion dates, August 2019 for the 28-story South Tower and sometime in 2020 for the 31-story North Tower, said Alexey Lysich, vice president of Protogroup, the Palm Coast-based, family-run company whose Russian owners are developing the property.

Despite a rainy summer, Lysich said that the absence of hurricanes or other tropical storms has enabled construction crews to stay on schedule.

“We are lucky this year with the hurricanes, unlike two years before,” Lysich said. “Everything is going very smooth.”

Zehe, who supervises a crew of roughly 200 tradesmen at work on the South Tower and another 20 starting prep work on the North Tower, said that crews on Friday will begin “dry-in” work on the South Tower’s 12th-floor mid-rise, a process that enables interior work to begin.

Outside utilities are scheduled to be brought in by November, he said.

Also this week, a tower crane will be going up on the site of the North Tower, where work on the foundation will begin on Thursday, Zehe said.

“We should start going vertical on the North Tower 60 days after Oct. 1,” Zehe said.

Zehe also reports that the weather has been cooperative for construction progress.

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