Florida's First Mass-Timber Office Tower Tackles Hurricanes, Tariffs
ENR reports that Canadian design-build firm StructureCraft, working with general contractor Whiting-Turner and developer Hines, completed the timber and steel superstructure for Fort Lauderdale’s T3 FAT Village, Florida’s first large-scale mass timber commercial office building. The six-story, 180,000-square-foot project used 705 spruce panels and 1,835 European spruce glue-laminated beams and columns, and the team had to ship 41 truckloads of fabricated timber at once to an offsite Fort Lauderdale yard after a temporary 25% tariff hit Canadian wood imports mid-project. To meet South Florida’s wind requirements, StructureCraft skipped a standard concrete core in favor of a timber core reinforced with steel angle bracing rated for winds up to 120 mph, and crews poured concrete floor slabs in two zones per level to keep lateral diaphragms in place during hurricane season, which added roughly two weeks to the schedule. Installation ran 28 weeks with a crew of six to eight people, wrapping structural top-out in October 2025.
What It Means for Subcontractors
- Concrete subs on mass timber jobs should expect split-zone pours and tight sequencing with MEP trades for floor sleeves, as seen on T3 FAT Village, where two turnovers per floor added about two weeks to the schedule.
- Steel erectors and connection specialists can watch for more timber-core hybrid designs in hurricane zones; StructureCraft’s approach used heavy steel angle bracing at the perimeter and core instead of a concrete core, a detail engineers may spec on future coastal mass timber bids.
- Trades bidding institutional or commercial work in storm-prone regions should budget for hurricane stand-down protocols, including added fasteners and heavier temporary bracing, plus daily rain and lightning delays that limited full workdays during South Florida’s rainy season.
