Gilbane-Turner JV Tops Out $1.7B Wadsworth Center Laboratory in Albany

A Gilbane Building Co. and Turner Construction joint venture has topped out the $1.7 billion Wadsworth Center Laboratory in Albany, New York, according to a Wednesday announcement from Turner.

The milestone puts a structural cap on what the release calls the largest construction project in the history of the Dormitory Authority of the State of New York, the state's public finance and construction authority. Not a bad line for a state agency résumé. HOK designed the five-story, 663,000-square-foot facility, and the JV broke ground in January.

The numbers behind the frame are worth a pause. The structural steel consists of more than 8,200 major components totaling approximately 5,545 tons, per the release. That's roughly the weight of a fully loaded Navy frigate, hung on a building dedicated to public health.

What happens once the structure is complete?

The lab will consolidate five existing New York State Department of Health laboratory locations, currently spread across the Capital Region, under a single roof. One building, five labs, zero cross-town sample runs. The consolidation logic is straightforward; the logistics of moving five state laboratories are anything but.

A quiet sector in a data-center economy

Healthcare construction has been a small boon for builders lately. While the broader economic environment seems to prioritize data centers and related infrastructure, the healthcare sector has quietly helped boost builders' planning numbers. Public health laboratories don't trend on earnings calls. They do show up in backlogs.

"Reaching the topping out milestone is a tremendous accomplishment for our entire project team and a testament to the dedication, craftsmanship, and collaboration with trade partners and the skilled tradespeople," said Carl Stewart, vice president and general manager at Turner, in the announcement.

Topping out, for the record, means the last major steel piece is in place. The tradespeople celebrate with a beam. Then everyone goes back to enclosure, systems and fit-out.

Is this a one-off partnership?

Hardly. Turner and Gilbane have a growing habit of teaming on prominent New York projects. The two firms delivered Highmark Stadium, the $2.1 billion home of the NFL's Buffalo Bills, finalizing the project in June. The Bills selected the JV in November 2022, and construction broke ground in June 2023.

So the pair has now capped a football stadium and a public health laboratory in the same calendar year, for a combined $3.8 billion in New York work. The Wadsworth Center's next phase shifts from steel to the interior work that actually makes a laboratory function — the part the public never sees and the part the state's health apparatus will depend on.