What will soon become Tampa Bay’s tallest tower is starting from the bottom this weekend. In the biggest private concrete pour in St. Pete history, more than 600 trucks worth of cement will create the foundation of The Residences at 400 Central on Friday and Saturday.

The pour for the new luxury tower begins Friday evening and runs all the way through Saturday afternoon, so be on the lookout for the steady stream of trucks coming through downtown St. Pete. In announcing the foundation pour, Red Apple Real Estate noted that more than five million pounds of steel have been put in place already to reinforce the foundation, which will be made up of nearly 6,000 yards of concrete.

To execute the continuous pour, Cemex will bring in 40 cement trucks an hour for the duration of the project. The general contractor for the building, Suffolk Construction, has overseen the drilling of more than 90 steel-reinforced pilings – some measuring as wide as eight feet in diameter – nearly 180 feet below the surface. Crews then built a massive, reinforced foundation structure that will be the focal point of the concrete pour, filled with concrete that will harden to form the foundation for the soaring tower.

“This is an exciting step in the construction of this wonderful project,” said John Catsimatidis Sr., founder of Red Apple Real Estate and principal of the company that is sponsoring development of The Residences at 400 Central. “We are grateful for the expert staff at the City of St. Petersburg who helped to coordinate the foundation pour. We are moving quickly to build this condominium and deliver homes to all of the current and future purchasers that are buying residences in this wonderful city.”

The science and planning behind the foundation pour is particularly interesting. There is a limited window between when the concrete mix is loaded into a truck and when it must be poured before it hardens, meaning the coordination and logistics between the city and the developers was particularly important for such a large pour in the middle of downtown. Trucks will be coming from four different plants in the area in the meticulously planned foundation setting.

As for the building itself, Red Apple Real Estate reports “tremendous success” in the early sales of units in the building, which they say have vastly exceeded initial expectations. The cap of that success includes the sale of a 43rd floor 4,237-square-foot penthouse for $5,230,000 that spans 4 bedrooms and 4.5 baths.

Read our full story on The Residences at 400 Central to learn more, or visit the state-of-the-art sales gallery across from the site at 465 Central Avenue.