Great Wolf Lodge: How many millions of pounds of steel and concrete in Naples? How big?

Editor's note: This is the latest in a series on Florida's first Great Wolf Lodge, one of the most significant endeavors in Naples history that's drawing plenty of questions from you. One of Collier County's biggest private workplaces, the 530,000-square-foot retreat and water park is slated as Southwest Florida's third largest employer in tourism, drawing by itself the same number of visitors in a year that all of Collier in its entirety attracts in nearly three months time.

I've told Suffolk Construction honcho Ben Wilson in the past that you guys and gals really dig data. I'm a big fan, too, having aced statistics courses at Purdue University thanks to being raised on Atlanta Braves baseball batting averages including underrated Ralph "Road Runner" Garr's lifetime .306. However, that's as far as my math goes or pretty much any top grades in college.

But that Mr. Wilson, he's a smart cat, as Suffolk's Gulf Coast chief operating officer.

"I'm a construction guy, and numbers are at the heart of what we do," Wilson said.

Not only is he on target delivering one of the biggest projects ever in the region by September, he also delivered on some new stats from April, and a lot of them will grow: "There's quite a bit of more work to go," he said. But "we have an incredible team that's already in the position to execute on that."

Here's some numbers to know about the Great Wolf Lodge South Florida, off Collier Boulevard and I-75.

What's significant about the number 563,249?

"563,249 is the number of hours worked by the men and women on this project," Wilson said. "We're incredibly proud of this effort."

1,287

"1,287 is the most people that have entered and left this site on a daily basis, working all towards the goal, which is to deliver this incredible product to the community," he said.

2.5 million

"1,176 (is) the number of tons of steel," Wilson said. "For anybody that's keeping track, that's 2.5 million pounds of steel that's hoisted in the air safely and efficiently to put this structure in the air."

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60 million

"Just under 15,000 is the number of cubic yards of concrete that was delivered and placed," he said. "That equates to 60 million pounds that is built into this project in and around the project building site."

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What number is Suffolk Construction most proud of with Great Wolf?

"Most importantly, and the number that I'm most proud of: 3,662," Wilson said. "That's the number of safety observations that were performed by the Suffolk team to ensure that every man and woman on this project site entered and left in the exact same condition. So if you think about that, that's 3,662 times that one of our team members took time from their day, to help educate, protect and improve the standards of construction operations here in Southwest Florida. Again, this is being done by a group of people who live here, who raise families here."

$5 billion

"This resort will create new jobs, approximately 600 new jobs," said Steve Jacobsen, Great Wolf executive vice president. "And it's going to range everything from culinary to management to housekeeping to engineering. It's kind of a full gamut of everything you can think of in a hospitality complex. (Over) a 30-year-period, it will generate more than $5 billion ― that's $5 billion in new net spending and $2.4 billion in net earnings over the next 30 years."

Based at the Naples Daily News, Columnist Phil Fernandez (pfernandez@gannett.com) grew up in Southwest Florida and has led Pulitzer Prize-winning efforts. He writes In the Know, one of USA TODAY Network's most read local news columns in the state. Support democracy. Subscribe to a newspaper.

This article originally appeared on Naples Daily News: Great Wolf Lodge South Florida, by the numbers. Millions and billions