Five Things to Watch
Who and what will you be watching across the industry this year? In this, the first 2014 issue of ENR Mountain States, we are launching a new feature called "Things to Watch." The use of the generic word "thing" is intentional because we are not limiting our choices to projects or companies or people—although those certainly will be included. We will also highlight trends, issues, industry milestones and even some cautionary tales.
We're looking across the industry to see who is making an impact—an above-and-beyond or out-of-the-box contribution—that may have ripple effects. Here are some of the things we think are worth watching. There are many more to come. Let us know what you think.
$1.8B SLC Airport Expansion Under Way
With the recent selection of a joint-venture contractor, work will begin this summer
Plans to replace aging terminals at Salt Lake City International Airport have taken several steps toward the starting line in recent years, and now work is scheduled to begin this summer. In 2012, airport and city leaders selected San Francisco-based international architecture and engineering firm HOK to lead the $1.8-billion Terminal Replacement Project. Last year, the airport brought Making Projects Work Inc. on board as its program manager. The Atlanta-based firm specializes in airport construction. In November the airport hired Salt Lake City-based Big-D Construction and Holder Construction Co. of Atlanta, working in a joint venture as HD Construction, to be the contractor.
"This selection is a major milestone in launching the program that will build a new terminal and facilities for Salt Lake City International Airport," says Maureen Riley, executive director of the Salt Lake City Dept. of Airports, in a statement. "HD has the specialized experience required for this endeavor and the perfect combination of skill and expertise."
The new terminal and associated parking structure will be located just west and south of the current facilities and will eventually utilize three of the existing concourses. The design by HOK calls for a five-level, 4,700-space (including 1,200 rental-car spaces) parking terrace separated from a three-story terminal by access roads and a pedestrian bridge.
A split-level road in front of the terminal is designed for departing passengers to be dropped off on the third level, with arrivals using the lowest one. Foot traffic from the parking terrace will enter the second level of the terminal via a pedestrian bridge. From the central terminal, concourse arms will extend east and west to individual gates. Work is scheduled to begin this summer with construction of rental-car service facilities. Demolition of old facilities and new construction will proceed in stages. The new terminal will open in 2019.
According to the Salt Lake City Dept. of Airports, the goals for the new facility include addressing seismic concerns, constructing right-sized facilities, improving customer service, solving operational problems, accommodating growth, maintaining competitive costs and upgrading in phases over eight to ten years.
During the design process, which began last year, HOK is engaging consultants from local architectural firms: MHTN, GSBS, FFKR and Architectural Nexus. Civil engineering for new roads, utilities and structures is being led by a partnership of URS and J.U.B. overseeing a team comprising CH2M Hill, Horrocks Engineers, RB&G and CDM Smith. Consulting for structural engineering will be done locally by Reaveley Engineers + Associates and Dunn Associates Inc., with mechanical and electrical engineering by Colvin Engineering and Van Boerum & Frank Associates Inc. Specialty contractors for the concrete, steel, stone, drywall and other trades are yet to be determined.
Currently, Salt Lake City International Airport is a collection of buildings and concourses of varying ages ranging from the main terminal and central plant, which are 51 years old, to the international terminal and concourse E, built 16 years ago. The airport site is about eight miles west of downtown Salt Lake City. It has operated as an airport since the early 1930s.
Developers at Odds With SLC Ordinances
Impact fees are getting a review but the waiting game continues for changes to demolition and parking regs
2014 could be the year the Salt Lake City Council, with four newly sworn-in members, will deal with the fallout from ordinances relating to new construction. The ordinances went into effect at the beginning of 2013 and have many people in the development community crying foul and hinting at legal action.
The objections come from Salt Lake City property owners and developers who have a beef with the city over impact fees for new construction and ordinances that restrict demolition of existing buildings.
Salt Lake City levies impact fees on new construction to fund capital projects for public safety, roads and parks. In 2013 the council raised the parks portion of the city impact fees from $681 per residential unit to $3,999. While the park-impact fees on residential construction are the highest, the city also imposed a new road-impact fee of $2.68 per sq ft for commercial office space. There was no office-space fee before 2013, and Bruce Bingham of Chicago-based developer Hamilton Partners says it has complicated his company's plans for a new downtown high-rise office building to complement the 222 Main building completed in 2009.
"Salt Lake City is not always at the top of everyone's list when they are looking for office space," Bingham says. "One of the things it had going for it was low taxes and fees and a business-friendly environment." Bingham claims the fee increase has put Salt Lake at a development disadvantage compared to other cities in the West, like Portland, Denver and Phoenix.
Complaints about the fees got a hearing during a Feb. 4 SLC council work session. City staff members presented options for changes to the fees, and Mayor Ralph Becker, who had been in favor of lower fees from the outset, suggested a reduction of park fees to $1,752, but no change to the road fee. According to transcripts of the meeting, council members expressed doubt about the negative effects of the fees, given that they are comparable to others in the region and support downtown amenities like mass transit and recent retail projects such as City Creek Center, which make the area more attractive for developers. The issue of timing was also raised, since the ordinance was passed more than a year ago. After some discussion, the matter was continued to a later date.
Yet to be addressed by the council are rules prohibiting demolition of buildings, which arose after a failed development in the Sugar House area left bare for several years a large corner parcel (dubbed "the Sugar Hole" by locals) in the popular Salt Lake neighborhood. Wanting to prevent a reoccurrence, the city tightened regulations on new developments, requiring owners to have plans, permits and solid financing in place before demolishing any existing structures. Furthermore, restrictions on creating new surface parking lots downtown means that owners may not demolish a building and use the space, even short-term, just for parking.
Vasilios Priskos, a developer and founder of Internet Properties in Salt Lake City owns several parcels containing older, vacant buildings that have, in his estimation, become not only eyesores but also liabilities because of the ordinances. "I agree that parking lots don't make sense everywhere, but as an interim use to generate some income, it's better than leaving a building that's a hazard and an eyesore," he says. "There are really only about a half-dozen buildings this is an issue for but [the city has] this one-size-fits-all ordinance that doesn't work everywhere."
Priskos says because plats in the downtown area tend to be relatively small, purchasing and assembling all the property needed to create a profitable development can take time. In the interim, older buildings often remain abandoned and deteriorate further.
"We have these two ordinances that seem to work against each other, and there is a lot of consternation about how to move forward," Priskos says.
CDOT Wrestles With I-70 Traffic Problems
Project will begin this spring to widen westbound I-70 Twin Tunnel
Colorado drivers are all too familiar with the lengthy delays and frustrations of a Sunday afternoon return from the ski slopes or a summer outing along Interstate 70 to Denver. The worst pinch point has been the section of I-70 from Georgetown to Idaho Springs.
The Colorado Dept. of Transportation and its joint-venture contractor Kraemer-Obayashi completed last year the $106-million Twin Tunnels project, which added a new tunnel bore and one eastbound lane from Idaho Springs interchange to U.S. 6. It expanded the eastbound tunnel to include three lanes, shoulders, improved lighting and a wider tunnel entrance.
This year CDOT will spend an additional $55 million to widen the westbound Twin Tunnel. The project should begin construction this spring and be complete by the end of 2014. CDOT anticipates that together the projects will reduce accidents by an estimated 35% and save Sunday travelers $11.4 million in travel time and fuel costs in 2014.
CDOT says it is also studying a more ambitious plan for the entire I-70 mountain corridor, one proposed by Parsons Corp. The Pasadena, Calif.-based transportation consultant proposed a $3.5-billion plan to add bus, rapid transit and tolled, reversible express lanes along 53 miles of the freeway from Denver's western suburbs to Silverthorne.
The new lanes would be built within the highway's existing medians to save on right-of-way and infrastructure costs. The project would require new bores at the Eisenhower-Johnson Memorial Tunnel.
The public-private partnership calls for express-lane tolls that would vary by time, day of the week and season. Parsons estimates toll revenue during the first 50 years could total $8.6 billion, and the expanded freeway could be completed by 2021. That's nearly 20 years sooner than CDOT anticipated.
Alliance Center Renovation Goes High Tech
Building will pilot new 'hot-desk' office plan
A complete interior renovation of the historic Alliance Center building at 15th & Wynkoop streets in Denver's Lower Downtown aims to create a LEED Platinum "hot-desk" office environment that has not been tried anywhere else in the city. The open-interiors plan "intuitively co-locates" different groups of tenants who will share office resources such as computer networks, conference rooms, printers and technical services and even cubicle and desk space on a rotating basis, says Jason Page, the Alliance Center director. His firm, the Alliance for Sustainable Colorado, will manage the tenants when renovations are complete later this spring.
Page says the open concept should save both money and energy. It will also provide tenants with better networking opportunities and maximum flexibility in how they use the physical resources of the building. It works only in a nearly paperless environment, he says.
"This is a mission-driven concept," Page adds. "We hope to change office culture." Management retains the right to move tenants around within the building as space allocations and needs change. There is no "ownership" of a particular space or even of an individual desk on a regular basis. "It's a collaborative approach, one where the traditional sense of space is more blurred," Page says.
The five-story, 41,356-sq-ft building includes nearly 40 collaborative, flexible office spaces in various sizes and shapes, and 16 glass-walled conference rooms with occupancy sensors and integrated-lighting, audio- visual and HVAC controls. Each of the upper floors has expansive spaces filled with natural light and 20-ft-tall open-beam ceilings. The main floor offers digital signage and event space that holds up to 160 people for cocktails or banquet seating and can be leased by the public for special events.
The Alliance Center currently houses 20 to 23 tenants, most of them smaller nonprofits such as Conservation Colorado, Colorado Solar Energy Industries Association, Sierra Club, Bike Denver and eGo Car Share. The building's newest tenant is the Nonprofit Centers Network, which is relocating its main office from San Francisco to Denver.
The $3.7-million renovation, designed by Denver's Gensler and being built by contractor EJCM, with owner's oversight from Fitzmartin Consulting, will also be a high-tech, green showcase. It features three roof-mounted, wind-driven turbines "on steroids" that integrate with solar panels to provide the building's power, says Don Fitzmartin, owner of Fitzmartin Consulting. He says that, to his knowledge, this will be the first use of urban wind turbines in Denver. "The technology here is so sophisticated that it allows the tenants not to worry about technology," he says.
CU Denver Expands Architecture Program
Undergraduate enrollment growing on campus
The University of Colorado is more than a year into a bold transition. Starting in spring 2013, the university moved its undergraduate program in architecture from the Boulder campus to CU Denver. Academic leaders sought a better alignment with the existing master's degree program in architecture in Denver and stronger connections with local design firms.
"We expected in the first two years that most of the undergrads would be transfers from other campuses," says Michael Jenson, associate dean for Academic Affairs at the College of Architecture and Planning. "But instead, 90% of them came from outside the [CU] system and from 13 different states." The program had 119 students enrolled in spring 2014 semester.
Jenson says that on the Denver campus, "we were missing part of our culture, with the undergrads still up in Boulder." The goal is to have 400 to 500 students enrolled in the undergraduate program by spring 2018, with options for fourth-year students to focus on landscape design, planning, urban design and historic preservation. Department leaders would also like to offer more business classes for designers, add engineering components and implement capstone courses in construction management.
"We're trying to re-energize our curriculum and redefine the master's program with an emphasis on professional practice," Jenson says. As part of that, the college will pilot its "Prax Lab" this spring, an experimental think-tank that will explore a "multi-disciplinary dialogue between architecture, construction and engineering," Jenson says. "We're hoping it will become a networking tool for everyone involved in the built environment and a way to find out what the industry really needs for its new work force."
