Historical Fort Sam Houston Made Modern
About two dozen buildings at Fort Sam Houston, some dating back almost as early as the post’s 1876 origin, are being transformed into modern, energy-efficient offices, barracks and other facilities for military personnel and federal employees.
The work is part of the $3 billion in Base Realignment and Closure and other construction programs ongoing at military installations in San Antonio.
“Fort Sam Houston has the most historic structures on an active military installation, so our program is renovating buildings,” says Randy Holman, program manager with the Army Corps of Engineers and spokesperson for the Joint Program Management Office, the tri-service military organization that is overseeing design and construction. “The oldest structure I am aware of was built in 1891, so we’re touching points of the post that were built not too long after the post was founded.”
The building 600 area, the old infantry post that housed original troops, is constructed of wood and masonry exterior walls and features interesting architectural elements such as parapets, horse ties, watering troughs and a sally port (a gate or passage in a fortified place for use by troops making a sortie), Holman says.
Renovations also include Spanish colonial-style buildings that share many design and construction features, including verandas with wrap-around porches, columns and huge windows.
The historic renovations represent more than 1 million sq ft of the overall 10-million-sq-ft program, which includes building and renovating 78 major facilities.
“We plan to house at the end of the program as many as 3,000 military and civilian personnel in the renovated structures, roughly 25% of the flow of people coming to San Antonio,” says Brian Dwyer, senior public affairs specialist with Parsons Corp., Pasadena, Calif., which is serving as architect engineer integrator and overseeing design and construction/renovation efforts.
Although the historic renovations are not the largest and most complicated piece of the overall program, they required a lot of planning and coordination with the Texas Historical Commission, the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation and compliance with the National Historic Preservation Act.
BRAC was authorized by Congress in 2005 and the JPMO began working on a business plan and sequencing in 2006, before contracts were awarded. “By the time our design effort started, most of the historic homework had been accomplished,” Holman says. The first contract was awarded in 2007.
“Early in the program, we relied on U.S. Army Garrison Fort Sam Houston and their staff to bring the right stakeholders to the table,” Holman adds. He says the ongoing partnership has been fruitful in facilitating communication and coordination when problems arise and helping maintain the schedule and budget.
Renovating old structures, bringing them up to modern codes and meeting the military’s standard for LEED-silver certification posed unique challenges for each structure, depending on its original construction and new, intended use, Holman says. In most cases, renovations required replacing interior partitions, electrical wiring, plumbing, climate-control systems and lighting. Wooden floors, doors, windows, stairways and ceilings needed to be repaired and refinished. Structural supports also needed repair and/or beefing up.
“We are looking for a modern solution to historical architecture,” Holman says. Some things are routine and others require special skills and numerous consultations with the military advisory council and THC, he adds.
“In some of the buildings, we have>>maintained some elements, like the original vestibule to the hospital, which included a full restoration of the wood-carved ceiling, including research to develop the right...
... painting and pigment qualities,” Holman says. “In another building, we used as one of the focal points the old nurses stations. We framed around that and kept the station, using the area behind as the sanctuary for copiers, etc.”
In some areas, raised bed floors provided the perfect area to run ductwork, electrical and telecommunications.
To achieve the LEED-silver requirements, JPMO stipulated a lot of reuse of original materials. “Preplanning allowed us to use as many materials as possible,” Holman says. “If we could deconstruct and make use of those materials, that was our first choice.”
Marrying the historic renovation to implosion-resistance standards was a challenge for RKJ Construction Inc. of Lampasas, Texas, which currently holds several historic renovation contracts at Fort Sam Houston.
“On the wood-frame structures that were built in the early 1900s, we had to run rods to bolts in the floor down the exterior walls to support them and then run bracing on existing floors to tie the walls together,” says Rex Johnson, RKJ president. “All the exterior windows have to match the style of the old windows, but be blast resistant, so we have to meet a higher psi on the window frames and glass and reinforce openings to meet that criteria.”
RKJ hired a blast-design engineer and coordinated with the architect designing the floor plans. Achieving LEED-silver is a challenge with historic renovations as well, Johnson says. “To match old doors, windows and trim, you have to have someone who can do specialty millwork,” he says.
The JPMO and Fort Sam Houston folks streamlined things for contractors, says Bobby Greaves, vice president of operations for JSR Inc. of Schertz, which holds a $5.9-million contract for renovation of Buildings 601 and 602. “Fort Sam is a good group, and works to get contractors what they need, so it’s not as difficult as it would be with other contractors,” Greaves says.
And because of the recession, contractors have their pick of good subcontractors, Greaves says. He adds that San Antonio contractors are faring better than in other parts of the country, largely because of the military work. “It’s not all doom and gloom,” Greaves says. “Our guys see packages weekly. Military work is a large chunk of our business, about 50%.”
Foreseeing how much business would be flooding the area, (roughly $1.2 billion in fiscal year 2008 and $700 million in FY 2009 when the historic norm is $65 million-$100 million annually) the JPMO partnered with the city of San Antonio’s Office of Military Affairs, Bexar County and the local business community to support the ongoing program with an online storyboard.
Implemented in April 2008, the storyboard (found at www.sanantonio.gov/oma) allows contractors to see an 18-month outlook of the program, including project descriptions, range of contracts, contracting mechanisms and award dates, Dwyer says. “The storyboard allows contractors to develop a plan, and we get a better product because people have had time to prepare for when the announcement comes through FedBizOpps,” he adds.
Most of the renovation projects at Fort Sam Houston will be complete by mid- to late-2011. The final projects will be awarded in fall 2010.
