River's Edge

Site-Appropriate Campus Grows at Apollo Riverpoint Center

by Scott Blair

The Apollo Riverpoint Center, currently under construction in Phoenix, will provide University of Phoenix Online with a 630,000-sq.-ft. campus including one ten-story and two six-story office buildings. The site also includes two large parking garages and landscaping that echoes the nearby riverbed of the Salt River.

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The Apollo Group, Inc., a provider of higher education programs, is building an office development for its subsidiary, University of Phoenix Online, while also providing space for its corporate headquarters.

Named Riverpoint Center, the 600,000-square-foot facility is located at Interstate 10 and 32nd Street in Phoenix.

The campus, named for its proximity to the Salt River, will include a ten-story office building and two six-story buildings. Two parking structures, plus surface parking, will accommodate up to 4,500 vehicles. A full-service kitchen and dining facility will be built as well.

"Apollo has gone through unbelievable growth in the last few years and we >> had people spread all over the valley, so we needed to bring everyone out of those facilities into one big location," said Rick Mason, director of construction with the Apollo Group. "The campus centralizes employees. Our hope is that we would eventually do three of these campuses around the valley."

Carpenter Sellers Architects of Las Vegas, Nev. designed the project with Phoenix-based SmithGroup. Phoenix-based Sundt Construction was brought on early to provide preconstruction services and then as the construction manager at risk on the job.

However, the project nearly came to a halt when the budget began to escalate dramatically after Hurricane Katrina and other calamities caused key material price hikes.

"We got to a point where the budget was so far out of line that we almost cancelled the project," Mason said. Through many value engineering sessions, the project again moved forward. "We were very pleased that when we broke ground we were building exactly what we wanted," Mason added.

One of the major value engineering items changed the two parking garage foundations from caissons, which would have needed to be very deep and large in diameter, to spread footings. The change saved Apollo Group approximately $4 million, according to Fred Friedl, senior project manager with Sundt Construction.

The office building structures are cast-in-place reinforced concrete, with Sundt self-performing concrete, underground utilities and excavation. Other trades were chosen using a prequalification process.

The campus is designed to fit in with the desert environment, with each office building aligned in a way to maximize day lighting while keeping out Arizona's harsh sunlight, said Rick Sellers, principal with Carpenter Sellers Architects.

"The buildings are elongated in the east-west axis so we maximized the north and south sides of the buildings, where all the large expanses of glass are."

But on the east and west sides where sunlight is more direct, pre-cast concrete and copper cladding were predominantly used, featuring small, deep-welled window openings to control heat gain.

Copper is also used as a border around the north curtain wall of each building, designed to evoke a giant computer screen. "We wanted to express that Apollo Group is a very forward-thinking and technology-driven company," Sellers said.

Crews have erected scaffolding over a large portion of the ten-story tower for the copper installation, including a large curved screen wall to block views of the rooftop mechanical systems. "We had planned on scaffolding the whole building on the north side to get this eyebrow built," Friedl said. "But the glazer said, why don't we just cantilever scaffolding out and have it designed kicking off the roof and then build it up 30-ft." This allowed KT Fabrication of Phoenix, the glazing and curtain wall fabricator, to continue with their instillation uninterrupted below.

The office buildings utilize under-floor air distribution system, where all cabling and air-flow occurs within a one-ft. raised channel. Since the interior design will feature open floor plans and modular work spaces, new air vents and electrical conduit can be brought up through the floor virtually anywhere since the entire floor acts as one giant duct.

"When you have vents above [as in most office buildings] you are blowing air down through the hottest air," Sellers said. "With the under-floor system, the velocity of the air flows out almost naturally at a barely detectable rate, and it is quieter."

With the system the design team was also able to provide additional savings to Apollo Group. "By eliminating putting a lot of that stuff in the ceilings, we were actually able to get one additional floor per building without increasing the surface on the exterior of the buildings, which saves a lot of money," Mason said. "It also provides the flexibility of being able to reconfigure our modular furniture from time to time."


Key Players

Owner: Apollo Group Inc.
Architect: Carpenter Sellers Architects; SmithGroup
General Contractor: Sundt Construction
Engineers: SmithGroup; Caruso Turley Scott; Dibble & Associates
Concrte: Sundt
Electrical: Delta Diversified
Electrical: Bombard Electric
Mechanical: Bel Aire Mechanical
Steel: Able Steel

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