All-In-One

Glendale Gets a New Hotel with a Whole Lot More

By Scott Blair

The new $112 million Renaissance Hotel, Glendale Conference and Media Center is being built across the street from two new sports arenas and a massive mixed-use development in Glendale.

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The concept of fast track takes on new meaning with the new Renaissance Hotel, Glendale Conference and Media Center located in Glendale, Ariz. Portions of the project were required to be completed before the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl which was held January 1st, just eight months after the initial designs were started.

The $112 million project consists of four different structures. The 11-story Renaissance Hotel is being built by Springfield, Mo.-based hotel developer John Q. Hammons Hotels. The city of Glendale is concurrently building an 80,000-sq-ft conference center, a 65,000-sq-ft media center and a four-level parking structure.


The project owes its existence to the explosion of growth in Glendale, including the University of Phoenix Stadium and the Jobing.com Arena next door. The project is also bordered by the mixed-use Westgate City Center.

The Renaissance will have the advantage of being the first major hotel near the stadiums.
Major sporting events dictated the need for an early completion date.

"The convention center, media center and parking garage were done by December 1st," says Ronald Barrett, vice president of operations for general contractor Killian Construction Co., a Springfield, Mo.-based company that recently opened permanent offices in Arizona. "It was about seven months total construction, but that included design. It was seven days a week, 24 hours a day, under very short time constraints."

The 320,000-sq-ft hotel required a longer construction schedule, starting in January 2006 with a scheduled completion in September 2007.

The project is being delivered using the design-build method, with a team including Hammons, the city of Glendale, Killian and Springfield, Mo.-based architect Butler, Rosenbury & Partners.

"We had to submit site and foundation drawings early to get permitting so that the contractor could then begin the process of building," says Douglas Jackson, AIA, vice president at the architect's recently-opened Phoenix.

"While Killian was starting construction, we were completing the final drawings for additional permitting so the contractor could actually sub-bid out that work and order materials."

In order to produce drawings quickly, the architect at times had more than 20 people working on the project. Meanwhile, the contractor had up to 440 tradespeople onsite, Barrett says.

While Glendale didn't allow any permitting or inspection corners to be cut, the design-build team worked out a mutually beneficial way to expedite the construction process. "The city actually had offices here in the job trailer so that the inspectors were on site every day just to make sure everything was going as planned and as needed," Jackson says.

While separate structures, the hotel, conference and media centers are connected on one side to allow hotel guests to pass between them under one roof.

The convention center houses a 30,000-sq-ft main ballroom and several smaller-sized rooms. The concrete foundation is slab-on-grade while the structural steel frame provides clear spans up to 125-ft-long.

The four-story media center will house production facilities for Glendale's government-owned television station, Glendale 11, and for other media outlets during special events and games. The building features a 30,000-sq-ft exposition area and two production studios with green-screen walls, soundproofing, extremely level floors and a low velocity mechanical system.

A 4,000-sq-ft press conference room is on the third level, while the top floor houses an open-air viewing platform covered by a semi-roof, for receptions and other media broadcasts.

"The whole facility is positioned so that when the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl occurs, or when the Super Bowl is here next year, the networks can come and just plug in," Jackson says.

The media and convention centers are equipped with over 100 floor boxes housing a variety of electrical currents, data cabling and other connections to anticipate the technological needs of media broadcasters.

The hotel tower is structural cast-in-place concrete, sitting atop a concrete raft mat foundation, a floating 3-ft-thick slab comprised of 4,600 cu yds of concrete.

"We used it because it was a faster and more economical system to get the foundations moving on the hotel without doing deep foundations, such as drilled or driven piers," Barrett says.

Due to the project's fast-track nature, some finish materials in the original design were switched out during construction due to availability.

"Some things you just can't get here fast enough," Barrett says. "A good example here was the use of a lot of architectural pre-cast." The contractor minimized its use from the original design and replaced it with Sedona cut stone, which can be quarried in both Arizona and India. "We saved the city about $400,000 on that one item," Barrett says.

A fast-track HVAC system technique provided another time-saving strategy, he says. "We used a chill-pack unit, which is like a mini-central plant all-in-one. It comes out of the box already plumbed with pumps and chillers in place. You just hook it up and it runs out chilled water to all your systems and you are done."

While the hotel is not a resort destination, it does feature several upscale amenities, including a spa, indoor and outdoor swimming pools and a five-story atrium.

Key Players

Design-Build Team:
Killian Construction Co.; City of Glendale;
John Q. Hammons Hotels; Butler Rosenbury & Partners

Subcontractors:
Midwest Partitions; Miller Bonded; Cannon & Wendt;
Hardrock Concrete; Star Roofing; Riggs Contracting;
Coreslab Structures, Inc.; Schuff Steel Management; Traynor Glass

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