New Civic Center Nestles into Historic Downtown Site

By Scott Blair

The Santa Fe Civic Center will provide 76,000 sq ft of multi-function space atop two levels of underground parking. The design melds indoor and outdoor space and conforms to downtown Santa Fe's historic pueblo style.

advertisement

When you’re the new kid on the block, sometimes you just need to fit in.

That’s the approach the city of Santa Fe required of the architecture team of Denver’s Fentress Bradburn and Santa Fe’s Spears Architects when designing the new Santa Fe Civic Center, a $50 million, two-story events center located in the heart of the city.

“The whole downtown area is a core historic district so the design had to first of all comply with our own historical architectural requirements,” says Martin Valdez, community facilities manager with the City of Santa Fe.

The city selected the architect by holding a design competition between five finalists.

“It was very exciting,” says Beverley Spears, FAIA, principal of Spears Architects. “The five competing teams had their entries viewed by the public and there was a lot of public comment.”

The building’s pueblo style responds to the existing surrounding structures by incorporating heavy timbers, adobe and expansive courtyards. “We worked hard to do something truly authentic, not only in superficial details but in the very massing of the building,” Spears says.

Santa Fe-based general contractor Cameron-Swinerton Construction LLC began work on the project in September 2006. However, initial work was slow due to significant archeological finds.

“It was a very rich archeological site,” Valdez says. “There have been a number of both Native-American and Spanish artifacts that have been discovered. Human remains were also found.”

A significant amount of pre-investigation was done before construction began in order to determine the parameters of where artifacts were most concentrated, Valdez says.

Yet construction could not wait for 100% discovery. “We met a compromise with the scheduled start,” says Jerry Lucero, senior project manager with Parsons-3D/I. Parsons was retained by Santa Fe-based Hands Engineering, the project
manager of the Civic Center representing the City of Santa Fe.

“Everyone from the city to the archeologist to the contractor has worked together exceptionally well to allow the archeological monitoring that’s required by the city’s contract.”

“There have been some minor delays caused by the fact that the contractor has to move at a slower rate so that the archeologist can observe the excavation as it is taking place,” Valdez adds.

The design had to be changed at one point to reduce the number of underground parking spaces from 600 to 512 in order to minimize the archeological disturbance. “We came to an agreement through negotiations with one of the local pueblos claiming the site as part of their ancestral areas to reduce the footprint of the underground parking,” Valdez says.

The spaces are distributed between two underground levels. “We excavated down 28 ft from street level,” says George Schwartz, senior project manager with Cameron-Swinerton. “We used a post-tensioned deck for the first parking level to thin up the slabs. If we had used a conventional reinforced deck or a pan deck, it would have added 2 ft to the excavation.”

The project is surrounded on three sides by busy downtown streets, and the fourth side abuts City Hall. To contend with excavating such a tight site, the contractor used a combination of drilled soldier beams and lagging with tiebacks for earth retention, which the parking structure’s concrete walls are eventually poured against, Schwartz says.

The foundation features 359, 20-in.-wide drilled piers, ranging from 30 to 35 ft deep. The entire project will consume 16,000 cu yds of concrete.

Above ground, the 39-ft-tall building shifts to a structural steel frame, though it is almost completely disguised beneath a stucco exterior. “Most of the important walls are very thick even though they are hollow,” Spears says.    

The tan-colored exterior will use cementitious stucco instead of acrylic to give it a more traditional look, she says. Other distinctly Santa Fe-style details include a major central courtyard connected to the street with a zaguan, numerous portals, exposed lintels and canales, plus ample French doors, wood-framed windows and fireplaces.

The interior focal point will be a 20,000-sq-ft ballroom with an intricate modular, three-dimensional ceiling comprised of layered pieces of wood similar to coffering, Spears says.

Three kitchens will support catering for the ballroom. The building’s smaller second story features several multi-purpose meeting rooms and outdoor roof gardens for additional meeting space.

The construction team is working towards LEED silver certification. “Early on, with the governor’s directive for public buildings to meet a certain level of sustainability, the team decided to go after LEED silver,” Lucero says.

This meant they had to begin accumulating points even before the general contractor was selected, since the civic center was replacing an existing building. The Sweeney Center, a former high school gymnasium that Santa Fe had been using as its ad hoc convention center, was torn down by Albuquerque-based demolition contractor Coronado Wrecking & Salvage in early 2006 under a separate contract.

Crews were able to salvage the HVAC units, which were given to the city for re-use on other projects, Lucero says. The new structure will feature rooftop units installed by Albuquerque-based subcontractor Yearout Mechanical.

Other LEED aspects include abundant natural lighting, rainwater harvesting for irrigation of the xeric landscape, low-flow urinals and the use of sustainable materials. In addition, crews are recycling construction debris such as lumber, steel and concrete.

The team is on schedule for an October 2008 completion date, a significant milestone considering the project almost didn’t get off the ground. The first time the city put the building out for bid in June 2006, there was only one bid which came in significantly over budget, Lucero says.

An eight-week round of value engineering resulted in too severe of cuts into the scope of the building for the owner, he says. “The biggest feature that was on the table during value engineering was the parking, but if you’ve ever been to Santa Fe you know how critical parking is. It was just too critical,” Lucero says.

“The city council took the chance to re-bid rather than cutting the project down,” Valdez says. The second bid was successful and came in lower than some feared. “That was a pretty extensive effort and it ended up saving $6 million without losing any of the building.”

Key Players

Owner: City of Santa Fe
Architect: Fentress Bradburn; Spears Architects
General Contractor: Cameron-Swinerton Construction LLC
Project Manager: Hands Engineering, with Parsons-3D/I
Engineers: Martin & Martin Inc.; ME Group Inc.
Subcontractors: Coronado Wrecking & Salvage; Case Iron Works; Structural Services; Yearout Mechanical; Mosher Enterprises; Hark Drilling

Click here for next Feature Story >>