Sol of a City

Town Center Anchors Mesa del Sol with Innovative Design

By Neal Singer

Designed by an internationally-renowned architect, Mesa del Sol’s town center will anchor the planned 18 million-sq-ft commercial and residential master-planned community.

A massive glass wall will serve as a large projection screen as part of the design of Mesa del Sol’s Town Center. Images courtesy Forest City Covington NM LLC.

The $10 million Mesa del Sol town center going up on a huge chunk of land south of Albuquerque will have no trouble drawing people to it.

The 78,000-sq-ft mixed-use project being developed by Forest City Covington NM LLC for business and residential uses was designed by award-winning architect Antoine Predock. It will house a visitor center, business office space and retail businesses. Ground was broken on the project in December with a target date for occupancy in late second quarter 2008.

There also is a huge glass wall that will double as a giant movie screen, which project executive architect Jon Anderson of Albuquerque-based Jon Anderson Architect LLC calls a signboard for the development.

Clips of movies developed by Sony (another tenant of Mesa del Sol), birds-eye images of the development or other visuals will be projected on a low-E ceramic frit pattern imposed upon an exterior glass wall 60 ft tall and 280 ft wide, arcing in a 360-ft radius. Placed on the inside of the outside face of the double-wall glass, the frit lowers light transmission by 60%, Anderson says.

The package limits heat gain in summer and heat loss in winter and is part of the project’s application for a LEED silver certification.

The images will be visible from a two-acre urban park across the street.

Site superintendent Carson Templeton of Albuquerque-based general contractor Klinger Constructors LLC says the biggest obstacle on the job is to “safely build the huge glass wall that is going to be a movie screen. But that wall is part of the beauty of the building.”

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Sixteen screens placed on 300 to 400 pieces of glass, some cantilevered over the top and sides, must come together for the curtain-wall application.

“It’ll take a lot of coordination,” says Tony Baca of Albuquerque-based Southwest Glass and Glazing Inc. “But it doesn’t intimidate us.”

Baca sent the graphic file, designed by Predock, to Northwestern Industries in Seattle, which will send the imaged glass back to New Mexico by flatbed truck.

Baca has experience in unusual designs. His 30-year-old company has done graduated silk screens on an outside wall in Colorado for Predock. It also made suggestions that lowered the cost for the 80-ft-high glass wall of Albuquerque’s Balloon Museum.

In general, says Baca, “They design it and we tell them how to make it work for the amount of money they’ve got.”

But it’s more than glass that makes Mesa del Sol unique.

Steve Reinhardt, general manager and president of New Mexico Metal Systems LLC, describes what he calls “a monumental staircase” from the lobby to a second-floor breezeway.

The guard rail will consist of .5-in.-thick solid steel plate, painted ox-blood red. The 467-ton staircase will be cantilevered with no support for its landing.

“The engineers have it figured out, but I just hope it works,” Reinhardt says. “It’s going to be a spectacular building.”

As part of the project team’s drive for LEED silver certification, metal, plastic and wood trash are separated for recycling. Sustainability is a prominent feature of the entire Mesa Del Sol master plan. Advent Solar, the first project completed within Mesa Del Sol, recently received LEED certification. At full build-out over the next 35 to 50 years, Mesa del Sol will include 18 million sq ft of commercial space and 37,500 residential units.

Ray Smith, co-president of Klinger, says, “All my life I’ve heard of developers going to build a city from scratch and it ends up a bunch of houses and a strip mall. This project is different.”

Mesa del Sol’s town center will have a steel frame and composite deck floor, with a 9-ft, 6-in. finished ceiling height for office users and 16-ft height for retailers.

Key Players

Developer: Forest City Covington NM LLC
Design Architect: Antoine Predock AIA
Architect-of-Record: Jon Anderson Architect LLC
General Contractor: Klinger Constructors
Engineers: KL&A Inc.; Paradigm Engineering
Subcontractors: Southwest Glass and Glazing Inc.; New Mexico Metal Systems LLC; Hanna Plumbing & Heating Co.; Mechanical Concepts; Chaparral Electric; Vulcan Materials

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