Tempe’s Newest Gateway

Offices Add Touch of Green Near Downtown Light Rail Station

Developed by Opus West Corp. and US Airways, the eight-story Tempe Gateway is nearing completion along Tempe’s Mill Avenue.

By David M. Brown

The $49 million Tempe Gateway, scheduled for completion in June, is a sustainably designed mixed-use project on 3.5 acres at 222 S. Mill Ave. in Tempe.

Tempe Gateway is strategically located directly adjacent to a new light rail station in downtown Tempe. (Photos courtesy Opus West Corp.)

The development is a joint venture of Phoenix-based Opus West Corp., serving in a design-build capacity, and Tempe-based US Airways. It includes a 101-ft-high, post-tensioned, poured-in-place-concrete tower and a precast, brick-veneered, 1,107-vehicle parking garage with five levels above grade and one below.

The 25,000-sq-ft grade level of the eight-story tower offers dining and retail space and direct access to the METRO Light Rail station at Third Street and Mill. There is 35,500 sq ft of contemporary loft office space on the second floor and 205,200 sq ft of class A office space on the remaining floors.

As its part of the agreement, US Airways contributed the land, which is contiguous to its nine-story corporate headquarters and four-level parking structure.

Opus West Construction Corp., the general contractor, began work in March 2008. Opus Architects & Engineers and Tempe-based DAVIS are sharing architectural responsibilities. DAVIS provided initial and continuing consultation and conceptual designs, with Opus providing production drawings and construction administration.

Opus West is targeting Green Globes certification. The program originated in Canada and was brought to the U.S. by the Green Building Initiative, a non-profit organization with the mission to accelerate the adoption of green building practices.

“Green Globes is similar to the LEED system in the categories,” says Theresa Schultz, director of construction for Opus.  “But the Green Globes point system weights the steps taken based on the magnitude and impact on the environment and energy efficiency.”    

Schultz says that early in construction the Opus/DAVIS team had to work around the site’s 20-ft-wide north-south fiber-optic easement and relocate existing utilities.

“We had to work with APS, the city of Tempe and adjacent building owners to move utilities,” she adds. The job meant finding new locations for the utilities, ensuring no downtime for any business during the relocations and phasing the work for the city and utility companies to avoid delays or power outages.

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The building’s design needed to fit in with the existing US Airways building and parking garage while embracing the elements of the vibrant downtown Mill Avenue area, says Eric Zobrist, president of DAVIS. “We discussed with Opus a number of scenarios, and the concept we came up with are buildings clearly of the same family but not identical,” he adds.

Hence, brick details on the west side of the tower and the garage link with the existing structures, and some fenestration of windows and doors also enhance the connections. The curtain wall of the Tempe Gateway is radiused, recalling the roofline of the headquarters building and other Tempe Town Lake structures.

In addition, the new garage integrates with the existing one, while offering new configurations of pedestrian and vehicular egress and ingress.

Through Tempe’s design/review meetings, the city emphasized a balance between the city’s historic brick structures to the south and the modern buildings sitting to the north against the lake. As a result, Zobrist notes, the Tempe Gateway tower incorporates elements such as aluminum as well as a glazed circular turret that provides “an iconic contemporary look to the corner.”

The project’s numerous sustainable features include a low water cooling tower system, high-efficiency air-handling units, high-reflectance roofing and low-flow plumbing fixtures.

 “One of the biggest challenges was to ensure interaction with Mill Avenue and the light-rail stop,” Zobrist says. One of the ways this was done was by scrapping the original master plan, which called for an east-west alignment along Third Street, and putting the new buildings on a north-south axis with Mill Avenue while integrating them with the overheight ground-level shops.

“Because the station is on our property edge, we wanted to embrace the light rail for several reasons,” Schultz adds. “We wanted to encourage passengers to go to our retailers on the first floor; we wanted to manage the circulation of passengers on and off the rail and inevitably onto our site; and we wanted to ensure that the people spaces in our project worked with the station, too.”

This orientation provides for a paseo between the tower and parking structure, which allows pedestrian circulation into the campus and incorporates stormwater control areas and low-water usage landscaping. Further strengthening the rail/pedestrian linkage will be walkways, planters and stepped areas from the station to the property.

Elements such as the paseo and proximity to light rail helped in the Green Globes certification, Schultz says. Others include low-water-use plumbing fixtures, extensive natural lighting, a low water- and chemical-use cooling tower system, recycling of construction waste, high-efficiency air-handling units, high-reflectance roofing materials and 100% covered parking.

Key Players:

Developers: Opus West Corp.; US Airways
Architects: Opus Architects & Engineers; DAVIS
General Contractor: Opus West Construction Corp.
Engineers: Kraemer Engineering; DEI Professional Svcs.; Opus Architects & Engineers
Subcontractors: HACI; W.J. Maloney Plumbing Co.; Tpac; Buesing Corp.; Allstate Energy

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