The concrete skeleton of the new Sheraton Hotel in downtown Phoenix has passed the halfway point on its climb to its 31-story destination.
When completed in September 2008, the $230-million tower will be the tallest hotel in Arizona. The building will redefine the Phoenix skyline. And, for Phoenix city officials, it will be all about chickens and eggs.
Every city in the United States wants a vibrant downtown area, a place where residents flock in the evening for dining and recreation. Large cities, including Phoenix, want their downtowns to be 24/7 hotspots where tourists and locals come to play long after the office buildings have emptied for the day.
Making that happen has never been easy, especially in sprawling Western cities where the majority of the people who work downtown often live 20 to 30 miles away. Nightlife gravitates away from the city core. In Phoenix, it gravitated years ago to Scottsdale, Tempe and a dozen or so shopping malls where residents can drive a few miles and park free.
How do you change that? How do you make people want to make the long trip from the suburbs to the city for a night out on the town? In Phoenix, part of the solution is already in place. Chase Field and US Airways Center sit side-by-side downtown. Both venues draw 20,000 or more locals to downtown nearly 100 times a year. Symphony Hall, Herberger Theatre, the Orpheum and the Dodge Theatre consistently draw hundreds to cultural events downtown.
It hasn’t been enough. Some puzzle pieces are still missing, but that all could change in 2008, and Phoenix city officials expect the new Sheraton Hotel to play an important role. "The last few months of 2008 are looking like a perfect storm for downtown," says Jerry Harper, project manager for the city of Phoenix. Late 2008 will see the nearly simultaneous completion of six massive projects:
Light rail, providing much easier access to downtown from the East Valley and the northern part of the city.
New North Building and West Building (completed) at the convention center to triple the space available there.
The Summit at Copper Square, with well over 100 new condominium units in a 22-story tower just south of US Airways Center.
44 Monroe, with 202 new condominium units in a 34-story tower on Monroe and 1st Avenue.
Phase 1 of Arizona State University’s downtown campus, with the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and housing for 12,000 students in two 14-story towers at Taylor and 2nd Street.
The new Sheraton Hotel.
The hotel’s ownership and financing are unusual. The land belongs to the city of Phoenix and construction is being financed publicly through city revenue bonds. Jerry Harper explains how and why the city is involved: "When you triple the size of a convention center, you triple the number of potential delegates, and they need a place to stay. The publicly financed model for a hotel works a lot better than privately financed. The city had purchased the property, and to protect the general fund and the city’s liability that’s associated when you a construct a full-service hotel, we formed the Downtown Phoenix Hotel Corp.
"It acts independently of the city. The city of Phoenix owns the land, and the Downtown Phoenix Hotel Corp. is leasing the land from the city. We sold revenue bonds to finance the construction of the hotel. When the hotel is complete in October 2008, it will be operated by Starwood under the Sheraton flag."
Taxpayers approved a specific amount for the hotel, so staying within the budget is an absolute necessity on the project. That meant the designers, the builders and Starwood all had to be completely involved in the project from the beginning.
The Downtown Phoenix Hotel Corp. and program manager TynanGroup Inc. allowed architects and builders from all over the country to compete for the project. Arquitectonica, headquartered in Miami, earned the job as lead architect and is partnering with the Arizona office of RSP Architects on the project. Arquitectonica brings an impressive portfolio that includes the Hilton Americas Hotel in Houston, the Westin New York at Times Square and dozens of other signature structures around the world.
Framingham, Mass.-based Perini Building Co.’s Phoenix office secured the role of construction manager. Perini is the largest builder in the Southwest, with a number of major projects under way in Arizona and Nevada. Steve Field, Perini’s senior project manager for the hotel, says, "The city took proposals for fees and management of the project, and we were awarded the project in the schematic phase and assisted the city and the design team during that phase to help ensure the project was designed to stay within budget."
The pre-construction phase included a tour of Arquitectonica’s recently completed Hilton Americas Hotel in Houston. Meetings during the phase included representatives from the Sheraton who made certain the hotel was designed to their standards. "We worked with the whole team from the beginning," says Fields. "That included mechanical, electrical, plumbing, shoring, and exterior subcontractors. We did as much as we could to lock in prices, and we are on budget. There’ve been minor items like copper escalation, but nothing like what I’ve heard on other projects."
The design delivered by Arquitectonica/RSP will be a spectacular addition to the Phoenix skyline. "We have a limited budget," says Jerry Harper, "but we wanted the hotel to reflect Arizona in some way. We wanted it to stand out. The roof was designed to reflect Camelback Mountain, one of the Valley’s most prominent landmarks. On the south of the tower, the parapet walls come up on an angle to give that curve. In the ballroom area, there’s not just a curve on the roof, there are also curves running back from the street."
Andrea Norman of RSP Architects adds, "We were very careful to be sure everything is designed for pedestrians in keeping with the city’s desire to create an urban area where people can walk and enjoy. There will be some nice ways to enter the property."
Staying within budget is only one of the challenges for Perini. The city block where the hotel is going up already had a pair of structures, and the new hotel is wedged in between them with some very tight clearances. The Arizona Republic newspaper has its main building on the southwest corner of the block and its parking garage on the north between 2nd and 3rd streets. The southeast corner of the block will be four stories, with a restaurant and shops at street level, a ballroom above and a swimming pool area on the roof.
The 31-story tower will be in the middle of the block, and there are more ballrooms and meeting areas in another four-story section, referred to as the Podium, on the north and south sides of the tower. Hotel rooms begin on the tower’s fifth story. There are two levels of parking beneath the tower and podium. That would not normally be enough parking for a hotel this size, according to Jerry Harper, but since this is a convention facility, it’s expected that many guests will not need parking.
Excavating and building in such a restricted space requires lots of careful planning. "It’s always a challenge building downtown," says Perini’s Steve Field. "We’re basically constructing this property from property line to property line, and we are good neighbors with the Arizona Republic — very close neighbors. We’re building right up to 20 feet to 25 feet from their buildings.
"We worked with them very closely on the shoring package. We’ve also taken precautionary measures with monitoring devices to keep track of how our construction interacts with their buildings."
A pair of tower cranes takes care of much of the material handling on-site. That means a large portion of the material moves directly from delivery vehicles on the street to where it’s needed in the building. To minimize traffic delays and street closure problems, Perini has arranged for many materials to be delivered at night, and daytime deliveries are carefully scheduled to get trucks unloaded and on their way as efficiently as possible. "We have six crane operators, so we can run the tower cranes 24 hours a day," says Fields. "Most days they run from 1:00 in the morning until 10:00 at night during the week."
The actual structure of the building is pretty straightforward, according to Fields. "We have a 31-story tower that’s cast-in-place concrete with post-tensioned slabs sitting on a mat foundation. The whole podium is structural steel, supplied by Schuff Steel, with fireproofing and slab-on-metal deck and metal-studded interior. The foundation is impressive. We completed a continuous 12-hour pour that amounted to 7,800 yards. That was in the middle of August last year."
When complete, the total project will use more than 50,000 cubic yards of concrete 5,100 tons of structural steel and 643 tons of miscellaneous steel.
One unique aspect of the construction will likely become very common in the near future, according to Field and Harper. "If we’d built this 10 years ago," says Field, "we probably wouldn’t have used the soil nailing system that was used on this project. The city gave us a requirement that soil nails not protrude into the upper 8 feet in the street. With the assistance of our shoring contractor, Buesing Corp., we came up with a system where we constructed a cantilevered wall the first 8 feet, and then installed soil nails below the cantilevered wall. This kept all the soil nails below the utilities."
Harper says it was quickly becoming obvious that the location of soil nails throughout the city needed to be documented — especially those in the likely path of future street and utility excavation. "The Street Department has put a system in place to track where soil nails are being used," he notes. "We don’t want surprises down the line, so we realized we need to regulate this better."
This spring, Perini was building a floor a week and closing in on an important milestone. Field explained, "When we get to the 14th floor with the exterior skin, we’re going to seal off that floor, and begin installing drywall and finishing the rooms on the levels below. That’s scheduled to start in May. Before we get to the top, we will have rooms finishing nearly halfway up the tower."
In April, Perini and its subcontractors had just over 400 employees working on the project. Field estimated that number would top out at 650. Groundbreaking for the project was in March of 2006, and Perini’s completion date is Sept. 15, 2008. To meet that deadline, Field says his crews are pouring concrete six days a week. "The tower slab is broken into three pours, and we pour slabs on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. In between, we’re pouring columns and walls. We’ll pour a slab at midnight, and before the day’s over, we’re completing layout for column pours on the next day."
Perini plans to turn the building over to Sheraton’s people in September next year, and the hotel opening is set for October. The new hotel, the two new condominium towers and 12,000 college students in the new ASU residential tower will dramatically increase the number of people in downtown Phoenix after dark. Enticing them to get outside and walk around is the next step. "The corner of 3rd Street and Van Buren," says Jerry Harper, "that’s where the restaurant will be located. A lot of the push for new development of downtown revolves around creating a 24/7 activity area around that corner."
It just might work.
By Terry Ertter
