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March 4-March 17, 2015 — COLORADO REAL ESTATE JOURNAL — Page 25
Construction, Design & Engineering News
GH Phipps Construction Cos.
celebrated the topping out of the
Center for Character and Leader-
ship Development on the U.S. Air
Force Academy campus in Colo-
rado Springs.
The topping out entailed low-
ering in place the final truss in a
canted stack that forms a 105-foot
tall skylight atop the building; the
final element supports the oculus
at the top of the skylight, which is
trained on Polaris, the North Star.
The skylight not only is designed
to reference the form of an air-
plane’s tail, but also it emphasizes
the importance of cadets being true
to themselves and adhering to the
academy’s Honor Code. Up to 20
levels of scaffolding support the
skylight during its construction,
forming an angledmatrix of metal.
The project marks the return
of architects Skidmore, Owings
& Merrill LLP to a campus that
features several original and key
buildings by the firm. The CCLD
gives the academy a central home
for a program founded in 1993 as
the focal point of the academy’s
commitment to developing leaders
for whom integrity is woven into
all aspects of life, notedGHPhipps.
GHPhipps isworkingwith inter-
national federal contractor ECC to
provide concrete services and field
supervision for the 46,000-square-
foot CCLD, which is going up on
a tight site in the heart of the Cadet
Area.s
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The Center for Character and Leadership Development features a 105-foot tall skylight atop the building.
GH Phipps Construction Cos.
Up to 20 levels of scaffolding support the skylight during its construction.
Hyder Construction broke
ground on the second phase
of FirstBank’s Lakewood
headquarters expansion, a
126,000-square-foot, Class A
office addition.
Project highlights include a
top-of-the-line boardroom, fit-
ness center, rooftop amenity
deck and large courtyard. The
lobby entrance will be com-
pletely new, featuring extensive
millwork.
The addition is a steel struc-
ture with a unitized curtain
wall and brick façade. The proj-
ect is targeting LEED Gold and
utilizes state-of-the-art mechan-
ical, electrical and lighting
equipment, according to Hyder.
The first phase of the expan-
sion was a 600-stall precast con-
crete parking garage behind the
office, completed in late Decem-
ber. The tight site constraints
allowed for only limited mate-
rial storage; the dirt stockpile
had to be contained within the
footprint of the project and
moved several times, the firm
noted. The open, fourth-level
parking deck now offers spec-
tacular 360 degree views of the
mountains, Front Range and
downtown Denver. For both
phases the architect is RNL and
the owner’s representative is
AMAConstruction.
The new addition will tie
into the existing structure. The
facility operates 24/7 so the
complicated tie-ins need to be
completed seamlessly to avoid
interruption, added Hyder.
Once the project is completed,
FirstBank will have more than
doubled its space, allowing the
firm to consolidate many of its
operations to one central hub,
completewith newamenities.s
The 126,000-square-foot addition is a steel structure with a unitized
curtain wall and brick façade.
The topping out
entailed lowering in
place the final truss in a
canted stack that forms
a 105-foot tall skylight
atop the building