CREJ - Building Dialogue - March 2016
The new lodging property project brings a contemporary new cornerstone to Lakewood’s Belmar development. When the 135-room Hyatt House Lakewood/Denver at Belmar first opened for guests this month, the slick $22.9 million hotel filled a need for the mixed-use development in Lakewood. Located near the intersection of Alameda Avenue and Wadsworth Boulevard on the former site of the Villa Italia Mall, Belmar now includes more than 80 retailers, including Whole Foods and Target, and a 16-screen movie theater, intermingled with office space and apartments. The Hyatt House is its first lodging, and it looks like an apt match. The mindset behind the project aligned with the overarching mindset of the broader vision for Belmar, where developers have taken a forward-looking approach since Day One. When it opened in 2004, the $850 million project featured some of the first LEED-certified buildings in Colorado, and it’s since earned national accolades as a model of New Urbanism. Today, more than 2,000 people live in the 22-block redevelopment area, and another 3,000-plus work there. It’s safe to say that Belmar has exceeded expectations in its first dozen years, as it emerged as Lakewood’s new downtown. The extended-stay Hyatt House, featuring apartment-like rooms and suites with fully equipped kitchens, is similarly on the leading edge, from the high-tech amenities to the construction process itself. “Hyatt’s very concerned with the details,” says Albert Haller, project manager for general contractor Alliance Construction. “I’ve done 23 hotels for Alliance and this is the cleanest, most upbeat and most modern one I’ve done.” With a hip bar, 24-hour fitness center, and 21st century sensibility, it’s squarely aimed at a certain demographic, Haller adds. “As far as look and appearance, it’s designed for the younger business traveler,” he says. But to get to the future, Haller’s crew had to deal with challenges from the past: There were 40 remnant caissons from the site’s Villa Italia days. With plans for 60 new caissons to be drilled about 20 feet down into bedrock, Haller says he was pleased there were very few issues with overlaps for all 100 caissons. “We mapped them out and only had two conflicts, which is amazing for that many caissons.” There were also space constraints to deal with. “It was a tight site,” says Haller. “We had stores on all four sides.” Some of the spatial and underground challenges were balanced by an aggressive timeline of about nine months after groundbreaking in May 2015. The 100,000-square-foot hotel’s main floor is a concrete podium, with five steel-framed levels built on top of it, and the installation of the framing took just six weeks in summer 2015. The notably fast pace of the project was catalyzed with an assist from innovative technology: Hyatt House Belmar is the first hotel built with Prescient’s patented 3-D design system, which models the building then fabricates QR-coded steel framing components at its factories in Denver and Arvada. The Denver-based company has grown rapidly since its founding in 2012 and now has more than 200 employees at three facilities in Colorado, and plans to open facilities on the East Coast and in Texas by early 2017. Prescient’s patented structural system is suitable for multi-unit buildings 12 stories and shorter. “At six levels, we really wanted a steel building as opposed to a wood frame, but we still looked at numerous structural options for Hyatt House Belmar,” explains Doug Alexander, Continuum Partners’ project director. “Ultimately, we chose Prescient not only because they were cost-effective and competitive with traditional wood framing, but also because their local presence made coordination, manufacturing, delivery and quality control in the factory much more simple and convenient,” Alexander adds. “In addition, they were able to work with our engineer in the design through Revit modeling, and their system was faster to erect.” Haller says the system saved about a month over the time that would have been required for wood framing, and the efficiency was matched by consistency. “Everything is standardized,” he explains. “People say that a lot in the industry, but it doesn’t always come out that way.” With the Prescient and the Hyatt House Belmar, however, standardized meant standardized. “All of those rooms are so close in tolerances, it isn’t even funny,” says Haller. Prescient CEO Satyen Patel says the Hyatt House Belmar represents the first hotel for the company, after numerous apartment, senior living and student housing projects. “For us, it was more about penetrating into a new segment,” says Patel. “Hotels were the last category we wanted to crack. When a name like Hyatt came up, we were obviously very excited.” Patel touts both the speed to market and the structural toughness, and notes that both are critical for hotels. “Aggressive phasing in of the trades can shorten the duration of construction by months,” he says, citing potential savings on materials of 35 percent. “Hotels are ideally suited for our system,” he adds. They’re highly stackable.” But Patel is quick to note affordable doesn't mean cheap: “The quality of the product has to be good because hotels take a lot of abuse. Hotels have to be built to last.” Haller says he anticipates using Prescient’s system on future projects he manages for Alliance. “Hotels lend themselves to this kind of system,” he says, adding that affordable housing and other multifamily projects are likewise a good fit. And Prescient is geared up to meet rising demand from a diverse group of developers in Colorado and elsewhere. Annual capacity is increasing from about 1.2 million square feet in 2015 to 4 million square feet in 2016. “We can build 50 Hyatt House hotels at our Colorado plants in a year,” says Patel.