CREJ - Building Dialogue - December 2017
With the Dry Creek light-rail stop a block away, Miller Global Properties knew its Panorama Park parcel had tremendous opportunity for development. However, with the nation just starting to recover from the recession, large corporate users were still hesitant to invest in ground-up office expansion. Miller Global initially hired The Weitz Co. to provide site development and construction for a six-story, 223,500-gross-square-foot spec office (core and shell) building with a two-level, 160,000-sf, 500-car parking structure. Having completed 16 projects together, the firms have a 20-year history of developing and constructing projects throughout the Denver metro area. Approximately six months into the development process, a full-building tenant was identified, which altered the design and changed the project into a build-to-suit. The original design of the building was structural steel. During the preconstruction phase, Weitz proposed changing the structure to precast concrete, resulting in a cost savings of approximately $2 million and creating a shortened schedule. This build-to-suit office building is the newest addition to the Arrow Electronics campus in Centennial. With 2016 sales of $23.8 billion, Arrow guides innovation forward for over 125,000 of the world’s leading manufacturers of technology used in homes, business and daily life. Through a network of more than 465 locations serving over 90 countries, Arrow brings electronics and enterprise computing solutions to industrial and commercial markets, and specializes in redeploying, remarketing and recycling technology equipment. Arrow’s culture is very collaborative. Therefore, the third through eighth floors are built on raised-access flooring and have collaborative workspaces, neighborhood cafés and centralized meeting areas. In addition, the eighth floor features an open ceiling to the deck. The second floor – the “amenity level” – includes a full-service kitchen, dining facilities, fitness center, large training and conferencing facility. This eight-story, 260,000-sf Class A office building includes one level of below-grade parking and an attached, five-level, 390,000-sf parking structure for 1,216 cars. During the construction, Weitz was tasked with finding a cost-effective and constructible solution for the 35-foot-tall foundation wall on the north side of the parking structure. The challenge stemmed from tight site logistics necessitating a shoring system of soil nails and shotcrete to retain the soil along the property line parallel to Dry Creek Road. The 250-foot-long foundation wall for the parking structure had to be installed only 4 inches from the shoring wall, so space and options were limited. The optimal solution was to combine the shoring system with the foundation wall design. By making the shoring system permanent and designed to carry all the soil loads, Weitz was able to build the foundation wall out of precast concrete. Precast concrete panels were made 35 feet tall, eliminating any horizontal joints. The combination of these components provided a much more cost-effective, easily constructible and time saving solution. Weitz performed the tenant build-out simultaneously with the building construction and coordinated the extensive communication between the construction management team, interior designers from OZ Architecture, subcontractors and tenant vendors to ensure the building would still turnover on schedule per the request of the owner and its eager tenant, Arrow Electronics.