Car Rental Reborn

Facility Gives Airport Passengers One-Stop Renting

Sky Harbor Airport is consolidating all car rental companies into one massive building with a 23-acre footprint, the largest building size in Arizona. The 2.2 million-sq.-ft. building is scheduled to open winter of 2005.

Finishing touches are being applied to the largest buildings in Arizona, west of Sky Harbor International Airport.

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The new Consolidated Rental Car Center occupies a 141-acre site near the nation's fifth-busiest airport, and is comprised of a 2.2 million-sq.-ft. three level garage and a 160,000-sq.-ft. customer service center on the fourth floor. Surrounding the main building are numerous individual parking lots and small service buildings, where cars will be taken for maintenance, washing, and additional storage.

The footprint of the main building covers 23 acres, making it the largest building in the state according to construction manager at risk Austin/Layton, a partnership between Austin Commercial and Layton Building Companies.

Austin Commercial is no stranger to airport construction, having just completed the $1 billion Dallas-Fort Worth Airport and being awarded the Atlanta consolidated rental car facility. "Austin knows how to build large, fast track projects," said Jim Lauer, project manager for Austin Commercial. "We were looking for a local company to partner with in order to grow our business in the Southwest, so we partnered with Layton on this project."

The center will consolidate all 12 car rental companies at Sky Harbor under one roof, with a common bus system shuttling passengers between their respective terminals and rental car agencies.

The facility was designed to accommodate a future automated people mover, which will eventually connect the rental car center to both the airport and the future Phoenix light rail system.

"The garage is uniquely designed to accommodate rental and return of vehicles, with 61-foot square bays," said Jim Lauer, project manager for Austin Commercial. "Rental car companies don't like a lot of columns getting in the way."

Arizona Building Systems installed the structural steel for the garage's roof system, with Kovach, Inc. installing the panels. "The roof is comprised of single sheet .040 aluminum standing seam panels, roll formed on site in continuous lengths and mechanically seamed," said Eric Kovach, principal and vice president of Kovach, Inc. "In total we used 700,000 sq. ft of panels. The color is a low-gloss dove grey, to reduce glare to pilots."

"The fourth floor customer service center is really a new structure," said Lauer. "It is a crescent-shaped building placed on top of the square garage. None of the columns on the fourth floor line up with any of the garage's columns on the floors beneath. They are sitting on cast-in-place concrete girders."

The project utilized 130,000 cu. yds. of concrete and 10,000 tons of rebar. Much of the exterior pre-cast concrete was tinted green, which will keep the color consistent throughout the proposed 50-year lifespan of the building.

Height limitations due to the proximity of the airport provided many challenges. "Crane height was limited to a maximum 120-foot," said Lauer. "In addition, the crescent-shaped customer service building was originally designed to sit on-grade, but it was moved to the top of the garage. This caused changes in how we sequenced the building. Normally we would have started pouring concrete from one end to the other. But because of the fourth-floor structural changes, we had to pour the first four center quadrants first."

The structure sits an average of eight feet below grade. C.S. & W. Contractors, Phoenix, Ariz. performed all of the mass grading for the rental car center. "We crushed in place 120,000 tons of native material into aggregate base at the site," said Robert Meyers, vice president of C.S. & W. Contractors. "We also crushed 50,000 tons of existing asphalt and concrete, from a former neighborhood that once was located there, and recycled it."

Since the building has so many tenants, the construction team was faced with many challenges. "There is a separate ramp for each tenant, and two for the shuttle buses" said Lauer. "In total there are 12 cast-in-place ramps, which are basically constructed just like bridges. It is very unique for a commercial construction site to have so many bridge-building elements."

Another challenge was getting the companies to agree on the overall design scheme. "Try getting two people to decide on a color, let alone 70," said Wesley Wong, director of aviation for HKS. "There's no question that trying to obtain consensus was the biggest challenge." Texas-based HKS partnered with lead designer TransSystems and Dick & Fritsche, both of Phoenix, Ariz.

The interior design uses a wide variety of materials, including terrazzo tile, Venetian plaster, ceramic tile and slate. "The color palette echoes that of a riparian area occurring naturally in the desert, from the greens and golds of the vegetation to the clay and brown tones of the rocks and earth," said Staci Seyer, principal and director of interior design at Dick & Fritsche. "The biggest challenge was balancing the need for a neutral enough palette so we didn't overshadow the design of the rental agencies, while giving the space enough design flair to indicate to the visitor that they have arrived in the Valley of the Sun."

The sun itself plays a role in the design. "Open and concealed skylights are used extensively in the design," said Seyer. "Artwork made from diachronic glass will hang under the open skylights, refracting and transmitting a variety of complimentary colors."

The ceiling drops low in many places with floating soffits clad in drywall providing many layered shadows. "We designed the low soffits to give the visitor an intimate feeling when they first walk into the space," said Seyer. "But as they walk through the building a sudden vertical space opens up underneath a 500-ft. long skylight, to give the feeling of coming upon an Anasazi cliff dwelling in the desert."

Landscaping carries the theme to the exterior. Large 20-ft. high mounds form an undulating desert landscape, studded with saguaros and other desert plants.

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