Building a Presence
Avondale Civic Center Centralizes City Services
By K. Robert Wendel

It's a story that's as old as Arizona: Developer sees land. Developer falls in love with land. Developer buys land. Developer builds thousands of homes, creating an influx of new residents, all of whom need city services.

Cities struggle to keep up.

That's the scenario in Maricopa County, where rapidly growing municipalities are shrugging off their agricultural past as new tile roofs replace cotton and alfalfa fields.
It's no different in Avondale, Ariz., a one-time farming community that has seen its population mushroom from just 15,000 residents in 1990 to more than 50,000 today.

To keep up with the growth, a design-build team composed of Sundt Construction and SmithGroup Architects is building a new, three-building civic center to consolidate the city's offices into one area.

The design-build method allowed contractors and designers to deliver the project in a quick manner.

"Avondale said it was very important to get the building up and going to establish a city presence immediately," said Kent Willcox, SmithGroup project manager. "Beyond the time factor, they wanted to maximize their budget and many revisions took place over a period of time. I'm not sure the design-bid-build method would have worked without a whole lot of frustration.

The new, 118,000-sq.-ft. campus features a new city hall with council chambers, administrative offices, a municipal courts building with a city clerk's office and a public safety building to support the police department. Future plans call for a proposed regional library, regional county offices and some private, class "A" office development on a pad fronting 115th Avenue.

"We are really excited about this opportunity because our offices are spread out around town, and it's really a disservice to the community having to drive and call all over town to get services," said Dave Fitzhugh, Avondale assistant city manager. "We are trying to bring all this synergy into one location and improve the level of service to the community and the customer."

The one- and two-story buildings are clustered around a central drive, with plans calling for a one-stop customer service center for developers and contractors.
Because the city still has plenty of room to grow, designers planned for future expansion to keep the project viable down the road.

"Each one of the buildings is built with an eye to the future," said Sundt Construction project manager Bill Lies. "The site itself is being set up to provide more buildings and we designated walls that will be removed and added extra rebar in the footings."

Constructed on a slab-on-grade foundation, the steel framed building is clad in EFIS with masonry accents and steel canopies.

"EIFS on a steel frame turned out to be the most economical system," said Charles Crain, SmithGroup principal in charge. "We ended up reducing the masonry because of cost and worked with more EIFS in order to meet their budget. We got the area for the functions they needed to have and we still provided them with an attractive product."