Fabulous at 5th and Wilmot
By K. Robert Wendel

Tucson-based Lloyd Construction Co.'s latest project is a little like a skeet shoot. The building team is literally trying to hit a moving target.

The "target" is the latest technology in the rapidly evolving field of medical imaging. Technology - and the drawings - have changed since work started in January on a pair of new office buildings.

The two, new office buildings are vastly different. One, a two-story, 42,000-sq.-ft. office building, functions as a medical imaging firm. The other, a two-story, 62,000-sq.-ft. building, will be the new home of First Magnus Financial Corp., a national mortgage broker.

"It's a challenging project," said Bill Lloyd, vice president of Lloyd Construction. "There are so many different users, owners and designs that we are just trying to keep the project moving forward."

advertisement

The project on the high-profile corner of Fifth 5th and Wilmot in Tucson is being constructed under a $14 million construction-manager-at-risk contract. Raul Reyes, vice president and principal architect at Town West Design and Development, designed the project.

"We've had a lot of changes in the medical building," said Shorty Pemberton, a project supervisor with Lloyd Construction. "We started out with machines from Siemens, but they changed to Toshiba and they could change the equipment once again."

The changes create a variety of problems for both contractors and designers, who must supply the correct amount of power, shielding and floor loading to make a particular imaging unit function correctly- and safely.

The two-story medical office building will eventually be a state-of-the-art imaging center with magnetic resonance imaging, cathode tube scanning and PET scans, as well as radiology and traditional X-ray equipment.

"Integrating all the systems is very complicated," said electrical engineer Jerry McGetrick of Tucson-based McGetrick and Associates. "You wouldn't want something to go wrong, such as having something incorrectly grounded, because there are people in those machines."

All of the heat generated by the imaging machines must be remediated, resulting in a beefy mechanical design to keep the machines running cool. Dedicated chiller units cool all of the >> equipment, and a separate condensing unit, along with a back-up generator, provides redundancy in case of a power failure.

"We also had to run an exhaust outside because the machines are cooled with nitrogen, and every once in a while you have to blow off the nitrogen in a safety release," said mechanical engineer Stan Adams of Tucson-based Adams and Associates Inc.

A central energy management and control system monitors all of the equipment and optimizes the starting of machines to minimize power consumption.

The Tucson firms Sun Mechanical worked on the plumbing, HVAC and other mechanical systems, while Commonwealth Electric Co. of the Midwest wired the two buildings.

"There's a lot of hospital-grade electrical work required in the treatment rooms, so there's a lot of special systems involved," said Tim Beatty of Commonwealth Electric Co.

The new office for First Magnus is less complicated, but there still were obstacles in the class A building.

Visitors will be greeted by a two-story glass entry way punctuated with a high-end water feature. Finishes throughout the project are also high end, with stainless steel hardware, granite accents, anigre wood paneling and copper roof caps.

"They had a very large entry canopy on the Magnus building so that was a challenge," said Brent Woods, a structural engineer with the Tucson office of Caruso Turley Scott.

Landscapers salvaged 80 palms trees, many of them in excess of 50- ft. high, from the site before the previous structure was demolished. The palms were put in storage and will be replaced during the final landscaping.

"The landscaping is designed to make a statement on that corner because it is such a prominent corner in Tucson," said landscape architect John Hucko, a principal with Tucson's Acacia Group.

May is the project's expected completion date.