A Statement in Steel
By K. Robert Wendel

Like the Nautilus submarine from Jules Verne's classic 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Tucson's new Patrick Hardesty Midtown Multiservice Center is a unique creation, ominous yet inviting.

Clad in bare 3/16-in. plate steel, the new home for the Tucson Police Department's midtown division rises like a submarine from a front entrance wash.

"The big idea was to create something that wasn't necessarily a building, but an abstraction of a land form," said architect John Kane, a principal at Tempe-based Architekton, the project designer. "The neighbors really wanted a park there and they didn't want a big commercial building, so the idea was to do a building that wasn't a blatant rectangular block with windows."

The $10.2 million project is the first design competition for the city of Tucson, with Architekton teaming with GLHN Architects and Engineers of Tucson and Concord Construction Co., also of Tucson. The project is named after Tucson policeman Patrick Hardesty, who was killed in the line of duty this past summer.

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"This job is really a conglomeration of building systems," said Steve Mitchell of Concord.

The 48,000-sq.-ft. building is anything but a rectangular block. Curved and radius steel dominate its design, with the untreated steel shell gradually developing a patina as it rusts. Tube steel ribs 4- ft. on center jut from the building's load-bearing masonry walls to support the plate steel sheets.

The sheets are 20- ft. long and 4- ft. wide and weighed 600 lbs. each. A cantilevered meeting room juts out over the wash, supported by a 17-ft.-tall, 130-ft.-long steel truss.

"Anytime you mix concrete block and steel, they all expand and contract a little differently and that effect is exponential in Arizona," said Bill Boris, owner of Tucson-based JB Steel LLC. "The plates are screwed and attached in such a way that allows the expansion and contraction of the steel.

"When you look at a joint in the morning, there's about a 1/8-in. gap, and by the middle of the afternoon, it is much larger."

Because there are few exterior windows, designers relied on 44 skylights scattered throughout the project's office spaces and hallways. The windows that are used in the project are level 4 ballistic windows, which are able to stop most small arms fire.

In addition to the police functions, which include four holding cells and secure parking, there is room for part of the city's water and finance departments. People can also purchase bus passes and get their children fingerprinted.

The project sits on the edge of Tucson's Reid Park, and its location at 22nd Street and Alvernon Road created some interesting civil engineering issues because the intersection floods during heavy rainstorms.

An existing wash was rerouted to the front of the property, incorporating the wash into the project's design. Six-in.-thick shotcrete stabilizes the walls of the wash, which must be able to handle a 100-year flood event.

Crews from the Tucson office of Dar Hill Corp. excavated 15,000 cu. yds. of earth to reroute the wash.

"It was important to the city and the police department to get the building out of the flood plain by moving the wash to the eastern edge of the property," said David Grigsby of GLHN Architects and Engineers, the Tucson architect of record on the project. "That allowed us to use the wash for security. The wash was a very complex part of getting the building done and it is very much a form giver to the project."

The building also sits near one of the most heavily used recreational trails in Tucson, and city officials didn't want to lose the path. Designers rerouted the path along the back of the new multi service center.

"We wanted something that would be very creative and compliment the park and deal with the flood plain issue, and I think this project does that," said Dodie Frederickson, a project manager for the city of Tucson. "Architecturally, this building is a strong statement."