A New Castle
by K. Robert Wendel

In the late 1800s, Huning Castle was the elegant and ornate home of successful Albuquerque merchant Franz Huning. But after he passed, the castle changed hands several times and gradually fell into disrepair before it was razed in the 1950s.

Now, contractors and designers are building the high-end Huning Castle Apartments on Central Avenue just west of downtown and are borrowing some architectural styling and the site of the original castle.

"Architecturally, the apartments will mimic the old castle in a light way," said Rick Tavelli, project manager for Bradbury Stamm, the Albuquerque general contractor on the job. "This project is really a luxury apartment complex with a lot of upscale fixtures."

The project features turrets on the end apartments, evoking the turrets of the old Huning Castle. The exterior will feature architectural details that also echo the old home. The original castle was constructed of an adobe-like product called terrones.

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"Terrones are like adobe, but instead of being made of mud and straw, terrones are cut out of swampland and dried out," said owner Tom Keleher. "The dirt, grass and roots bind the clay and soil together."

Although the project started in August, plans for the apartment complex have been on the boards for years. Contractors are aiming for a June 1 completion date.

Originally designed by a Denver firm, project was scaled back by Albuquerque architects through a value engineering process. Designers cut a planned underground garage and reduced the architectural ornamentation to bring the project within a $4.4 million budget.

The redesign also moved the apartments from the back of the 3-acre site to the front, providing a streetscape on Central Avenue and easing the concerns of neighbors in the county club area of Albuquerque.

"The goal was to reach a certain budget, so we looked at it and decided to get rid of the parking garage and park the cars on-grade instead of underground," said architect Ron Witherspoon of Albuquerque's Dekker/Perich/Sabatini.

"It changed the character of the building and pushed it out to the street to create an urban edge, which made the design more efficient."

The 63 apartments are divided into two individual buildings. One is three stories and 56,000 -sq. -ft. The other is two stories at 14,000 sq. ft. An open breezeway connects the two.

Tavelli said the project features eight different floor plans, with six special units that are larger and plusher. Rental rates have not been determined.

To limit noise transmission between the floors, crews from Albuquerque's Koch Mechanical applied gypcrete, a mixture of gypsum binder and aggregates on the second and third floors.

"It looks and feels like concrete when you are all done with it," said Duane Koch, owner of Koch Mechanical. "It creates a two-hour fire barrier and it's lightweight. There isn't anything else you can pour this thin that won't crack up."

Each unit has a water heater that supplies a fan coil unit for hot and cool air. The project features high-end plumbing fixtures with Roman tubs. Four Seasons Engineering LTD oversaw the mechanical design, with 4H Plumbing performing the installation. Both are Albuquerque firms.

A gas-heated pool is also planned, along with 15 individual parking garages and space for 119 cars on a surface-grade parking lot. Extensive landscaping is planned with "trees and types of plants that give a feeling of lushness without the turf," said John Braly, a landscape architect with Albuquerque's Heads Up Landscaping.

The 2 x 6 wood-framed buildings sit on slab-on-grade foundations with a post-tensioned concrete slab. Since the project sits on an ancient river, the soils were extremely poor. Contractors over excavated and brought in 5 ft. of engineered fill to replace the poor soil. Because the building's slab takes an approximately 50-degree turn, post-tension crews needed to work carefully so the tension cables wouldn't bunch up at the turn and weaken the structure.

"Post-tensioning is a superior foundation system, and if it's done right it can actually be cheaper than a regular slab if you have good soils," said B.L. Jensen, owner of Engineered Foundation Systems of Albuquerque. "If you have bad soils, you don't have to have such a dramatic slab."

"But it was a tricky thing to make sure the cables didn't get grouped, because that would compromise the structural integrity at those points."

The Huning Castle Apartments project is part of larger move to redevelop the area, and developers up and down Central are building and planning to build more housing in the growing area.

"Downtown is hot," said project architect Dale Rush of Dekker/Perich/Sabatini.
"Developers think the market is going to grow, and you see more and more businesses and people moving back to downtown.

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