Taj Ma Garage
New Maintenance Facility in Store for Glendale
By K. Robert Wendel

Dave Harvey is a busy guy. The city of Glendale, Ariz., superintendent of equipment management has 1,400 trucks, tractors and other pieces of equipment to maintain.

For the past 20 years, his department has made due with a small, out-of-date facility that often left mechanics lying on hot asphalt in August while repairing equipment.

Now, Harvey and his staff are eyeing their new home, a 70,000-sq.-ft., state-of-the-art maintenance facility under construction by DL Withers of Phoenix. John Norbut is Wither's project manager and Pat Peters is one of two superintendents.

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"To get people out of working outside and to give us adequate space, it's pretty exciting," Harvey said. "We are ready to go as soon as they open the doors."

Those doors opened this month. In addition to the shop space, the facility has a two-story, 24,000- sq.- ft. parts warehouse; 10,000 sq. ft. of administration; two wash bays; and a tire- changing shop; and welding and auto body shops.

The project is being built under a construction manager at-risk contract, which city engineer Bill Passmore said "is a little easier on everyone than a design-bid-build project. We think we get a much better product in the end."

Work on the $16.8 million project started in August 2003 with earthwork at the 40-acre site on Grand Avenue near downtown Glendale. Design on the project started a year before, with meetings to determine the best shape and form of the project.

"One of the reasons the design process took longer is that we had to make sure we were providing the right set-ups for vendors and equipment manufacturers," said Mike Thomas, a project architect with Arrington Watkins Architects of Phoenix. "We had several meetings to discuss the scope and type of construction, so we went through several alliterations before we finally got what we wanted."

A barrel-vaulted roof, evoking the appearance of a blimp hanger, tops the tilt-up project, which uses 35-ft. tall concrete panels. The high ceilings allow mechanics to pull large hydraulic cylinders from city trash trucks and allow the use of 2-ton and 5-ton bridge cranes.
"When you start adding up all the factors they need, you end up with a very large structure and the question becomes 'how do you efficiently span that space that is both elegant and cost- effective?" said Mike Quinn, associate architect with Arrington Watkins Architects.

"We also needed to get light down into that space to try and make it a nice work environment."

Structural designers used 100-ft. long, 50-ton steel trusses on 20-ft centers to span the mechanic bays.

Designers pierced the acoustic structural steel deck roof system with ribbon skylights throughout the two major service bays to provide natural lighting. The acoustic panels deaden noise transmission.

The project sits on a slab-on-grade foundation with slab thickness at 12 -in. in the service bays and 5 -in. in the administration areas. Suntec Concrete of Phoenix was the concrete subcontractor.

The bays are divided between light- duty equipment such as trucks and cars and heavy-duty equipment, such as front-end loaders and large tractors.

The drive-through mechanic bays are grouped in units of two, sharing common equipment and computers. Cold air from evaporative roof coolers is piped down to the shop floor to help cool mechanics during the hot summer months.

Although the project is located in a busy downtown area, contractors came into work one day and found a small surprise: a red fox had made its way to the roof.

DL Withers superintendent Tom Harmeyer tried to corner the fox and summoned animal control officers, but the fox had other ideas.

"He ended up jumping off the roof right into where they were finishing some concrete," Harmeyer said. "The finishers were pretty surprised to see a fox come flying out of the sky."

The fox got away.

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