Savoring Sandia
By K. Robert Wendel

The Sandia Pueblo Casino in northern Albuquerque is hoping to cash in on even more gamblers and visitors with the construction of a new 280-room hotel, 38,000-sq.-ft. convention center, golf course and clubhouse.

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If the project is successful, plans call for another 220 rooms to be added in the future.

The Albuquerque office of McCarthy Building Cos. picked up the project with Phoenix-based 3D International acting as the owner representative. The project is east of Interstate 25 on Tramway Boulevard.

Work on the seven-story building started in April 2004 with sitework and utilities. Contractors are aiming for a November completion on the $80 million project.

The Sandia Pueblo planned the 400,000-sq.-ft. project several years ago, but everything was delayed after Sept. 11.

"It's a fast-track, but we have most of the same subcontractors that we did on the casino," said McCarthy project director Jim Brandt. "It's not a design-build, but we are building it as fast as a design-build project."

The project employs a variety of building systems. On the hotel portion, designers chose cast-in-place concrete with 9-in. post-tensioned concrete floors. McCarthy placed 19,000 cu. yds. of concrete and 2,500 tons of rebar.

The hotel tower features six cable elevators and one hydraulic elevator, along with two restaurants and retail space. One of the restaurants is planned on the tower's seventh floor and will offer sweeping views.

For the convention center, steel was the best choice to create large bays.

Designers used 150-ft.-long by 120-ft.-long steel trusses to create the convention hall bays. The steel was supplied by AMFAB Steel and erected by Hughes Erectors, both of Albuquerque.

The convention center also features prefunction areas.

Because of poor soils, both the convention center and hotel sit on more than 70 piers, 3 to 6 ft. in diameter and drilled down 80 ft.

One of the main charges for the designers and builders was preserving the views of the Sandia Mountains, which are sacred to the tribe.

"We had to maintain the views, so that left us with only one option and that was to split the hotel into two wings," said McCarthy senior project manager Bill Schuttler. "We used some pretty big transfer beams in the lobby so you can still see the mountains from the main lobby."

The transfer beams eliminated one row of columns to open up the views. The lobby is encased in a 40-ft.-tall curtain-wall system to provide spectacular views.

Because the tribe wanted a consistent connection and experience between the hotel and casino, the finishes >> throughout the new buildings are being designed to match. The pueblo-themed hotel and convention center features deeply punched windows and a tan EFIS system.

"We are taking a lot of the same architectural vocabulary from the casino, but the hotel incorporates a lot more stone finishes," said Mike Stewart, vice president of architecture for Las Vegas-based architects Marnell Corrao Associates.

Albuquerque's Beaty Construction plans to place 700 tons of stone strip veneer along with 30,000 concrete masonry units in interior areas. The hotel rooms are all steel-stud framing.

Designers also had to match up mechanical systems. Three new boilers, a chiller and a new cooling tower are on the second floor to match up with the casino's interior mezzanine mechanical system. There are also 11 air handler units. Albuquerque firms Miller Bonded acted as the mechanical contractor and Prime Electric performed the electrical work.

"We wanted to keep as much of the mechanical systems off the roof as we could so people aren't looking at a bunch of mechanical units," Stewart said.

"We needed to get the guest rooms up high enough to preserve the views out of the existing casino, so we put the first floor of rooms 45 ft. above the casino floor."

A championship, 18-hole golf course is expected to open in June, along with a 14,000-sq.-ft. golf clubhouse. Sandia Pueblo hired Scott Miller of Scott Miller Golf Design in Arizona to create the course. Miller is the former senior architect for Jack Nicholas.