Cancer Killers

By K. Robert Wendel

Tom and Ruth Ann Hornaday have a personal fight with cancer. The couple lost their daughter as well as Tom's mother to the disease.

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Active in cancer research since the 1980s, the Phoenix developers are stepping up to battle cancer in a big way by building a 120,000-sq.-ft., $35 million Mayo Clinic Collaborative Research Center in a partnership with the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale.

There, dozens of scientists from T-Gen and the Mayo Clinic will conduct research into new drugs and methods to conquer cancer. T-Gen, or Translational Genomics Research Institute, develops methods to convert genomic discoveries into human healthcare.

More than 500,000 Americans died from cancer in 2004.

"This wasn't done as a financial project," Tom Hornaday said. "I have a personal interest in seeing cures for cancer and that's why I did it."

Plans call for the building to be held in a trust resembling a charitable remainder trust.

Each year during the next 15 years, the Mayo Clinic will assume a larger percentage of ownership.

The unique owner and developer relationship helped move the fast-track project along. The project broke ground May 2004, and the facility opened in June.

"The team structure allowed us to bend some rules to get decisions to get things done quicker," said project manager Steve Smith of Phoenix-based Weitz Cos., the general contractor on the project.

T-Gen and Mayo Clinic researchers are the primary tenants, with about 20,000 sq. ft. of space remaining for a lease with other researchers. Hornaday said. Weitz Cos. crews are working through punch lists on the project on East Shea Boulevard, on the existing Mayo Clinic campus.

The project primarily consists of clean-room-style labs, with extensive office space and meeting areas for collaboration. The labs feature a variety of medical gasses, including nitrogen, along with Herman Miller lab stations. There is also a laminar airflow hood system that moves air sideways across the bench space. An extensive networking system also ties the new facility in with the rest of the campus.

"This has one of the most advanced building automation systems in existence," said Tri-City Mechanical's Mark Lenhardt. "In fact, this is the most advanced cancer research center I or any of the other trades have ever seen."

The three-story, above-grade steel-framed building also features a below-grade vivarium where research animals are kept.

Contractors were able to sidestep the rapidly increasing steel prices by planning ahead. The move saved $400,000.

"We pre-bought the material to get a lower cost," said Ed Welch, a project manager with Phoenix-based Hi Tech Steel. "By the time we bought the steel and it came in, steel prices soared. We saved a lot of money."

Designers went through an extensive value-engineering process to keep the project on schedule and in budget. However, because the steel was preordered, it created issues for the structural design team.

"The structural engineers wanted to make some changes, but we couldn't make any because we had already ordered the steel," said architect Bob Smith of Phoenix-based Deutsch and Associates. "They came up with some ways to stiffen the beams where there was additional loading."

Crews welded 2-in. by 2-in. tube steel to the steel beams to support the additional weight.

In keeping with the Mayo Clinic Hospital and nearby S.C. Johnson Research Lab buildings, the new research center at the Mayo campus takes its architectural vocabulary from the existing structures. The EIFS-clad building features blue accent bands and the base will be girded with imported rock - when it arrives. "The stone has been on a slow boat from China and now it's in customs," said Weitz project superintendent Larry Palmer. "Hopefully we can get it up in the next 30 days."

The rocky site posed problems for contractors, who turned to large track hoes with a single-point ripper to excavate more than 1,200 truckloads of caliche. Beefy spread footings support the 77 columns that make up the steel frame. Floors are pan decking with concrete topping.

A large central plant serves the project with space for adding future capacity. As with many labs, the mechanical systems are more robust to move air in and out of the building.

"We have just a single air handler, but it's huge, about as big as a good-sized house," Smith said. "The air handler exhausts more air through the exhaust hoods than in a typical building situation."