Ready in Reno

By K. Robert Wendel

The first of five planned speculative office buildings at the Northern Nevada Corporate Center in south Reno is finished and occupied, and there are plans for permits to be pulled for the second project.

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Work on the first 45,000-sq.-ft. building started in October 2003, and tenants occupied the space 11 months later. Four more speculative offices will be built at the 16-acre site.

The buildings will be laid out in a sawtooth pattern, and architectural features will remain fairly consistent.

"We had a learning curve, so the layout on the succeeding buildings is going to be a little different," said Matt Clafton, vice president and general manager of Panattoni Construction's Reno office. "We reduced the size of the lobby and added another variable air volume box for redundancy."

Although this $3.3 million project is a slab on grade, crews faced difficult environmental issues. Pour drainage had created a soggy site, so before construction could start, the parcel needed dewatering with pumps. Crews also constructed a dewatering trench to keep the project dry in the future.

"The biggest issue before construction was the dewatering," Clafton said. "We couldn't move until we took care of that."

The two-story buildings are concrete tilt-up with some exposed architectural steel elements. Builders went with tilt-up for ease and speed of construction.

A curved exposed steel staircase punctuates of the office lobby, which is finished with high-end materials such as granite. The exterior is a combination of EFIS and dry-stacked stone, and there are 150 parking spaces in the first phase.

"They wanted to blend the surrounding architecture with a more efficient floor plan," said architect Jeff Turnipseed of Reno's Johnson Blakely & Ghusn Architects.

"Panattoni wanted to compliment the other projects but be more competitive from a leasing standpoint."

Because the building backs to the I-395 freeway, architects wanted to create a presence for it, so almost as much attention was paid to the back side as to the front.

The building is capped off with a single-ply roof, which is where the mechanical systems are located. A parapet screens the roof and the gas-fired mechanical systems.

"We have a five-year master plan and our intent is to start a building every year," Clafton added.