Urban Reborn

Reno's Montage Re-Uses 70's Tower

by Scott Blair

The former Golden Phoenix Hotel in downtown Reno is being stripped to its skeleton and will be reborn as Montage, a sleek, modern residential tower.

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As developers realize the potential for downtown Reno, the city's urban core is undergoing a slow but steady transformation. Once-barren streets emptied of pedestrians by the self-contained worlds of downtown casinos are becoming vibrant again due to new shops and residential options.

The new $80 million Montage is at the forefront of this rebirth. The 24-story condominium tower is being constructed by using the skeleton of the former Golden Phoenix Hotel/Casino, which was built in 1978.

Demolition began in October with crews removing everything but the post-tensioned concrete bones of the building's tower, and the steel beams of the attached low-rise.

"It is half renovation and half new construction, so part of the challenge has been incorporating the old into the new," says Don Speedie, project manager with UPA Group, the Reno-based general contractor on the project.

"Everything's been gutted out. We've got a combination of concrete and steel and we're making it all work together."

While it saves builders time and money to start with an existing structure, it poses a different set of challenges.

"The columns are packed very tightly with steel, so trying to tie into any columns or any sort of existing structure has been pretty tough," Speedie says.

"Also the slabs have post-tensioned cables running through them, which means that you can't cut the cables without de-stressing them. So you have to scan everything before drilling, or you can only drill so far."

These limitations pose problems when trying to retrofit modern residential requirements into a vintage building. A larger quantity of penetrations in the slab are now required to incorporate new mechanical, electrical and information systems cabling, according to Patrick Ford, president of Pewaukee, Wis.-based Matsen Ford Design Associates, the structural engineers on the project. "The architectural layouts play a really big part in that - you try to use as many existing holes as you can."

Chicago-based Antunovich Associates Inc. was the architect on the project, which will be completed in Spring 2008.

Scheduling crews for this type of project required a different approach.

"When you build new, as you work your way up out of the ground you've got your usual rotation and you get a good rhythm going," Speedie says. "For this project, once the demolition was complete we had 800,000 sq ft ready to go all at once, so we were off like a firecracker trying to get at this thing."

Before work on the interior could progress, cracks that had formed over time or due to shaking during demolition had to be addressed. "Any cracks in critical structural zones were marked so that later the concrete reclamation contractor could epoxy-inject them and then grind them smooth" Ford says.

Since the tower has the most units, UPA will tackle it first using two sets of crews, one starting at the bottom and one midway up, climbing floor by floor.

The project includes lofts, townhomes, two-level row houses on the lower floors and two-level penthouses atop the tower, totaling 379 units overall.

"The intent is to get a clean, contemporary look," says Doug Garofalo, president of Chicago-based interior design firm Garofalo Architects. "We wanted to make the interiors seem more spacious than they actually were and filled with natural light while making wise choices about materials and lighting."

Since residential occupancy loads for residential are nearly identical to that of hotels, no significant structural support was required, Ford says.

The existing structure even allowed for the addition of some new construction.

The top level of the Golden Phoenix was originally occupied by the Sky Lounge, a restaurant and lounge that featured high ceilings. This was removed during demolition along with some heavy concrete and CMU originally used to raise the floor level.

"Between the weight we removed and the higher live loads, we were able to add two additional stories of much lighter-weight construction and lighter live loads," Ford says. "It essentially became a wash." Cold-formed steel was used as the light-weight framing material.

Space was added in a similar fashion within the building's low-rise section, which formerly housed the casino, lobby, restaurant and showrooms. This area was stripped to its structural steel beams and will be reconfigured into six levels of residential units, retail and lobby space.

Since far less natural light is desired in casino design, many non-structural exterior walls were removed during the conversion. In addition, one shear wall was relocated to inside the building in order to open up one of the facades.

The exterior will be finished with painted concrete, stucco and ample windows.

While seismic codes have changed much since the building was first built, the capacity requirements of the lateral loading has not gotten significantly larger on this structure. A cost-prohibitive seismic retrofit was avoided because the new construction did not reduce the overall lateral load carrying capacity of the building, Ford says.

The low-rise section will be topped with a 17,000-sq-ft pool deck featuring ample landscaping. "We reinforced the trusses and added steel column supports here and there to hold up the new pool structure," Ford adds. <<

Key Players

Owner: L3 Development
General Contractor: UPA Group
Architects: Antunovich Associates; Garofalo Architects of Chicago
Engineers: Matsen Ford Design Assoc.; Summit Engineering
Electrical: AJ Kirkwood & Associates
Mechanical: Mt. Rose Heating and Air Conditioning
Drywall: Standard Drywall Inc.
Steel: Reno Ironworks

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