Bright Lights Big City

Phoenix Enlivens Downtown Core with Sheraton Hotel

By Scott Blair

The city of Phoenix continues its quest for an active 24/7 urban core with the construction of the new Sheraton Hotel. The 31-story tower will provide 1,000 rooms and ample convention space to work in tandem with the city's new Convention Center nearby.

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The 1,000-room Sheraton will be located in downtown Phoenix near the city's rebuilt Convention Center.

"The Convention Center is tripling in size, and when you do that you triple the number of potential delegates that come for a convention, who need a place to stay," says Jerry Harper, project manager with the city's downtown development office.

After years of trying to attract a privately financed hotel, Phoenix officials decided to purchase the land and publicly fund the project's $200 million construction cost.

"To protect the general fund and the city's liability that's associated with the construction of a full-service hotel, we formed the Downtown Phoenix Hotel Corporation," Harper says.


With a 31-story cast-in-place concrete tower, the hotel will be the tallest in Arizona, Harper says. Surrounding the tower is a structural steel-framed, four-story podium, while a two-story underground parking structure is tucked underneath.The project broke ground in March 2006 and has already received reservations for its October 2008 opening.


"The pre-opening sales effort has been extremely promising to date, with our sales team realizing a booking performance that is over 185% of the goal we established for success," says Steven Spivak, director of sales and marketing for the hotel. "There is a pent up demand for this type of destination in the convention and meetings market."

The Miami office of Arquitectonica and RSP Architects of Tempe designed the project. Phoenix-based Perini Building Company was brought in early in the design process as construction manager under a guaranteed maximum price.

"When projects of this magnitude are built, we really encourage clients to engage a contractor for pre-development services very early on because it gives us feedback as we are designing the project," says Bernardo Fort-Brescia, FAIA, founding principal of Arquitectonica. "We explored three alternate design schemes in the beginning… and Perini's input on cost was important in the selection of the scheme that is being built."

A major challenge on the job was the four-acre, L-shaped site. "We are constructing property line to property line," says Steve Field, senior project manager with Perini. The building's 80-ft-tall podium wraps around the neighboring Arizona Republic building on two sides.

"We are very good neighbors but very close neighbors," Field says. "On their north side our building's podium is less than 25-ft away."

With such a tight site, preparing it for construction was a challenge. Phoenix-based subcontractor Buesing Corp. demolished the existing site's on-grade parking lot and excavated 90,000 cu yds of earth to a depth of between 26-ft and 38-ft.

Buesing also performed design-assist services and installed the shoring, which was unique because the city had a requirement that soil nails not protrude into the upper 8 ft of the street.

"On the first 8-ft we cantilevered the wall, providing a thicker section up top and then starting soil nails below that," says Bryon Matesi, director of preconstruction at Buesing. "That kept all the soil nails below the utilities so it wouldn't affect the city down the road."

The podium flanks the tower on the north and south sides. "The big advantage of this is there are two good levels of meeting spaces," says John R. Williams, AIA, project manager with RSP Architects. "You could have four independent events going on in the hotel."

The north podium, which contains the larger 30,000-sq-ft ballroom, occupies the longer side of the 'L' shape and will be visually connected with the tower.

"It actually bends and becomes part of the podium as if it is one piece," Fort-Brescia says.

The podium will be suspended over a large porte cochere on the ground floor, which is set back deep into the building's footprint to provide continuity to the sidewalk, he adds. "We didn't want it to interfere with the sidewalk procession."

Other ground floor attributes aim to draw in pedestrians with retail shops, outdoor cafes and dining.

"A lot of the push for new development downtown revolves around creating a 24/7 activity area, and to do that we needed the retail space on the ground floor," Harper says. "We also wanted the hotel to reflect Arizona in some way, in both the interior and exterior design."

The tower's curtain wall and EIFS exterior is designed with this in mind. "The windows of the rooms are connected horizontally by a series of colored panels that create a pattern of orange, yellow and reddish colors that creates a Southwestern pattern, almost like a textile, out of the façade," Fort-Brescia says.

On the tower's roof, the building's parapet lines will curve up on an angle and create a roofline intended to reflect the nearby landmark Camelback Mountain.

The tower is located so that the 300-ft long width faces north/south to reduce solar gain. "On the south elevation the windows have screens at the top of the window line to shade from the sun angle when it's the time of year when you need it most," Williams says. Also, many of the meeting spaces have windows to provide natural daylighting while most meetings are occurring.

Perini is currently pouring one floor a week on the tower. "The tower's post-tensioned slab is broken into three separate pours, which we do on Monday, Wednesday and Friday," Field says. "In between we are pouring columns and walls."

Once crews reach the 14th floor this month, the exterior will be sealed and drywall and other finishes will be installed on the floors below. "Before we top off the tower, we'll have rooms finished almost halfway up," Field says.

Key Players

Owner:
City of Phoenix

Architects:
Arquitectonica; RSP Architects

General Contractor:
Perini Building Company

Subcontractors:
Rosendin Electric; University Mechanical; Schuff Steel;
Buesing Corp.; MKB Construction; Aero Automatic Corp.

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