High Country Hails New Conference Center

By Michele Van Haecke

A new $42 million convention center, 158-room hotel and parking structure are being built in Flagstaff through a unique partnership between private and public entities.

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How do you build a 42,000-sq-ft convention space, 450-car parking structure and 158-room high-rise hotel on a four-acre former parking lot in just over a year?

It’s a time-and-space puzzle suited to an intellectual enclave like Northern Arizona University, where the High Country Conference Center has been under construction since October 2006 and is scheduled to open in February.

Sean Rosebrugh, project manager for Ayers Saint Gross, the national architecture firm whose Tempe office provided the design, says that initially the team wondered how it could build three buildings at essentially the same time without fighting for space and starting a turf war.

He adds that the team for this $22 million, public-private project found solutions that worked and avoided jobsite havoc. “As soon as possible in the design process, we talked about constructability issues and worked out schedules,” Rosebrugh says.

Ryan Cos. of Phoenix served as construction manager for the NAU-city of Flagstaff project, which includes the event center and parking structure, and coordinated with Drury Inns Inc., the St. Louis-based company building and leasing the six-story hotel under a separate $20 million contract.

“We knew we needed folks with the wherewithal, the relationships with the subcontractors, the abilities to negotiate costs and all those intangibles that make a project successful,” says Rich Bowen, NAU associate vice president for economic development. “It’s fast track and has been acting like a commercial development. We had to have a team we felt very confident in that definitely could deliver.” 

Ryan served in the same capacity for NAU’s $24 million W.A. Franke College of Business project in 2005 and employed the same superintendent, field engineer and project manager for this project.

Managers had to juggle 20 to 30 subcontractors, university traffic, materials, equipment and deliveries on the site, and they had to share an access road with the hotel construction team.

Weather influenced scheduling and even design choices, such as precast over cast-in-place concrete.

Managers coordinated everything by breaking down packages, communicating schedules and making smart decisions early on, says Steve Jordan, Ryan’s director of construction services. “The project team did a wonderful job working with the architects and engineers to develop a design and procurement price so we could arrive on time,” he says. “Even with all the ups and downs, we were still able to have the quality we needed.”

Quality was high on the list for the university, which conducted extensive feasibility studies and worked with meeting-industry experts to determine design. “They didn’t want to just pop some little conference center in here,” Jordan says. “They wanted it to have appeal not only from an aesthetic standpoint but also a functionality standpoint.”

The university team, led by NAU president John Haeger, wanted a commercially viable facility that could go head-to-head with private competitors, says Bowen, whose background includes real estate development with Chicago-based JMB Realty Corp. 

“The state of Arizona is robust in the conference market,” Bowen adds. “Our whole goal was to make sure that when we opened the doors, we’d have a truly state-of-the-art, relevant conference center the marketplace would respond to.”

The facility will include the latest audio-visual technology; upscale finishes; a kitchen a five-star resort would envy; and easy access to the upscale, limited-service hotel. It’s expected to bring 50,000 to 60,000 people and $7 million to Flagstaff each year.

Designers at Ayers Saint Gross focused on creating a facility that would assert university and regional identity while generating a sense of accessibility and comfort, says lead designer Jack Black. “The design is soft and affirming and not hard-edged,” he adds. “That’s what it’s really all about, being comforting.”

Black says he wanted to reflect Flagstaff’s historical and regional personality while avoiding clichés, such as what Bowen called “just putting a few pine cones around.” Black designed the curved, multilevel rooflines to suggest softness and respond to the area’s blue skies and mountain surrounds. “This is kind of sculptural but very simple,” he adds.

Downtown Flagstaff’s turn-of-the-century buildings inspired the red brick finishes and pedestrian-friendly perimeters. The area’s expansive views and natural beauty inspired abundant windows, for which Black used special low-E glass sprinkled with random purple, amber and green details. The multicolored confetti effect is repeated with terrazzo flooring in the three-story, glass-enclosed lobby, a structure designed to become a “community lantern” when lighted at night.

Bowen is gearing up for a busy first year in the convention business. NAU has already launched a marketing campaign and by early autumn had booked several events.

Key Players

Owners/Developers: NAU; City of Flagstaff; Drury Inns
Contractor: Ryan Companies
Architect: Ayers Saint Gross
Subcontractors: Kinney Construction Svcs.; Tpac; Maverick Masonry;       Metal-Weld Specialties Inc.; Walters & Wolf Construction Specialties; Dial Mechanical; Shephard Wesnitzer; Audio Visual Resources

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