Tempe Treasure

Hayden Flour Mill to Rise Again

By David M. Brown

The new Hayden Flour Mill will be great grist for booming downtown Tempe.

advertisement

The Tempe City Council approved in March a Planned Area Development submittal by Tempe-based Avenue Communities for redevelopment of the historic mill, begun in 1872 by city founder Charles Trumbull Hayden. Hayden completed the adobe mill by May 1874 with one grinding stone (he added more as demand increased), a waterwheel powered by a waterfall fed by canal from the then flowing Salt River.

The 5.04-acre site on the southeast corner of Mill Avenue and Rio Salado Parkway backs to Tempe (Hayden's) Butte and looks across Mill Avenue to Hayden's 1871 adobe home, which now houses Monti's La Casa Vieja restaurant.

The mill burned in 1917 and was rebuilt in 1918. The existing complex includes the rebuilt mill structure and the117-ft-high silos behind. A 150-foot-high grain elevator attaches to the silos on the far south of the site.

The Avenue Communities team includes an architectural collaboration of Minneapolis, Minn.-based Meyer, Scherer & Rockcastle and Substance Design Consortium of Phoenix. Phoenix-based Paragon will be the structural engineer.

Participating as well are Tempe-based Archaeological Consulting Services, which has prepared an excavation report for the city, Tempe Historical Society and Tempe Historical Museum.

The mill building and silos will be incorporated into the new design-a multiphase, mixed-used development including the phase-one restoration of the mill into 50,000 sq ft of retail, office and restaurant space as well as an archeological garden and shaded public plazas.

Avenue Communities is targeting LEED Platinum certification for the project.

Early in the design process, Barbara Hendricks, a partner with Substance Design Consortium, modeled the project in eQUEST. The energy simulation program was used to evaluate energy and daylight performance -- just one step on the road to the project team’s green building goals.

Avenue Communities, which will also serve as the general contractor, plans to break ground in late spring 2008 and complete the first phase 18 months later. Phase-one sitework will include surface parking, creation of a Butte Park entrance and extension of Second Street into the site.

Future phases will include converting the silos to other uses-one idea from Avenue Communities is a boutique hotel-as well as new construction, says Richard Labonte, project manager for Avenue Communities.

The mill building will receive a one-story addition on the west (Mill Avenue) side and a six-story addition on the east (silo) side, says Tom Meyer, FAIA, founding principal of Meyer, Scherer & Rockcastle. Also on the east, an archeological garden will reveal a long-buried canal and the original penstock.

“The restaurant and bar seating will overlook this archaeological garden,” says Meyer, whose firm specializes in adaptive reuse of historic structures, including the mixed-use Mill City Museum in Minneapolis, a project in a converted flour mill.

“The archaeological remains pose no real detrimental problem to the design and building process but do offer wonderful opportunities,” says Victoria D. Vargas, MA, RPA, the principal investigator with ACS, which hopes to monitor the construction process to ensure that any new discoveries are noted and recorded. “For example, Avenue Communities is incorporating the Hayden Ditch, the Tempe Canal lateral that provided water to power the mill, into its redevelopment designs as well as several other significant features on the property.”

During its sitework, her company recorded 122 features and structures and collected 8,470 artifacts and samples, including several coins as early as 1893 and botanical evidence. It was also able to uncover in the Arizona Historical Museum the 1917 Lescher & Kibbey architectural plans of the current mill building.

“Inhabitable gaps up to 60 ft will be maintained between the original mill and the additions so that the old can engage in a visual dialogue with the new,” says Donna Barry, a partner with Substance Design Consortium, which did the early city-approval work. She and Hendricks are assisted by partner Jose Pombo.

Water flow was an integral part of the milling process. “The project seeks to recreate the presence of water on the Hayden site and extend this element into adjacent properties in order to weave the experience of water back into the Mill Avenue District’s fabric,” Barry says.

The interior design will preserve and expose the building’s original wood floors, steel piping, grating, concrete and windows, whenever possible.

The sloped site presented grading and drainage issues from the adjacent butte, Labonte says. In addition, subsoil rock on the butte side will require particular excavation care. All of the structural conditions in the foundation are still unknown, and Avenue must work with the city on code issues related to historic wood materials and fire, Labonte adds.

Converting the building to new uses and maintaining the historic character will be difficult, says Chris Messer, principal planner for the city. “The developer has spent many hours with our Historic Preservation Commission, and I feel confident that future visitors will get a real sense of what the mill used to be.”

“It is a balancing act between old and new,” Meyer says. “When the whole is complete, both need to be vibrant and engaging.”

Useful Sources
Read more about the history of Hayden Flour Mill at www.tempe.gov/haydenflourmill

Click here for next Feature Story >>