Renewed Heritage of Learning

New School Improves Outlook for Albuquerque Neighborhood

By Neal Singer

The Atrisco Heritage Academy may bring economic opportunities for a challenged southwest Albuquerque area, but the $116 million project must overcome its own hurdles first to reach the finish line.

The $116 million, 420,000-sq-ft Atrisco Heritage Academy High School rising in southwest Albuquerque is not only a step beyond most school designs but carries enough challenges and dreams for a TV soap opera.

Multi-colored corrugated metal panels create a collage effect for a long-lasting, low-maintenance north face of the school.

Photo courtesy Roldan Pasion/APS

Challenges at the public high school have included steel delays, asphalt rationing, modification of initial designs from a single phase to three phases and a construction schedule that proved overly rigorous.

Dreams include creation of an unusually well-equipped school housed in three buildings intended to resemble a college campus. Erected in a relatively poor area economically, the school would function to raise student expectations from minimum-wage jobs to professional careers. The buildings would also serve as a dual-use facility for the surrounding community in providing gym access, a health facility and library, and computer and Internet access.

“The dual possibilities are an efficient use of taxpayer money,” says Karen Alarid, Albuquerque Public School’s facility design and construction director.

Construction began in September 2007 on a 100,000-sq-ft building expected to house the school’s first freshman class. This first phase was expected to be completed in 10 months at a projected cost of $26 million.

That didn’t quite happen. “We had a steel delay in November and December, and we couldn’t make that time up,” says Johnny Barton, vice president for project management at Albuquerque-based Gerald Martin General Contractor. “We were dead in the water five to six weeks. Steel affected the critical schedule, momentum was lost and hard to regain.”

The delay was caused by stricter interpretations of new building codes that eventually faulted the condition of some steel beams already in place. “It was a legitimate requirement,” says Barton of an aspect of the International Building Code that hadn’t been enforced before. Because the job’s Texas-based supplier wasn’t a certified steel fabricator under IBC requirements, special inspection reports were required. “There was an issue with the welds and application of camber to some of the beams,” Barton says.

Architect of record Susan Johnson of Albuquerque-based Fanning Bard Tatum Architects says: “A relatively new requirement in the IBC, that no one was conscious of, states that a noncertified fabricator of steel has to have an inspector onsite in its plant. The company didn’t. That required backtracking and reinspection. A third-party inspector found welds he wanted done again, when he found three beams overheated during cambering.” Most problems could be corrected on-site, she says, but “sequencing is critical in construction. You have to get the first floor columns in first.”

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Barton says that because of the extended delay, the school district decided to acquire more space to start school on time. And so the school’s first freshman class is receiving its first three months of instruction as guests of the county courthouse in downtown Albuquerque. “Everyone’s stepping up to the plate to get things fixed,” Barton says.

“The project’s scope and schedule meant a tremendous effort placed on us and the contractor,” Johnson says. “The schedule was extremely challenging and we’re scrambling to meet it. But just the sheer size and scope is unique to Albuquerque and New Mexico. Gerald Martin is doing a fantastic job of managing.”

Rapid progress is now expected in phase-one project completion.

Alarid agrees that it was “an aggressive deadline. When I contract with an architect, I ask for a start-to-finish schedule, I tell them we need the school by a certain date. As with any well-made plans, sometimes we lose ground. Sometimes we hit it and sometimes we don’t.”

The first phase will house the initial freshman class. Buildings erected in 2009 in phase two, also under direction of Gerald Martin, will be 273,000 sq ft and house students in the higher grades. A phase-three general contractor has not yet been determined.

The full 420,000-sq-ft school should be operating in fall 2010.

Project phasing occurred because it was difficult finding a contractor able to bond the entire job, Johnson says.

“We initially designed the entire school as one construction job,” says John Paxton, president of Bridgers & Paxton Consulting Engineers, which maintains an office in Albuquerque and specializes in mechanical and electrical designs. “Then there became phase two, which along the way broke into phase two and phase three.”

He says his company had to then “understand what components were affected, where to show breaks and if there’s something in phase three that needs to be moved into phase two.”

The building’s dramatic three-story central commons serves as cafeteria dining, student lockers and overflow classroom space.

Photo courtesy Roldan Pasion/APS

The school’s name itself went through changes-from Southwest High School to New Southwest High School to its current Atrisco Heritage Academy High School.

The name pays homage to the former Atrisco Land Grant on which the school sits, says new principal Karen Sanchez-Griego. “I grew up in this community,” she says. “Our schools were built with the intent to guide kids into becoming handymen, to join the day-to-day labor force. They weren’t taught to be lawyers or scientists or contractors but to be hourly workers.”

The new school features relatively small learning communities of 150 students. The teachers will have an office they share with as many as five other teachers. There, they can discuss the behavior of students in their cluster. Floor plans and even lighting are intended to help develop a sense of family.

Also available to students seeking entry to professional careers will be a film lab, a courtroom that Johnson says will be “used as a real courtroom for a traveling appellate court system,” a culinary arts program and arts and performing arts centers. Gyms and weight rooms will be available. Woodworking and auto repair shops will not be.

An 85-ft fall over a 65-acre site required extensive pre-excavation by Albuquerque-based Aztec Grading Inc., followed by terracing and installation of retaining walls. The result permitted use of less-expensive spread-footing foundations for buildings instead of piers. Excavated dirt was hauled to another APS site that needed the fill. Special attention was paid to provide accessible space, says Johnson, for a student body that contains a higher number of physically handicapped and special-education students.

A pilot project uses the highly abuse-resistant plaster Duraplex in high-traffic areas to see how it performs. “Kids are known for scratching drywall and paint, forcing repainting every year,” Johnson says. Duraplex, an integral-color plaster, is expected merely to be wiped down with a cleaning fluid.

For aesthetics, a “butterfly roof” meant to look like it is flying was installed, Johnson says. The floating effect is created by traditional beams with glass wrapped around them. “It’s not expensive,” she adds. “It uses standard materials, standard methods.”

The north face of the school is constructed of metal panels finished in three colors, creating a collage effect more visually welcoming than gunmetal gray. The corrugated metal siding costs more than stucco but will avoid costs common to restuccoing every 15 to 20 years.

The other side of the building features an exterior steel system that supports >> an outboard sunshade system. It allows for a clean, uninterrupted glazing system that will be easier to maintain while providing a sophisticated louver shade system designed for the angle of the sunlight reaching the southwest-facing glazing, Johnson says.

On the interior side of this wall, a dramatic three-story central commons space looks out onto the campus’s central plaza. The commons will serve as a cafeteria, student lockers and overflow classroom space. Classrooms and administrative spaces face the expansive common area and clear site lines help with security.

The school buildings will be oriented slightly off north-south to provide a view of the mountains, minimize winds in courtyards and create shade where needed.

Phase one and two require 3,800 tons of steel and 31,000 cu yds of concrete.

Before saying goodbye to phase-one construction, Barton faced a scarcity of asphalt, but he adds that “the good thing about asphalt is there’s not much that comes after it.”

Key Players:

Owner: Albuquerque Public Schools
Architect: FBT Architects; Perkins & Will Architects
General Contractor: Gerald Martin General Contractor (Phases 1 & 2)
Engineers: Bridgers & Paxton Consulting Engineers; Chavez Grieves; High Mesa Consulting Group
Landscape Design: Morrow Reardon Wilkinson Miller
Theater Consultant: D.L. Adams
Subcontractors: Miller Bonded; Theco Electric; Aztec Grading

Useful Sources:

For more information about this and other APS construction projects, visit their facilities, design and construction website at www.apsfacilities.org/facilities

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