Office to the Max: Campos Building Consolidates Nevada Operations

The five-story Campos Office Building offers its new state tenants a unique hybrid space comprised of multiple structural systems.

By Tony Illia

The $28.6 million Campos Office Building, a new hybrid office building in downtown Las Vegas, is consolidating operations for Nevada’s Department of Parole and Probation.

The building at 215 E. Bonanza Road brings together 300 state employees scattered throughout Southern Nevada and takes its name from A.A. “Bud” Campos, the 1971-81 chief of Nevada Parole and Probation who is credited with putting a modern face on the agency.

The project’s small footprint and tight budget required a unique mix of components, including cast-in-place, precast and tilt-up concrete with structural and reinforcing steel. Limited space led designers to incorporate the parking garage into the building. (Photo by CORE Construction of Nevada)

“We have been renting space throughout the valley, but one of our goals was to get everybody under the same roof,” says Thom Jackson, administrative captain of the agency’s southern command. “The new building will give us room to accommodate our forecasted growth for the next 10 years.”

A portion of office space will be leased to the Nevada Department of Transportation when the Campos Building opens in September.

CORE Construction of Nevada Inc., Las Vegas, is building the five-story, 187,467-sq-ft Campos Office Building and accompanying three-level, 253-space parking garage. It replaces the aged two-story, 40,000-sq-ft concrete building that was demolished last year by Bulldog Equipment Co., North Las Vegas.  

“The old building wasn’t big enough, it was antiquated and it had asbestos,” says Vince Sartori, CORE project manager. “The new building more than doubles its size.”

Backhoes with hydraulic hammer attachments demolished the old cast-in-place office building, which had a 3-ft-thick double mat rebar foundation that took over a month to tear-up. After recycling the concrete and rebar, the 1.5-acre site was over-excavated by 1.5 ft to remove unsuitable soils and asbestos pipes - an act that required 25,000 gallons worth of dewatering.

The new facility rests atop 158 piers, 40 ft deep and 3 ft in diameter, connected by pier caps and continuous footings. The building uses a little bit of everything: cast-in-place, precast and tilt-up concrete, as well as structural and reinforcing steel. Multiple structural systems help meet budget constraints and fulfill user needs on a small project site.

SH Architecture, Las Vegas, is the architect, and Las Vegas-based Mendenhall Smith is structural engineer.

“We chose to optimize the site with a combination of different concrete systems,” says John Anderson, SH president. “It was the most cost-effective approach. The parking was also designed into the space.”

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The building’s 268- by 240-ft footprint leaves little excess room. CORE rented an offsite property across the street for field trailers and worker parking and used another space 2.5 mi away for materials storage and staging. The jobsite also abuts a fire station, which meant added planning, nighttime work and traffic coordination to minimize disruptions.

“Coordination of a tight site with no place to store materials is a project challenge,” says Dennis Fischer, CORE’s project superintendent. “There will be 55 people onsite during the peak of construction activity.”

Project work additionally entails placing a 12-in.-diameter, .25-mi-long waterline and other utilities along one of downtown’s busiest streets, Bonanza Road, which is also a Nevada Transportation Department right-of-way.

Construction uses 44 tilt-wall panels, the largest measuring 25 by 40 ft, along with concrete masonry block along the building’s first three levels. Levels four and five are steel framed. Cast-in-place concrete is used over metal decking floors, as well as for structural columns placed on a 27-ft grid and a trio of shear wall corridors for stairs and elevators. The building is sheathed in a combination of precast concrete, glass and EIFS.

Levels three through five cantilever 14.8 ft over the building’s east side for a hangover that partly screens service systems.

Level one consists of secured, dual-entrance parking as well as a lobby, training rooms, holding cells, offices and DNA evidence storage. It’s followed by additional parking on level two and more parking on level three plus offices and a planted plaza area along the south face. Level four has office space as does the fifth level where mechanical systems occupy part of the floor.

The building is serviced by three boilers, two chillers and four air handlers.

Visitors are greeted by a 28-ft-tall glass vestibule at the southeast corner of Bonanza and Casino Center Boulevard backed by a towering 89-ft-tall, 92-ft-long, 20-in.-thick, cast-in-place concrete radial wall that serves as an architectural focal point.

The design includes a 28-ft-tall glass vestibule backed by a towering 89-ft-tall concrete radial wall. In addition to being the project’s architectural focal point, the wall functions as a thermal mass to reduce heat gain. (Image by SH Architecture)

“The curved wall on the corner is an iconic element that gives the building a civic facility look,” Anderson says. “It also acts as a thermal mass that helps reduce some of the heat gain on the building.”

The project unifies three parole and probation facilities, while still providing adequate space for investigators, administrative staff and state officers. There also is adequate separation between people who will be using the building, from offenders to secretaries. Lobby-level computers enable parolee check-in, reducing their circulation inside the building, while a second story look-out allows officers to see who is coming and going.

“The biggest thing is the physical security issues,” Jackson says. People in the building “run the complete gamut from first-time offender to hardened criminal. We need to work around these people, so we needed to structure a balanced environment.”

Key Players:

Owner: Nevada State Department of Public Works
General Contractor: CORE Construction of Nevada Inc.
Architect: SH Architecture
Landscape Architect: Southwick Landscape Architects
Engineers: Mendenhall Smith Inc.; Lochsa Engineering; JBA Consulting Engineers
Subcontractors: Big Town Mechanical LLC; Nevada Ready Mix Inc.; Tpac, a division of Kiewit Western Co.; Northstar Concrete Inc.; Bulldog Equipment Co.

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