Opus to Construct Mojave County Offices

Opus West Corp., through a competitive proposal process, has been selected to develop the new Mohave County Administration Building, a $20 million, 130,000-sq.-ft. design-build project that will consolidate more than 350 employees and serve as the new home for Mohave County Administration and Mohave County Health and Human Services.

The administration offices will occupy 100,000 sq. ft. of the building. The remaining 30,000 sq. ft. will house health and human services, including the health department, public fiduciary and community development.

The Mohave County Administration Building will be delivered through a 15-year privatized lease-to-own arrangement, similar to the approach taken with the $65 million Arizona Department of Administration and Arizona Department of Environmental Quality buildings that Opus West developed for the State of Arizona on the Capitol Mall in 2002. Construction on the administration building is scheduled to commence in July. Completion is planned for September 2005.

Work Starts on New Hospital

Contractors recently broke ground for the new Havasu Community Healthcare in Lake Havasu, Ariz. Layton Construction is the general contractor and the $22 million project is designed by Architectural Nexus.

The 60-bed facility breaks the design tenets of traditional community hospitals with features such as hotel-style rooms that are larger than normal and built to accommodate the patient's family, to separate public and patient entrances and hallways to ensure the privacy of a patient being transported to and from the operating room. The facility will include an ER, urgent care facility as well as a health club with two racquetball courts. Project completion is fall 2005.

New Performing Arts Facility in Store

The city of Tempe recently broke ground on a new, $44 million arts center near Tempe Town Lake.

The 88,000 sq.-ft. facility will feature a 600-seat theatre, a 200-seat studio theatre, meeting and administration space and a 17-acre Arts Park. Among the local arts organizations slated to use the facility are Childsplay, Tempe Little Theatre, Tempe Symphony, Desert Dance Theater, Actors Renaissance Theater, A. Ludwig Dance, Arizona Academy for Performing Arts, Tempe Community Chorus and Essential Theater.

Phoenix-based Kitchell CEM is serving as construction manager and Architekton is the project architect. Completion is scheduled for 2006.

Contractor to Build Auto School

Homes & Son Contractors, Inc was selected as the General Contractor to build a new, state of the art facility in Tempe for Automatik Education, in conjunction with Barduson Architecture. Automatik Education provides research, consultation, instructional design and training event management to the automotive industry. Working with clients like BMW, Porsche and Volkswagon, Automatik Education was in need of a new facility that provided ample space for their clients to demonstrate and train on new models and equipment.

The new facility, which will be located in Gilbert, will consist of more than 12,000 sq. ft.. Ground breaking took place in May

D.L. Withers Works on Bank Construction

National Bank of Arizona's new East Valley Regional Center is currently under construction. The two-story, 22,000-sq.-ft. building is located in Mesa at 1119 W. Southern Avenue. D.L. Withers Construction will head up construction of the new facility, working with the architecture team from Mittelstaedt Cooper & Associates.

The new structure set on a two-acre parcel will house a full service branch bank, the bank's East Valley Regional Commercial Lending team, as well as general office space.

Work Starts on Community Clubhouse

Wespac Construction Inc., Phoenix, recently began construction on Province Village Center, a 24,300-sq.-ft. recreational facility situated within Engle Homes' first active-adult master-planned community located at Smith-Enke Road and Maricopa Road (SR 347) in Maricopa, Ariz.

Scheduled for completion in December, the two-story community center will include a fitness center, café, indoor lap pool and outdoor resort-style pool, facilities for ceramics, arts and crafts, music, computer technology and administrative offices. The masonry block and wood frame building with a pre-cast exterior was designed by DFD CornoyerHedrick.