Going Up: High-Rise Projects Continue Amid Downturn

High-rise construction continues across major metro areas in Texas.

By Debra Wood

The Hess Tower, conceptualized in the front, right, designed by Gensler and being built by Gilbane. (Image: Courtesy of Gensler.)

While the recession has hampered new high-rise starts, several continue rising skyward, and at least one, the $180-million, 850,000-sq-ft, 35-story, mixed-use Block 21/The W Hotel in Austin, broke ground last year. Meanwhile the 54-plus-story Austonian, designed by Zielger Cooper of Houston and being built by Balfour Beatty of Dallas, nears completion and will become Austin’s tallest skyscraper

And as projects across the state wrap up, developers are finding success.

The Vistana Developer Ed Cross, CEO of Cross & Co., of San Antonio, saw a need for apartments in downtown San Antonio—near the city hall and historic El Mercado—and began working on The Vistana, which includes ground-floor retail.

“The submarket in downtown hasn’t had a new building in 20 years,” Cross says. “We are ahead of schedule with [leases] and tickled pink with the response.”

As of mid-summer, 147 units were leased, with about eight leasers signing weekly. The project will wrap up this fall.

C.F. Jordan of San Antonio broke ground on the $46-million, 17-story Vistana in 2007. The building features 247 apartments and four levels of parking with 485 spaces; a C-shaped tower atop the parking deck; and a sixth-floor amenity deck, with a pool, fitness center and party room. The top two levels contain two-level penthouses. Six-ft-tall by 8-ft-wide windows allow natural light to flood the units, each with 10-ft-high ceilings.

Three San Antonio architectural firms collaborated on The Vistana. Michael G. Imber, Architects, PLLC, designed the exterior with art deco influences; B&A Architects created the interior layout of the units; and RVK assumed responsibility for documents and permitting.

Cross sought a brick-clad building that blended with the surrounding community and offered a “wow” factor when people walked into the units. Until the 1930s, San Antonio’s high-rises were brick, says Michael Imber, president of the firm that carries his name. The orange-hued bricks complement nearby warehouses with clay block and terra cotta.

“We wanted to tie into the character of San Antonio, with a statement of what San Antonio was, is and will be in the future,” Imber says. “We wanted it to be simple, strong and expressive.”

The structure fills the entire half-block parcel, with C.F. Jordan building within inches of the property line. Crews poured 605,000 sq ft of structural slabs, including the roof slabs, on the cast-in-place, post-tensioned concrete building. Some 23,000 cu yds of concrete was used.

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The building sits on a peer foundation, with 144 piers. The building does not include any below-grade space, due to the high water table, says Dave Baer, C.F. Jordan executive vice president of the Central-South Texas Region. C.F. Jordan participated in early constructability and budget meetings and suggested several cost-savings ideas, some accepted and some revised.

“We build to own it for a long period of time, rather than to build to sell,” Cross says. “A number of decisions with the construction led to a better-quality building.”

During value engineering, C.F. Jordan investigated many options for the exterior. Brick clad the lower levels, but was cost prohibitive for the entire structure, so company officials came up with the idea to mix terra-cotta-hued brick with EFIS on the higher levels.

“We carried vertical lines of brick,” Baer says. “It is infilled with windows and EFIS detailing. The top portion of the building has a lot of detailing made out of EFIS.”

In addition, rather than simply placing a backlit architectural tower feature, similar to a beacon, on the southwest corner of the building, C.F. Jordan suggested building a three-story, three-bedroom, 3,500-sq-ft penthouse with views spanning 270 degrees.

“It took quite a bit of structure to get that wedding-cake design,” Baer says. “We suggested spending more to have an ideal and exclusive apartment in that space.”

Cross has not leased the penthouse unit yet, but he says he is pleased with the interest people have expressed in it.

Hess Tower Gilbane Building Co. of Houston began construction on the 29-story “Discovery Tower” office building in downtown Houston in March 2008 for Trammell Crow Co. of Houston and Principal Real Estate Investors of Des Moines, Iowa. In January, the developers announced that Hess Corp. of New York had signed a long-term lease to occupy the entire 844,763-sq-ft building and renamed the building Hess Tower.

A renderning of The Hess Tower, which features 10 rooftop wind turbines. (Image: Courtesy of Gensler.)

“The success of the lease proves the triple bottom line works,” says O’Neal Furr, LEED AP, an associate with Gensler’s Houston office, which designed the building to achieve LEED-gold certification and to meet the Environmental Protection Agency’s Energy Star standards. “By doing well for the people and planet, you can also make a profit. The building does all of that successfully.”

Aaron Thielhorn, principal of office development for Trammell Crow, announced in a written statement that the Hess deal was one of the most significant leases signed in Houston over the past several years.

“Hess considered a number of factors when we decided to select Discovery Tower as our new location,” says Maripat Sexton, spokeswoman for Hess. “The decision was based on space availability, technological capabilities and location. The fact the office will be LEED-certified was definitely a factor in the choice to move to…[the] tower.”

Texas Construction previously reported project cost estimated at $156 million. Neither Trammell Crow nor Gilbane would confirm the cost.

The first two levels contain retail space and a lobby. It is topped with 27 levels of Class A office space. An 8-ft-thick mat foundation, surrounded by 120-ft-deep drilled piers on three sides of the perimeter, supports the cast-in-place tower. A combination of spread footings and drilled piers support the cast-in-place garage.

Two levels of basement parking sit below the tower, and a two-story entry pavilion offers access to one of two structural-steel pedestrian bridges, connecting the building to Houston’s skybridge system. Another bridge links the tower with its 10-level, 420,000-sq-ft parking garage, which is across the street to the north.

“We designed this building from the inside out,” Furr says. “We started out designing an efficient floor plate for the developer that was flexible and worked with open and closed office layouts.”

A notch in the floor plates brings daylight and views deep into the interior space. The exterior features full-height glass, with a high-efficiency glazing and low-E coating. The building features a carbon-dioxide monitoring system and increased ventilation.

Gensler positioned the tower on the triangular site to take advantage of gulf breezes, which help power the building, and to decrease solar heat. The park to the southeast of the tower provides an open wind-shed for harvesting wind energy.

“In sustainable design, some of the most important decisions are made upfront about how you site and orient the building,” Furr says.

Units at San Antonio’s The Vistana feature high ceilings and large windows. C.F. Jordan built the 17-story brick-clad building. (Photo: Courtesy The Vistana.)

Ten vertical-access wind turbines will be installed atop the tower. A fin element, facing south-southeast, will funnel the wind past the turbines, increasing the wind speed and turbine efficiency. The turbines are expected to generate enough energy to light the building at night, but research is under way to try to quantify exactly how much the turbines will generate.

“Currently, there are only a few buildings in the world that have wind turbines built into them,” Furr says.

On the south side, an entry plaza with a fountain complements Discovery Park, and the vegetative roof on the entry pavilion acts as a visual extension of the park.

Gensler designed the building to be approximately 20% more energy efficient than a typical building. In addition to the turbines, it features a highly efficient energy-recovery unit, located near the roof. It also employs high-efficiency centrifugal chillers for cooling.

The plumbing system is approximately 40% more efficient than a traditional building and features low-flow fixtures. It also will harvest air-conditioning condensate, which will supply all of the landscaping irrigation.

Saint Ann Court Austin Commercial of Dallas expects to wrap up construction early this fall on Saint Ann Court, a $51-million, 26-story, 320,000-sq-ft office tower in Dallas, for Harwood International of Dallas.

“It’s doing surprisingly well,” says Gabriel Barbier-Mueller, founder and CEO of Harwood International.

Saint Ann Court is 75% preleased, with major tenants Amegy Bank, the Boston Consulting Group and McGuire, Craddock & Strother. It will also serve as Harwood International’s headquarters. The project represents the sixth phase of the developer’s 17-city block Harwood district in Uptown Dallas.

“Our first four office buildings were fully let and had been for quite awhile, and we had demand from tenants,” Barbier-Mueller adds.

Austin Commercial of Dallas is close to completing Saint Ann Court in Dallas. A rendering shows the gallery lobby. Harwood is the developer and the building will serve as Harwood International’s headquarters.

Construction began in November 2007 on the concrete structure, which has some steel support. A 20-ft-deep, drilled-pier foundation, with slab-on-grade and beams, supports the building, which is clad in precast concrete with ribbon windows on three sides and curtain wall on the north façade.

The downtown site had to deal with traffic and no laydown areas, says Trent Lander, project manager for Austin Commercial.

“The difference between here and an open site is [deliveries] cannot show up whenever they wanted,” Trent says. “We had a more sequenced operation and planned accordingly.”

Shimoda Design Group of Los Angeles created the final design of the building, and BOKA Powell of Dallas served as the architect of record.

The team aims for LEED certification. Austin Commercial has recycled building materials, with multiple dumpsters on the limited site. The building is near the Katy Trail and will have showers in the fitness center for people riding bikes to work.

Harwood International provided the crane and self-performed the hoisting activity.

The developer also provided all of the landscaping, including a 20,000-sq-ft, 12th-floor garden. It specially mixed the soil, mulched dead trees and grew new ones on a nearby ranch and hauled everything to the downtown site.

Austin Commercial is running utility lines to the former, 1920s-era Saint Ann School, which will become a restaurant and gallery to display the Barbier-Mueller family’s private art collection. The developer agreed when the parcel was purchased from the Roman Catholic Diocese of Dallas to retain the two-story school. A garden will connect the space with Saint Ann Court’s gallery lobby.