Work progresses on new Thornburg building

Paul Weideman | The New Mexican

7/6/2008 - 7/6/08

After a contentious permitting process and a delay of almost five years, the new office complex for Thornburg Companies is about two-thirds complete on a 14-acre site on Ridgetop Road.

Ricardo Legorreta, who won the American Institute of Architects gold medal in 2000, designed the building in association with Dekker/Perich/Sabatini of Albuquerque. Legorreta was the architect on the College of Santa Fe's Visual Art Center and the adjacent Santa Fe Art Institute building, as well as on the Zocalo condominiums.

The new office project is being built in three sections to accommodate Thornburg Mortgage, Thornburg Investment Management, and the Thornburg resource team, which includes Garrett Thornburg, the companies' founder and chairman.

The resource-team section stands out with its series of curved, rooftop "monitors" designed to admit indirect sunlight, and Garrett Thornburg's elevated, corner office featuring 14-foot-high walls of glass.

During a mid-June tour of the site, Santa Fe City Council member Rebecca Wurzburger pointed out a window and said, "The Northwest Quadrant project that will hopefully come to fruition before I leave the council is right over there. That will be a mixed project with affordable housing and they'll have the same beautiful views as this building."

Wurzburger was one of the council members who supported the office project as it made its way through the approvals process. After the Thornburg plan was unveiled in the spring of 2003, neighbors in the Tano Road area complained that the building's type and scale were inappropriate. Their protest went all the way to the New Mexico Supreme Court, but the project was ultimately permitted.

In May 2007, the Santa Fe City Council voted to issue $45 million in industrial revenue bonds for the Thornburg Companies office building. The strategy exempts Thornburg from paying property taxes over the 30-year life of the bond, although the company has pledged $75,000 annually to the Santa Fe Public Schools.

Thornburg broke ground on the 102,000-square-foot facility 10 months ago. David Miller, managing director and senior vice president of corporate communications for Thornburg Companies, said the construction delay raised the cost of the building from $32 million to about $45 million. "It's primarily the steel and concrete," said Dekker/Perich/Sabatini's Brett Frauenglass. "Prices escalated astronomically during that time."

The contractor on the project is Klinger Constructors. "Klinger worked with Garrett on the Dance Barns for the National Dance Institute of New Mexico and he was so pleased with their work that he didn't even put this out to bid," Miller said.

Klinger and the architects are employing "an overall green-building strategy," according to Thornburg facilities manager David Ford. One element is the porous parking-lot paving system, which is made up of gravel on a recycled-plastic grid and filter fabric, overlying nine inches of base course. Ford said the system is capable of admitting up to three inches of rain per hour back into the soil.

It is anticipated that the Thornburg project will achieve a LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) "Gold" certification. The standard is awarded based on points for many sustainability criteria. "The big ones are the mechanical systems, including the under-floor air system and hot-water radiant heating with adjustable grills below the windows, and the water-management strategies," Frauenglass said. "We have 50,000 gallons of rainwater storage in cisterns that will be used to irrigate all landscaping, including rooftop gardens."

With an under-floor air system, which Frauenglass said is relatively new in New Mexico, pressurized air flows in engineered spaces below the walking floor to workspace ducts. In an article about the system, Ford said the air in a conventional system must be well-chilled because it's delivered at ceiling height. Also, any pollutants in the interior rise and mix with the "fresh" air to be recirculated.

A raised-floor system requires less-chilled air, and the air at the top of room is returned to the air-handling systems to filter contaminants. It is also quieter because there is no fan assist; it allows for reduced building heights and a cleaner-looking ceiling; and ultimately uses up to 40 percent less energy to condition the space.

Employee comfort is prioritized via operable windows and adjustable air vents in the floor at each workstation.

The building has been designed to avoid heat gain from direct sun in work spaces while affording views of the surroundings.

"Department heads and senior officers will be in the interior, in glass offices, and the staff will be on the exterior walls," Miller said. "Everybody will have a great view, and that represents the importance of all our employees in our approach."

The company has a Web cam so employees now working downtown can monitor progress on their future quarters.

Frauenglass said one of the biggest design challenges was attempting to satisfy the preferences of Thornburg and Legorreta while staying within the budget. The design was worked out via models sent back and forth between the offices of Legorreta in Mexico City and Dekker/Perich/Sabatini in Albuquerque.

Rather than scraping the entire site flat, the building has been designed to integrate with the terrain, with parking areas and retaining walls stepping down a hill. When the landscaping plan is complete — some trees will be transplanted at three-quarters their mature height, according to a brochure about the project — the building will be protected from views on Ridgetop Road, Miller said.

The main entry is highlighted by a grand stairway next to a wall. This is a typical Legorreta feature, Frauenglass explained, as are several freestanding walls, some punctuated with rows of small openings.

"His buildings are all about the wall so you see a lot of wall features, but it doesn't always emphasize mass," Frauenglass said. "Also, in Mexico, everything is reinforced concrete. Our job was to take that idea apart, use steel framing, and make it look like it has the mass of concrete but using more lightweight, more energy-efficient materials."

In the Thornburg Investment Management section, there is a platform where guests can look out over the trading floor. In the ceiling above is a lighting feature composed of five large, round skylights and rows of little, square holes containing electric lights, all within a broad, amoeba-shaped ceiling recess. This the only rounded form in the structure.

The exterior stucco of the office building will be finished in Santa Fe-acceptable earth-tone colors (brown, red-brown, and tan), but there will be some vibrancy of hue here and there on the interior. For example, a big, yellow wall will stand at the top of the entry stairway.

Thornburg Companies employs about 400 people, all but about 60 working in leased office space at Marcy Plaza and the First Interstate Building. "About two-thirds of our employees live in Santa Fe, and most were born and raised here," Miller said.

Wurzburger added, "This project is all about keeping our people in Santa Fe."

The Thornburg office building is expected to open early next year.



Contact Paul Weideman at 986-3043 or pweideman@sfnewmexican.com.