Travis County Commissioners Court
Tuesday, May 25, 2010,
Item 17
>> number 17 is to consider and take appropriate action regarding 700 lavaca street property. A, designate location of commissioners court offices within the building. And b, dell bait to core team authority to negotiate transitional lease terms with tenants. We note that b may be taken into executive session under the real estate and consultation with attorney exceptions to the open meetings act.
>> good morning, judge, commissioners, roger el khoury. We've been working with the court team about the space on 700 lavaca. Today we have a good presentation regarding the second and third floor. As directed by the commissioners court two weeks ago. And what we did on the second and the third floor is to have -- to have all the commissioners be on the same floor, on the second floor, or on the third floor. We have a couple of options on the second and one option on the third. Also, the presentation also does go a little bit into the cost of each floor. Also if the commissioner of course wishes after the presentation that we can have a split right there on some commission on floors, we can come back and present that. I will turn this over to jim barr and ken david for the presentation.
>> we are not ready.
>> [ laughter ] i apologize. I'm not the most technically proficient here. We tried to load this powerpoint.
>> i can mention a couple of things while jim is loading the software. The cost on the second floor and the third floor is very comparable. It is very important to note that on the second floor is we have 25,000 square feet of space. On the third floor we have about 17,000 square feet of space. And the unit cost on the third floor is $45.81 per square foot. And the total of about like 7,000 -- $778,800. And the cost estimate on the second floor, which is 46.98. As you can see, very comparable. 46.98 for the second floor and 45.81 for the third floor. And with the 25,000 square feet, that would bring it to about $1,174,000. It's good to note that it's very important to note that we make the comparison and we make it on dlart per square foot because both are near the same size.
>> and ir respective of who uses the second and third floor, it will still have ton renovated, right?
>> that's correct.
>> so the cost in regard to our decision of how we locate, there's no cost avoidance aspect to our decision making because whichever floor we don't use will have to be renovated.
>> that's right.
>> and i'm sorry, the third floor total was 800 some-odd?
>> the third floor, it's --
>> 800,000 some-odd?
>> if you want to round it off, it's $780,000. And you are right, commissioner, this is really what it is. The cost is the same because we'll renovate it anyway down the road.
>> i would further say that whichever floor we decided to locate you folks on we would probably spend more per square foot on that floor nato just jazz it up a little bit, whether it was the second, third or whatever floor, to make it look good.
>> shhh.
>> [ laughter ]
>> ken, i thought that was going to be our little secret!
>> i just want to mention one more thing also, that what you're going to see today, the presentation and all the design, it's a concept design. It's not schematic design at this time. It's concept. So once we know which floor you would like to be on we can go forward with seght the design -- to comply with doesn't standard and move forward.
>> we made a large file for you. As roger and ken both have said, this is a concept design. We took the program that the central campus team has come up with and we just ran with that. Once there's a decision made about which floor or which couple of floors the commissioners court offices will be on, we'll then engage in a much more personalized effort to do the immediate programming, which is different than what was done before. This will get into the nitty-gritty of how you want the glazing to be in the offices, how the doors are going to work, the proximities of, for instance, a commissioners office with the staff aide, where the coffee bar will be located, the file room, all of that kind of stuff will then go into the kind of programming that we'll do at that time. Once that's done a schematic design will be produced and then be brought back for approval before we move forward. Once approved, the construction documents will be prepared, we'll go through the purchasing process to get a contractor on board and the thing will get constructed. So that's kind of the process in a nutshell. This is pretty much reiterating what we just talked about. The purpose is to graphically illustrate the designs for the commissioners court offices, so we've actually produced a real design. It's conceptual. It's to prove -- it goes a step beyond the blocking and stacking that's being done right now and it's to supplement the blocking and stacking. But this is actually drawing walls and doors and windows and showing that it is possible to put these designs into those floor spaces. The aim of this is to give the commissioners court the best possible information, the detailed information to make the most informed decision that you can. Hopefully it's information that you can use to make your decision more clear. Here are the measurements of the various floors. We do show the first floor on here, just by comparison, i know that perhaps all of you have been over to look at the building. The first floor is between thousand 076 nosf, which is net occupiable square feet. The second floor is 25,000. The third floor is 17,000. The ceiling heights vary quite a bit. On the first floor it's 13 feet four inches for the ceiling height, which is a fairly tall ceiling. The second floor is 9.2, which is a typical office height. And the third floor is 10 feet, six, which is higher than most offices normally have. This is just to give you an idea of the heights of these various spaces. This is a diagram of the building. It shows the two floors, the third and the second, and their relationship to each other. This is the table of contents about what we'll be showing you. We'll run through a series of photographs to orient you to or remind you of what each floor looks like. We'll do a concept plan. We actually have two concept plans for the second floor. And then we'll show you the axon drawings. That's really a drawing where you take the floor plan, and in the auto cab program we're working with you with tilt it and it shows you where the walls are, the doors, you can see through the dallas into the room. So that -- through the glass into the room. That gives you the interior he will vagues in combination with the floor plan. It's a neat way to look at it, but it's a little bit of a complex drawing and probably will require a little bit of study. Here's the second floor elevator lobby. There's also a conference room that we've prepared to leave. It's the barbara jordan conference room. It exists now and has this large table in it. At the moment it can be reserved by the tenants in the building to have large conferences. This is a view from the second floor looking east. Walking into the second floor you can see that there's existing marbles on the walls. The doors are full height and there's a good deal of the office framing is varnished cherry. There's quite a bit of dallas. This is on the west side. The glass looks -- this office is a see-through office and it looks like you just walk right off of the edge. It's floor to ceiling glass. All of that can be modified for the design and we probably want to modify it for various reasons, both visual privacy and just making -- so that you're not looking up into clurt in those offices. -- clutter in those offices. In this part of the second floor, part of the ceiling has been removed. The building is a flat slab design, which means that there are no beams and structural members up there, so it allows for a shorter floor to floor height, which is why this is a relatively short 15 story building. It also allows for a lot of flexibility above the ceiling spaces. The columns that support the third floor are 18 by 18 inches. They're square cast in place concrete. This is a corner office facing the southeast. Here's the concept plan a. This one presumes that there would be for the most part a central entrance to the commissioners' suite. And that is just off the elevator. I have this floor plan here. It's right there. That would be the main entrance. Here's the elevators. And once you go through this door -- this doesn't have to be a door. It could just be part of the hallway and then you would go either to the right or to the left into commissioners' offices. That's the low tech part of our presentation.
>> [ laughter ] we've kind of picked this area here for the county judge's office for a variety of reasons. It -- the judge's office actually has a little bit different program than the commissioners' offices, and this seemed like the best spot for that. This shows up in both of the second floor plans. And none of this is necessarily cast in stone obviously at this point. All of this -- once a decision is made about which of these floors we'll get into the weeds on the decision. This is an axon metric drawing of that plan. As i said earlier, it's tilting it a little bit so you actually see the walls and the floor at the same time, which is a pretty cool way to look at this. It gives you a better feel for the spaces. And this one is going to require a bit of study, so i won't dwell on it very much. It's kind of hard to see at this little scale on the screen. But you do have a copy of it and we'll be happy to answer any questions as we go forward. Concept plan b is a little bit different philosophically in how the commissioners' offices are centered. This is kind of how the offices are right now. You walk off the elevator and you're actually in the office area. So there's no kind of single port of entry as it were. One of the things about the second floor is that it does another department to be co-located with the commissioners court, and that department is located here in this -- in the southwest portion of the suite with the commissioners' offices running from here all the way around, kind of -- they occupy approximately the same area of the plan as the previous concept a. We show the judge's office in the same location. There are some large conference rooms that are part of the broaddus team that was that was developed and those are indicated on here as well. One of the aspects of the -- of this plan, which actually could be done on both plans, is the infill of this part of the two-story space outside of the east plaza. One of the schemes that's been proposed shows the commissioners courtroom. That's one of the two locations that the commissioners courtroom could be located on the first floor. I don't think there's been exactly enough evidence yet in the studies to allow any decision to be made about the best place to put it, but regardless of whether that's the commissioners courtroom or a very large public conferencing center that has dividable walls, i think around 3600 square feet. In order to put the necessary theatrical components into that space, a lot of them would have to be hung from the ceiling on a pipe grid, which would support the cameras, the acoustical clouds, the a track duct work, sprinkling system and all the cabling and various components that go into making a proper theatrical courtroom. And so if that's done from 25-foot nine inch ceiling height, then you have all of those components hanging down from that high ceiling and you're basically looking through that from the second floor. Now, 25 feet, nine inches is really too tall to be an appropriate space for one of those -- for either the courtroom or this conferencing center. So what we're advising -- this is going to require a lot more study. This is not something that is -- that we're ready to totally recommend yet. We need a structural engineer, we also need to look at the architectural aspects of that. But we're proposing that we put a floor across there that would actually produce about a 15-foot ceiling height in those first floor spaces, which is a pretty good ceiling height for a space of that type. Probably it's at least equal to the city council chambers, maybe slightly taller. That would add approximately 3,069 square feet to the second floor, which would allow a more moderate sized department to be added to the second floor along with the commissioners court offices. Here's an drawing of that infill. It's the pink area. Right here. And the thought is that whatever medium sized apartment would be there might grow into that space above the first floor below. This slide is a verbal discussion that is more verbose than you would normally make a powerpoint slide, but because it was doing double duty as both a report and a powerpoint, we've put a lot more words on this slide, so i won't dwell on it too much. This is just what i've verbally spoken about. Here's a photograph of that east side space. Again, to those columns to the left are 25 feet, nine inches tall. The ceiling height on the first floor is 13-foot, four inches. So there's some -- it's a really nice space and we would want to preserve as much as we could some of the grandeur of that space and at the same time accommodate the functional needs of whatever program ends up there. This is a view from the second floor looking in the same location.
>> can i ask a question?
>> yes, ma'am.
>> in talking about the need to perhaps put an infill floor there to address the cameras, lights, system components, hvac duct work, etcetera, doesn't it already have hvac, and do cameras have to be suspended down? I mean, there is -- i've been in a lot of courtrooms with heights that high, so i'm curious -- i don't quite understand why there may be a need for that?
>> the majority of courtrooms are not thee at theatrical space -- they're theatrical spaces, but they're not media spaces typically.
>> you put in the grid work. You have to have the grid work for a theatrical and it has to be above a certain height, but not so high that it makes your angles too acute on your lighting.
>> right. And of course this is something that will require a good deal of effort and study, so there are a lot of questions. There's a lot of things that will be looked at with this. So it's not 100% discussion. We have a lot of research to do and we'll bring -- we'll keep you in the loop on the whole way on that one. And our desire is to end up, i think as everybody, with a really fine courtroom and public spaces for county government to be properly represented in this county. So it's a strong priority to look at all the angles of this.
>> if i may. We will be outsourcing, hiring acoustical engineers to help and be on the team and also av, audio visual consultant, also a lighting consultant and we would like to have a specialized architect that can help us with the commissioners courtroom and make a top-notch commissioners courtroom for the county for years to come.
>> these are other photographs of that same space, just several different angles. This is across the building with windows that are looking out on to guadalupe street to the west. These walls on the second floor are enclosed in half-inch thick tempered glass from floor to ceiling on the second floor there. Again the ceiling fight here is 25-foot, nine inches. Some of the windows would be commissioners and staff offices. These glass walls can be either replaced or they can be supplemented with panels as we've spoken about. They'll require some sealant between the glass. The glass is what's called butt-glazed glass. And originally it had plastic, kind of clear plastic gasket between the glass. Those are missing now, so when you push on the glass it kind of wobbles in a rather disturbing manner.
>> [ laughter ]
>> you don't want to fall against t.
>> exactly. You don't want to lean on the walls.
>> this is just walking around the second floor. What we did was we shot photographs through the windows of what we proposed to be the judge and the commissioners offices. On the second floor. This particular one is taken from the office that we're proposing to be the judge's office in the concept plan. May not end up here, but this is for the concept. We actually have a capitol view there. That's the statue on the top of the capitol there.
>> i loved your notes.
>> [ laughter ]
>> i just can't help t i spent time in the principal's office in school. This is a view from the northeast corner of the second floor. This is a rather unusual situation here in that you're looking through two pains of dallas. This is facing the southeast. -- paines of glass. This is facing the northeast. We couldn't capture this with the camera, but if you're looking straight down you're seeing the escalators down floors down. One of the things that we would propose to do also on both of these schemes is along here, along both the north wall and portions of the south wall and portions of the kind of southwest wall is quite a bit of brick. It's brick veneer on six-inch metal studs. We're proposing to make window openings in portions of that so that even though right now there are no -- there's no glazing in those offices, we would propose to put probably five feet by five feet windows in that brick wall. That would be in kind of keeping with our hope to achieve some leed rating on this project, even though trying to achieve a leed-eb rating on this project would be quite difficult, we at least on all of our projects, we do the best we can to meet those goals. From the northwest corner this is looking out towards -- i think that's the nicona in the holes in the trees there. It's quite a lush view out of some of these windows, particularly on the west side. This is the southwest corner. The tower crane there is where the new federal courthouse is under construction. On the lower right photograph that's the public library. This is looking down from the two-story space on the west side. We're looking through the two layers of glass, the butt-glazed half inch tempered glass in the offices and out through the exterior of the building.
>> now, that also is a possible location for the courtroom, correct?
>> it is, yes, ma'am. Down on the first floor.
>> and so with regard to the infill on the other side, is infill being considered for that space if it's not utilized as court space?
>> you know, in this case what we might -- i don't think in this case our impulse right now is to dem doing a floor. I think it would be a grid that would support the equipment that we've spoken of and looking out of these windows you would actually be looking down through that grid. Now, in addition to the grid, there would undoubtedly be devices hung from the ceiling that are both decorative and functional in that they're often called acoustical clouds. And they're designed to modulate the acoustical properties of the room so you would be looking down on to that. In this case we would be conscience of what that would look like from above. We don't really want it to look like a rat's nest of wiring and pipes, so there would be some consideration given to how that would look, but it would not be an occupiable space on this floor. And in fact, the same thing could be done on the other side if that's how it comes down to it. Moving up to the third floor, we're going to run through a similar kind of thing. We only have one scheme for the third floor because it was far more straightforward. The third floor is the first of the tower floors. Here's the elevator lobby. Very nice finishes. There's marble flooring and marble on the walls. As it exists now. The third floor is largely been -- has largely been stripped of its previous walls and a lot of the ceiling components. The leasing manager did that in order to demonstrate to prospective tenants out the spaces could be built out. You can see some of the duct work and the overhead there and you might again notice that the slab -- the concrete slab above there has no beams or joists or anything like that. That's the result of it being a nine inch thick post-tension slab. Which is where cables are -- cables are set about three feet on center both ways when the slab is poured and then after about seven days, hydraulic jacks tighten the cables and that takes the place of the typical reinforcing steel that's done in most buildings. Here's another -- just a general third floor shot. Ns a discussion about the roof decks. This always comes up. The roof over the second floor in portions here, because the second floor is larger than the third floor, you actually are seeing the roof from the third floor. The roof is about 14 inches above the floor level of the third floor. And they have -- there are access doors that allow you to walk out on to the roof. There have been a lot of questions raised about whether these roof areas can have wooden decks or concrete decks put on them. Our investigation of the building plans indicates that there was a 20-foot pound per square foot live load calculated for these roof decks. A normal floor in this building is 80-pounds per square foot. And some of the floors are 1 -- have areas of 125-pounds per square foot. So 20-pounds per square foot is not sufficient for having a deck out there unless you really go to some elaborate extremes to focus the loads down on top of the columns, which starts getting to be quite a deal because the columns are 36 feet apart. So our recommendation is generally that the roof areas not be used for decks.
>> how would we make them more visually appealing, though, for those who are looking out on them? Because otherwise it's just -- it like you're looking out on a surface parking lot.
>> one of the questions has been can we do green roofs on things like that. There are a number of techniques for doing dpreen roofs. There are some techniques for doing them on lightly loaded roof structures. And it can go to the other extreme of what was typically done at city hall, for instance, which is they -- there's a five-foot depth of growth media there which when rain soaked and having mature trees on it is a huge load. So that would be completely impractical for something like an existing building. But i think there are a number of ways to perhaps incorporate planters. There are lightweight growth mediums that can be used. Green roofs are-- have an awful lot of benefits. They require a real commitment to make them work. The more you get into the lightweight growth medium and the kinds of plants that are adaptable this kind of climate, which actually can be quite harsh to plant over the period of a year's cycle, but i think a lot of that -- we certainly would want to explore that and come back with some answers on the best solutions. But i agree, the roof -- the other thing too is when the roof is replaced, because these are getting on in years and they're beginning -- i think our due diligence reports indicated that these have a few years of life left, but they're going to need to be looked at. You can always go back with more attractive roof coverings, but in the interim too you can put planters out there and some things like that, but we would definitely look at the possibilities for some kind of green roof application. This is the tird floor concept plan. It's a lot more come compact. Because of the parallel graham floor plate you get into some pretty odd geometric structures and when you start lying offices out in here. We were able to fit the commissioners court offices -- and these plans we're looking at the 2025 growth projection, so we should accommodate the court out to 2035 provided that the growth is as predicted. It also allows for a very small additional department to be located on this floor, and that's shown in the top center portion here. Here's the axon drawing of that same floor. And nen then we run through the views. This is a sampling of the views from the proposed judge's office. Bosses of that's are mostly to the south southeast. Here's the northeast views. The northwest, which commissioner brings up your issue about the roof for sure, that's quite an expansive roof on this one. This is looking towards the parking garage to the north and the public library. Here's the southeast corner view towards the frost tower. You can see the top of the norwood tower to the left. And again, quite a bit of roof. And this is the view from the southwest corner. Looking at the vermont house and the 360 tower. The next steps are some -- we're going to wait on decisions by the court about whether the commissioners' offices will be split between one floor or more than one -- well, if they'll all be on one floor or whether they will be split to another floor. We'll need to -- a decision on which floors and which two floors or which single floor. Also a request that if the time is acceptable that we be able to come back next week. Is next week june 1st?
>> yeah.
>> and that there probably needs to be a met methodology to determine which portions of the floors each commissioner will occupy. And this may require more input from us and we're happy to do that. And we await your direction.
>> and really our objective today is to show you what the second floor and the third floor, and if you have any feedback for us so we can work on them. And also our objective is to see if y'all really want to be on the same floor or we're going to split because we have attached one more option if you decide that it going to be split, we have one more option to bring to you on june 1st. Splitting means two different floors.
>> two different floors or more than one?
>> more than one floor.
>> there's a difference.
>> let me give you an example. Like 15 and the second floor. There would be somebody on the 15th floor and the commissioners would be on the second floor and judge -- you know, what your wishes are. We would like to work with them because the commissioners court and the commissioner members' office is on our credit cet kel on -- critical path to move forward with. This we would like some feedback.
>> so what if the five court members suggest that they want to be on floors two, three, seven, eight and 15? What does that do for planting?
>> we'll do whatever you wish, judge. We could do it, but all of them have some lease implication. We need to talk about that on the executive session because some of them have lease implication right there.
>> okay.
>> i was just going to summarize real briefly kind of what we looked at. As far as just comparing simply the second and third floor and keep in mind the third floor is kind of a model of any of the tower floors. That could almost be repeated almost on any of the floors. The second floor of course has more space. So not only could the commissioners -- all the commissioners' offices fit on that floor if you chose to do that, there's also room for at least another small department, maybe another larger department and/or a space for more conference rooms on that floor at the same time. The third floor and the rest of the tower floors have less space, so this scheme here really shows only two conference rooms, a small one and a medium one, and a small department with the commissioners' offices. You saw the view issue. There's different -- the second floor has different -- has somewhat better views if you consider that the third floor is looking on the roof. And if you go up in the tower the roof becomes less of a view issue. The skd floor, one thing interesting about the second floor too and this is a minor detail and may not be of importance to you, but if it was decided that the best place for the commissioners courtroom is on the east side in that large area on the east side, there's a stair from the second floor going directly down behind that space, there would be a direct stair connection between the commissioners offices --
>> very nice backstage area.
>> those are a few of the things in general to consider what we've looked at.
>> so you have -- am i correct that you've narrowed the commissioners courtroom to the second floor or the first one?
>> no, it's actually we're look at both. Either the east side of the first floor or the west side of the first floor. We don't think that -- we don't think the second floor is an option for the courtroom.
>> so first floor either the east side or the west side.
>> that's correct.
>> okay. Commissioners, questions, comments?
>> do you think we are -- would it be right for us to be able to advise on whether we all want to be on the same floor or not?
>> it would be right next tuesday. That will give us a week to mull over it. Whoever has that southeast corner needs to get accustomed to looking at garage space, right?
>> yeah. The garage would be -- yeah, the garage would mostly be on the -- yeah, there's a garage on the north and also one across the street -- across seventh street.
>> somebody in facilities put the judge's title on that space.
>> [ laughter ]
>> actually, it's -- actually, it's a good view out of that corner, out of the southeast corner. It really misses that garage space. I mean, unless you turn hard to the right, you actually have a pretty good view of -- out into downtown towards the frost bank.
>> so judge, it's just a concept.
>> [ laughter ]
>> i was going to spend a little time over the weekend trying to fall in love with the parking spaces.
>> i was beginning to think we were going to escape out of here unscathed.
>> [ laughter ]
>> so i'm just curious why you didn't get the views from the 15th floor.
>> we actually had those and could bring -- owe we'll certainly be able to bring those if you would like to see them.
>> we've got y'all down for june 1st.
>> thank you, sir.
>> thank y'all. Good presentation.
>> move that we recess until 1:30.
>> second.
>> all in favor? That passes by unanimous vote.
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Last Modified:
Tuesday, May 25, 2010 2:35 PM
