Alvera, Cube Named Finance & Commerce Top Projects

7/25/2022
We're excited to announce that two of our Client Direct Services projects – Alvera Apartments and the Cube​ – have been named Finance & Commerce Top Projects!

Top Projects are selected based on the difficulty, design creativity, construction innovation, partner cooperation and sustainability. These two projects exemplify our team's ability to creatively solve challenges and work collaboratively with all project partners.

Alvera Apartments

Developed by The Ackerberg Group, Alvera is a seven-story, 192-unit building in the iconic West 7th/Fort Road neighborhood of St. Paul.

The building sits on a half-acre near the corner of Grand Avenue and West 7th Street with close proximity to United Hospital, Children's Minnesota Hospital, Xcel Energy Center and the West 7th entertainment district.

The first two levels of the building are above-grade, precast concrete that supports five stories of prefabricated wood-framed modular apartment units.

The building was constructed on a very long and narrow parcel. With private property on both long sides, construction access was limited to the site's two narrow ends that fronted the streets. This challenging access was compounded by the requirement of installing the prefabricated modular apartment units. Weighing up to 40,000 pounds each, erecting and setting the units into place required a very large crane that also needed to be accommodated on the site.

The ground level includes retail space and 110 covered parking spaces. The majority of parking spaces are within a unique, semi-automated parking system that stacks vehicles three high.

Alvera Apartments were completed in October 2021.

Benilde-St. Margaret's Cube

Benilde-St. Margaret's takes a holistic approach to education with real-word experiences and hands-on courses to fully prepare students for the future. Located in the Minneapolis suburb of St. Louis Park, Benilde-St. Margaret's is a co-ed school for grades 7 through 12. When they identified a need for a new space to support this work, they chose Opus' Client Direct Services group to deliver the Cube.

The Cube is comprised of three state-of-the-art conference rooms, an open area with collaboration spaces, whiteboards and cutting-edge technology. Two new classrooms were also built during the construction of the Cube.

The Cube was the final phase of the school's capital improvement campaign. Previously, Opus' design-build expertise helped deliver science classrooms and a reimagined entry space.

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Client Direct Services (CDS) is Building for You. CDS is part of our flexible approach to meeting our client's needs. It pairs our award-winning construction project managers working directly with clients to deliver their organizational vision. Whether expanding for growth, optimizing efficiencies, or creating an inspiring workplace – every building starts with a purpose. Whatever your purpose, we build for you, delivering targeted solutions through our client-centric process, to take your experience to the next level. Learn more about CDS.