As our team in St. Louis continues to grow and develop, we’re making waves with impressive projects that allow clients to achieve their business goals and objectives and provide residents with places to live, work and play. We can also add award-winning to that list. Recently, Bunge North America Headquarters and Citizen Park Luxury Apartments won Design-Build Institute of America – Mid-America Region awards!
Bunge Named Project of the Year
Located in Chesterfield, the Bunge North America Headquarters is a four-story, 150,000-square-foot, build-to-suit office completed in fall 2017. It offers a highly collaborative and amenity-rich working space for Bunge’s employees, including a 650-stall parking garage, fitness center, full-service kitchen and dining space, game room and training spaces.
Our unique design-build model and in-house expertise were instrumental in delivering this building and winning Project of the Year! Specifically, this project benefited from our ability to deliver on a tight schedule with cost savings, commitment to safety first and collaborative design process.
Commitment to Safety First
From the beginning, Bunge was clear about its commitment to safety. We were excited for the opportunity to work with a client that prioritized safety like we do! Two full-time safety professionals were engaged to provide custom hazard analyses for work activities that met Bunge’s standards as well as our own. We implemented daily safety huddles, job hazard analyses, daily safety audits, weekly safety meetings, custom reporting and regular safety lunches that highlighted the project’s safety record.
In addition to implementing safety goals, the project team partnered with OSHA for periodic site consultations. All of these efforts resulted in a project that netted zero lost time injuries or accidents on a site that saw over 1,000 workers with nearly 200,000 man-hours worked!
Delivering on a Tight Schedule with Cost Savings
Our fully-integrated, in-house team was crucial in achieving substantial completion of construction two years from the beginning of the entitlement process. The entitlement process began in October 2015, construction started in April 2016 and the client moved in early November 2017. To streamline the schedule, the core and shell design process coincided with the entitlement process. Tenant improvement plans were not complete until January 2017. However, phasing the building program procurement and construction allowed us to begin core and shell construction well before tenant improvement plans were developed.
Collaborative Design Process
In order for the project to be built, the site had to be rezoned. Our team worked with the City of Chesterfield to navigate requisite approvals, including site development, building massing, signage, lighting and architectural aesthetics. Bunge also wanted to maintain the project schedule while going through the entitlement process, so we worked side-by-side with the City and Bunge’s executive leadership to meet project goals for both parties. An iterative design process was undertaken with Bunge to develop architectural options for review and approval. We successfully designed, priced and reported back to Bunge on various changes to the program in real-time, allowing for timely decisions to keep the project moving.
Designed with a timeless, modernist aesthetic achieved through simple massing, clean lines and refined details, the office building and adjacent parking structure are integrated into a visually unified design solution. The building's vertical length is broken by the architectural framing element and vertical glass entry expression, along with the recessed glass and column expressions at the first level creating a building base. Architectural precast color changes create unique massing elements. The building presents a strong, sustainable statement with horizontal sunscreens and large areas of high performance vision glass. The sunscreens also enhance the building image through a constantly changing play of light and shadow throughout the day.
Citizen Park Wows with Impactful Design & Consideration
Citizen Park Luxury Apartments is a mixed-use, multifamily development in the heart of St. Louis’ most vibrant neighborhood—the Central West End. The 12-story building contains 217 units, 240 enclosed parking stalls and 10,000 square feet of street level retail with Orangetheory Fitness and Yellowbelly, a new restaurant concept, as tenants.
Some key points of our model that allow us to provide value to clients and achieve success like we did with Citizen Park includes a single point of responsibility, collaboration between our internal team and with stakeholders and high-quality design capabilities.
Single Point of Responsibility
As a single point of responsibility for design and construction, we’re able to establish an early guaranteed price, manage risk, reduce costs, develop faster schedules, reduce owner administrative burden and manage quality.
Collaboration with Stakeholders
Our full team collaborated internally and closely with the city of St. Louis and their Cultural Resources department, the Central West End Planning & Zoning Commission as well as neighborhood leaders to meet entitlement requirements. Throughout this collaboration, our team gathered feedback and designed the building exterior, community spaces and resident amenities to be attractive to today’s discerning customers and to match the aesthetic of the historic neighborhood.
High-Quality Design Capabilities
Citizen Park’s design used traditional building materials interpreted in a modern way. The exterior consists of high-quality architectural stucco, prefinished metal panels and traditional brickwork with a color palette selected through a variety of on-site meetings that allowed the team to evaluate compatibility with surrounding buildings and changing sun patterns. The project is an interpretation of the contextual materiality of the neighborhood. Each building in the area was studied to find important details that could inspire the project. One notable neighbor is the Chase Plaza Hotel one block away. This iconic structure’s limestone base and beautifully detailed brick façade influenced the design of Citizen Park.
One very important programming requirement was to enhance the public realm. Creating an activated streetscape is vital to any mixed-use project. The building’s plaza serves as the link that brings everything together. Retailers are able to use the plaza as an extension of their space. A diagonal cuts through the plaza, offering as a way for area residents to connect with the Central West End neighborhood while also drawing them into the building.
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Congrats to the client, project team, stakeholders and community!