ENR 2024 Mountain States Best Projects
Award of Merit, Water/Environment: Parker Water & Sanitation District Headquarters
Photo courtesy Parrish Ruiz de Velasco
PARKER WATER & SANITATION DISTRICT HEADQUARTERS
Parker, Colo.
Award of Merit
Submitted by: Perkins & Will
OWNER Parker Water & Sanitation District
LEAD DESIGN FIRM Perkins & Will
GENERAL CONTRACTOR JHL Constructors
CIVIL ENGINEER JVA Consulting Engineers
STRUCTURAL ENGINEER Thornton Tomasetti
MEP ENGINEER WSP
LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT Wenk Associates
This two-story, 130,000-sq-ft building co-locates 180 administrative and maintenance professionals. The curved design is inspired by its hillside site, the concentric rings of a water droplet as well as the preserved native American stone tipi rings nearby.
About seven months before groundbreaking, the project team began coordinating with the local electrical utility provider, planning to bring in a secondary metered service from a nearby electrical line approximately 300 yd away. Despite months of preplanning, the application for electrical service was unexpectedly rejected due to a new tariff introduced earlier in the year.
Subsequent requests were denied as well, as the existing Reuter Hess Water Purification Facility adjacent to the new headquarters had sufficient capacity for the new building’s load. After nearly 10 months of limbo, the team sourced a refurbished transformer with a 30-week lead time.
This solution required a ¾ mile trenching and boring operation in frozen winter conditions to connect to the existing primary service. Despite the setbacks, the electrical connection was completed on time and within budget, and the building opened as scheduled.
