Building in Briarwood
Business to Business Monthly Magazine
Date -- August, 2001 - By Bill Milliken, CCIM
Ann Arbor Area Chamber of Commerce
An Ann Arbor-based developer is stepping in to build what a trio of out-of-towners over fifteen years could never manage.MAV Development will ask Ann Arbor City Council this month for approval of South State Commons, a three-building, 220,000 square foot complex north of Briarwood Mall. Comprised of three and four-story buildings, this Class A office center could break ground this fall, and have its first building ready for occupancy by December of next year. It would include deck parking for 350 cars.
Class A Space"We began work on this job in March," says project architect Carl Luckenbach of Luckenbach Ziegelman Architects. He has the lead role for the developer in its rezoning and planned project petition to the City of Ann Arbor. With a knack for innovation, Luckenbach has also worked to achieve new energy efficiencies in the buildings with glazing systems - or windows - that reduce summer solar heat gain; they will also be "operable" windows, an amenity that translates directly into additional construction cost. His design consistently emphasizes perimeter daylight throughout the buildings. "Every building is a 'smart building' today," says MAV's Rob Aldrich, who states flatly that State Street Commons will reflect the state of the art when it comes to things like telecommunications and internet connectivity. The phone closet of old is now the size of an office. With new "plug-and-play" capabilities, it will enable building tenants to contract for various voice and data vendor services with minimum of fuss.
October GroundbreakingThe first office building - or Phase I - is scheduled for groundbreaking October 1. It is a 94,000 square foot, four-story building with State Street frontage, located immediately south of Howard Cooper's automobile dealership. This building, like the two construction phases that are to follow, will be steel frame construction on concrete footings. Phase I will include a forty-car, underground parking deck, with spaces being allocated to tenants according to their leasehold square footage. "We are on the verge of signing a major tenant [unnamed] for about a third of the building," says Aldrich. MAV is also talking with a financial institution and several other professional firms about space. The rental rate is $26 per square foot, plus the cost of electricity. This number places State Street Commons squarely at the head of the class when it comes to Briarwood rents, according to Swisher Commercial's Bart Wise.Phase I will cost about $15 million to build. Midwest Consulting, Inc. is providing engineering services, and Etkin Skanska, USA will be the general contractor.
Green" Infrastructure ComingStormwater system design, long a functional requirement of site plans, has new standing at State Street Commons. While Washtenaw County regulations mandate on-site detention, the site plan for this rolling, fifteen-acre parcel also calls for a variety of native species to be placed on 1.6 acres of the development's natural area."We were asked by the developer to try and minimize the impervious surfaces, and to use a more natural approach to stormwater management," says Andrea Kevrick, principal of InSite Design Studio, which is working with Luckenbach Ziegelman on the site plan. "In our business, we call it 'green infrastructure,'" she says, adding that they will use a mix of prairie and wet meadow species in their plan. The virtue of these native species, among other things, is that their root systems reach as far down as fifteen feet. This enables runoff water to infiltrate the soil, to shed its impurities as it does so, and to replenish groundwater supplies.
Oakbrook Drive ConnectorOakbrook Drive is not a household word -- yet. But as a condition for its development, MAV will construct the second to last segment of Oakbrook Drive, an interior connector roadway that will ultimately link Ann Arbor/Saline Road to Boardwalk Drive. City planners are eagerly promoting the street as an alternative to Eisenhower Parkway for certain traffic. MAV is also scheduled to install a new traffic signal at the Oakbrook/State Street intersection.
For More Information Contact:
Bill Milliken, CCIM
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