777 Tower at Novus
General Contractor: Ryan Companies
Location: Tempe, AZ
by Juliette B. Bradley
Just imagine — a model urban city within a city offering sustainable planning and development with a future of creative neighborhood design. Novus Innovation Corridor (Novus) is such a city featuring 10 million sq. ft. of sports performance and entertainment, bluechip and high-tech office space, smart city technologies and innovations, restaurants, hotels and nightlife and new residential urban living, all served by an extensive, multi-modal transportation system.
Located adjacent to Tempe Town Lake and Arizona State University’s (ASU) campus, Novus is progressive, exciting and the perfect place for a wide variety of residents and tenants. Fittingly, US News and World Report recently named ASU as the most innovative university in the nation. Because of projects like Novus, the innovation just keeps on coming.
Catellus Development Corporation (Catellus), in partnership with ASU hired Sasaki to transform Novus into an iconic, world-class, mixed-use urban district and destination. The master development plan for Novus includes utilization of more than 300 acres of land to accommodate both new construction plus renovations of NCAA athletic facilities including the Sun Devil Stadium. Novus is adjacent to Metro Light Rail and the region’s freeway system.
Ryan Companies US, Inc. built 777 Tower at Novus. This six-story, multitenant Class A office building features 160,000 sq. ft. open floor plan with penthouse office space, 8,000 sq. ft. of retail space on the first floor and a public urban plaza. This building is the cream of the crop with high-quality standard finishes, state of the art systems, exceptional accessibility and a prominent presence in the corridor.
Ryan Companies is the owner, developer, property manager and builder of the core shell of 777 Tower at Novus. It was their decision to contract American Direct to supply doors, frames and hardware and AccessNsite for access control for the entire core shell of the building, which include all entry points on the first floor, main entry, electrical room, stairways, root top and current installation in the elevators.
American Direct Senior Sales Representative Tyler Bardwell met with Ryan Companies Project Engineer Vance Arnold to go over their high level plans and considered every opening; where they wanted card readers, how they wanted the doors to function and who should have access to those doors. After this meeting, some card readers were actually deleted from the original plan because Bardwell analyzed each opening to consider who really needed access to that particular room. For example, the IT room had only one person who needed the access and that person could have a key to that door, eliminating the card reader and the expense associated with it.
Arnold says there are benefits to using one source for doors, frames, hardware and access control software. “There is a definite convenience to having one point of contact for everything. Sometimes if you have one vendor for doors and another for access control, things can get complicated, but working with American Direct and AccessNsite together provided us with the total security we needed and the expertise to guide us along the way.”
AccessNsite software allows Ryan Companies to be in total control of the core shell security. Arnold says, “We can go into the access control software at any time and make changes that happen immediately so if we should need to lock or unlock all doors at once, we can do that instantaneously. It is also very convenient that we can make those kinds of changes on our laptops, desktops, or our phones — from wherever we are with Wifi.”
Each tenant in 777 Novus owns their own space and they can choose to utilize AccessNsite software at the entrance to their space so that their one credential that gets them into the main entrance, also gets them access to their tenant space.
This construction project began before the COVID-19 crisis hit, however American Direct and AccessNsite are now (at the time of printing this magazine issue) working with Ryan Companies on Crosspoint, a mixed use project in Phoenix, Arizona and the product selection is very different there because the owner has requested touchless entries. The mechanics of a touchless entry ensure that when you swipe your card, the door automatically opens. This results in having a power operator on every opening. It used to be that power operators were only used for ADA compliance, but now with COVID-19, more general contractors are requiring them. Having touchless entry points is an end user return on investment with significant value proposition to the tenants, however a power operator at every door opening does increase overall construction cost.
Although there isn’t much one can do to offset the cost of a power operator, general contractors can breathe easy knowing that American Direct and AccessNsite can be the proven construction partners to improve your return as they help strategize on the best product for the job, creatively collaborate to provide the best total opening solutions and deliver the job on time as promised.