Luxury Living, San Jose Style

City's first high rise condo project sees May completion

By Don Lipper & Elizabeth Sagehorn

To paraphrase "The Jeffersons" theme song, San Jose is moving on up to the big time, with some deluxe apartments in the sky.

The $50-million City Heights at Pellier Park project is the first high rise condominium building to open its doors in San Jose. The 124 luxury condos are appointed with smooth wall finishes, granite countertops, cherry wood cabinets, imported ceramic tile, upgraded appliances, nine- to 11-ft ceilings, generous bedrooms and closet spaces. Each room has bundled Cat5 cabling, plus the choice of cable or two satellite systems. The bathrooms have designer plumbing and light fixtures.

The Developer/Owners are Green Valley Corporation and City Heights LLC. The general contractor is Barry Swenson Builder with designs from architects The Steinberg Group and Berger, Detmer, Ennis.

After Steinberg Architects furnished the design, the architects of record, Berger, Detmer, Ennis, ushered the project from drawings through construction. "We wanted to have a very good design, make it an iconic type of building for San Jose," says Chad Zane, project manager for Berger, Detmer, Ennis.

The exterior finish system was glass fiber reinforced concrete panel, so there was a high level of accuracy required to determine openings sizes for windows, according to Zane, who adds that the benefit of GFRC is that it allows economies of scale where repetitious panels can be poured from the same mold. Construction is very fast with crews constructing a floor a day, he adds.

The downside is that unlike low-rise construction, change orders on the exterior could cause a nightmare.

"Things couldn't be changed in the process," says Zane. "The plan wasn't set in stone, but it was set in GFRC."

During the construction stage, access to the infill site presented the biggest challenge to Barry Swenson Builder. Most of the hard work took place before workers ever got to the site.

Because of the access limitations of the site, which included one-way traffic on two sides, a firehouse on the other and the fourth side landlocked, "[we] spent a lot of time orchestrating the sequencing of events, from bringing materials to scheduling pours," says Steve Andrews, vice president/project manager of City Heights Construction for Barry Swenson Builder. "Vertical transportation of materials is much more acute in high rise because the configuration is a much denser unit count (124 units) per acre. The sequencing and the safety awareness has to be more thorough."

Everything needed a higher level of planning, from the mat foundation through the skin system up to the newly designed roof features. "You're worried about waterproofing details, wind, seismic loads on exteriors. Your skin system becomes much more heavy duty than low rise applications," says Andrews.

The design turned the roof into an architectural element. The original design of the roof had a tipped roof that enclosed a mechanical penthouse level. The team decided to make the roof lighter and more dynamic. Now it is capped with an outrigger trellis and blades. The light and shadows continuously play across the top of the building as the sun moves across the sky.

"The change resulted in a functional and aesthetic improvement for issues like window washing equipment clearance, a lot of mechanical issues like venting, etc." says Zane.

The project is nearly completed. At press time sheet rocking was still being done, but everything looks on track for a May 1 move-in date.

The Project Team

Owner/developer: Green Valley Corp., and City Heights LLC, San Jose
General Contractor: Barry Swenson Builder, San Jose
Architects: The Steinberg Group, San Jose office; and Berger, Detmer, Ennis Architects, San Francisco

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