Architects Queried on Civic Center

Thursday, November 17, 2005
By RYAN DEZEMBER Staff Reporter

ORANGE BEACH -- City leaders interviewed teams from two Southeastern architectural firms Tuesday in an effort to select a designer for a proposed civic center.

The building would be located on a 240-acre tract just south of City Hall on Alabama 161, but beyond that little has been determined about the project, city officials said. Still in its infancy, no budget, timeline, specific building functions or even its size has been set.

Jeff Moon, city administrator, said that the notion of a civic center came about after the Mystics of Pleasure, an Orange Beach-based Mardi Gras society, offered last summer to build a convention center for the city in the center of town provided they could use it for their Carnival revelry and monthly meetings free of charge.

Eventually city officials decided to expand on the Mystics' proposal and sought design proposals from regional architecture firms.

"We wanted to just look at doing a civic center on our own," Moon said. "There's not many places on the island for local groups to meet or have a dinner -- we're just very, very limited."
Other city officials have said that they'd like for the building to be able to host indoor sporting events such basketball and volleyball tournaments as well as graduation ceremonies, theatrical performances and business conventions.

Six firms responded with interest in designing an Orange Beach civic center, Moon said. In a council work session earlier this year city officials chose two firms to interview for the job: The Architects Group Inc., or TAG, of Mobile, and Spillis Candela DMJM of Coral Gables, Fla.
TAG worked on renovations at the Mobile Museum of Art and the Alabama School of Math and Science and designed the Arthur R. Outlaw Mobile Convention Center and the nearly completed Meyer Real Estate office in Gulf Shores. The firm has also designed schools in Baldwin County, a music company's corporate headquarters in Mobile, a federal courthouse in Pensacola and several Regions Bank branches, including one across the street from the proposed civic center site.

Spillis Candela, one of the country's oldest design firms, lists on its portfolio, Miami International Airport Concourse A, the Birmingham Federal Reserve Bank, Harborside Convention Center in Fort Myers, Fla., AAA's corporate headquarters in Orlando, as well as several judicial facilities, educational buildings and convention centers, including the 35,000-square-foot Emerald Coast Conference Center in Fort Walton Beach, Fla.

TAG's hour-long presentation focused primarily on the firm's local roots, past projects and achievements.

"There's financial advantages of working with a local firm: We can be here in two hours," said Ronald Taylor, a co-owner of the firm. "We certainly have a vested interest in doing the best job."
Asked if TAG would bring on experts in convention center design, public landscaping and permitting, as Spillis Candela had proposed, Taylor said TAG may do that, but only if its staff encountered something it couldn't handle.
Spillis Candela, on the other hand, brought along representatives from other engineering and design firms it would partner with if it got the job, including Volkert Engineering, which is based in Mobile and has an office in Foley.
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Spillis Candela's team showed off many of its past and current projects, particularly public projects like convention and civic centers. Much of its hour-long presentation, however, was used to explain a "use matrix" designers would employ in the initial stages to figure out how much space would be required for a host of uses, from sporting events to trade conventions. Whichever use requires, for example the largest kitchen, would determine how big the building's cooking space would be, according to the designer's methods.
The Florida firm also showed conceptual drawings of the type of building it envisioned for the project site. Artists' renderings and technical drawings showed a rectangular building divided by a broken or stepped roof line and a pattern of glass and opaque surfaces on the outer walls.
Michael Kerwin, a Spillis Candela principal, said the building could be arranged either parallel to Alabama 161, giving a "great presence on the street" or perpendicular to the highway to form an "L" shape with City Hall.
Either way, designers envision including a "long, deep sidewalk, almost like a promenade," a large green space between the building and the street and a structure that could be added on to as the city's needs grow. Storage space, including that which could hold roll-away stages and large sections of telescopic seating, would be emphasized in Spillis Candella's designs, Kerwin said, in order to maximize the building's versatility.
Council members said they were impressed with Spillis Candella's presentation, particularly the demonstration of how the building's square footage and use needs would be calculated. City officials also made clear that they wanted a versatile building that could grow with the city.
Councilman Pete Blalock said he didn't want to plan anything short-sighted and Councilman Ed Carroll said: "We need something that can be built on without looking added-on to."
Moon said that the council could choose one of the firms and begin negotiating a contract as soon as the body's Nov. 28 meeting.
Also Tuesday, during a regular meeting, the council, minus Mayor Steve Russo, who was overseas on his honeymoon, voted unanimously to:
Approve developer Larry Wireman's plans to add two 22-story towers to his Caribe planned unit development. The towers, 234-unit Caribe East and Caribe West, with 312 units, will bookend three 14-story towers that are either completed or under construction on Perdido Key.
The development along Perdido Pass will eventually have a total of 1,146 units.

Rezone 29 acres along the Foley Beach Express from a category for recreational vehicle parks to general business. Already a portion of the property was zoned for commercial uses, but the council's move makes the tract, which sits north of the Riverwalk Orange Beach project on the west side of the highway, uniform in its zoning.

Doyle Rabren, the owner, said two hotels and a national chain restaurant, like a Ruby Tuesday or Olive Garden, are planned for the property.