CREJ

/ BUILDING DIALOGUE / MARCH 2017

three cranes and the lot suddenly became very tight, neces-

sitating more coordination than usual.

Implementing pull planning on the job allowed for that,

says Mortenson. “You finish one operation and it’s literally

just minutes until the next one comes in,” he notes.

Another challenge has been “the shortage of skilled

craftsmen in the Colorado market,” adds Brian Parr, GE

Johnson’s project manager for Granite Place.

Regardless, the project has run like clockwork.

Blake Mourer, principal of Open Studio Architecture in

Denver, says his firm has had a terrific working relation-

ship with Confluent. In the last five years, Open Studio has

designed The LAB, TriZetto's headquarters, and several oth-

er projects in the Denver area for the developer before tak-

ing on Granite Place.

“We got real familiar with the site and what it would

yield,” says Mourer of Granite Place. “What we found was

this would be a pretty darn good site for office.” Granite and

Confluent “liked the fact they could have a lot of density in

a small footprint.”

Because it’s a spec project, “We’ve got to right-size the floor

plates and the building overall,” he adds. “We’ve done this

before, but having a true column-free plate was really im-

portant to us,” he adds. “We pushed for it.” The million-dol-

lar question: “How can we eliminate all of these end-cap

columns to create long-term flexibility?”

The facade features different shades of precast concrete

with a surprising amount of glass in floor-to-ceiling cur-

tain walls, he notes. “They wanted it to feel timeless.”

Granite’s three-tower office development in Plano, Texas,

/ Granite Place at Village Center: A New Breed of Office /