Award-Winning Spotlight: The Station on Washington

The Station on Washington has recently won a Design Build Institute of American Upper Midwest Region(DBIA-UMR) Excellence Award in the commercial building category. The project has also previously won the Minnesota Shopping Center Association’s STARR award for best mixed-use project.

The DBIA-UMR Awards recognize projects that successfully demonstrate the application of design-build principles, including interdisciplinary collaboration in the early stages of the project and acceptance of single-entity risk. All projects submitted for the award must have been completed on time and on budget, and they should exemplify the principles of interdisciplinary teamwork, innovation and problem solving.

This was a true design-build endeavor. We were charged with the design and construction of a world-class student living facility, seamlessly integrated into an active urban site with mixed-use components.

We had a number of project goals on behalf of the developer, the community and other stakeholders:

• creating a world-class transit-oriented development (TOD) located directly on the light rail’s Washington Avenue transit mall
• replacing a defunct gas station, surface parking lot and single story suburban-style pad restaurant with a properly scaled urban development
• performing necessary environmental remediation
• promoting goals of the City of Minneapolis, Stadium Village neighborhood and TOD with high-density, high-quality and professionally managed student living and active commercial uses along the transit corridor
• promoting sustainable design principles throughout the design and construction of the project
• creating economic value through the successful implementation of all the goals

Reaching these goals necessitated overcoming a number of challenges, including

• schedule
• site constraints
• campus environment and safety
• contracting environment

We managed to wrap the project up successfully on the tight timeline, opening the doors for students to move in at the end of August 2013.

• More about The Station on Washington