[KevinFromTexas]

Designers named for arts center
http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/Des...ts_center.html

Excerpts from the article:

A Seattle-based architecture firm known for its cultural arts work and San Antonio's Marmon Mok Architecture will lead the design team for the adaptation of the historic Municipal Auditorium into a modern performing arts center.

The Bexar County Performing Arts Foundation revealed the design team selection Monday.

“I think that team really understood the iconic nature of the auditorium and how to be sensitive to how the community reveres that building,” said J. Bruce Bugg Jr., who heads the nonprofit foundation overseeing the redesign. “We were seeking to find a team that would inspire the foundation, but more importantly the community.”

LMN Architects of Seattle and Marmon Mok will help write the next chapter of the auditorium's story, combining the history of the building's well-known shell with the need for new high-tech theater spaces inside.

Design and engineering work will start in earnest in June and continue until March 2011, when the performing arts foundation plans to seek bids for a general contractor. The project should break ground in June 2011, and the facility be ready to open in September 2013.

The $122 million construction budget includes $21 million for pre-construction services. Of that $21 million, the design team costs will be $14.8 million, according to a construction budget submitted to the Bexar County Commissioners Court.

Other design team members include: Sussman/Prejza & Co. of Culver City, Calif., for interior design and environmental graphics; San Antonio-based Pape-Dawson Engineers and Dallas-based Walter P. Moore for civil engineering; San Antonio's Alpha Consulting Engineers for structural engineering; HLB Lighting Design of Culver City for interior and exterior lighting design; San Antonio's Fisher Heck Architects for local historic renovation expertise, and San Francisco's Timmons Design Engineers and San Antonio's Goetting & Associates for mechanical, electrical and plumbing engineering.

The foundation hopes to pursue some level of certification from Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, a national green building program.