The Grand at Papago Park Center

Tempe, Arizona

A monumental water feature, inspired by Arizona’s iconic Theodore Roosevelt Dam, amplifies property value at 350-Acre Mixed-Use Business Park in Tempe, Arizona

The Grand at Papago Park Center, a 58.53-acre mixed-use site along a 1/2-mile of freeway frontage on the Loop 202 Red Mountain Freeway and immediately east of Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, will contain over 3.2 million square feet of commercial development at build-out. The Grand is the final phase of Papago Park Center, a 300-acre mixed-use business park in Tempe, Arizona. Papago Park Center’s mix of uses offer office, retail, and hotel space of the highest order.

At the heart of the Grand lies its spectacular centerpiece: a legacy water feature inspired by the Theodore Roosevelt Dam, celebrating its role in Arizona history, designed by WET. General contractor JE Dunn Construction Company brought water feature construction experts OTL onto the team to install state-of-the-art fountain equipment and a highly complex plumbing system which create a variety of extraordinary water effects.

The architectural fountain, anchoring a park designed by lead consultants GBtwo Landscape Architecture and Kendle Design Collaborative, serves as a unique piece of placemaking and a means of attracting center tenants, residents, and visitors from miles around to admire its magnificent effects, while adding significant value to the business park.

Idea

OTL was tasked with collaborating with the design and construction team under an extremely tight timeframe to deliver a water feature that was aesthetically superior, representative of the dam, and exceeded the expectations of the park developer Papago Park Center, Inc.

In addition, the fountain presented the team with enormous project-site challenges. As the site sits below the water level of the adjacent Grand Canal, which has been delivering water from the Salt River to Phoenix for over 130 years, there was a high risk of water from the canal flooding the work areas during construction if certain safety measures were not initiated.

Meeting these challenges and completing the complicated project required high levels of coordination amongst the team firms. OTL’s prior experience with building complex WET fountains enabled the company to apply its expertise to anticipate potential areas of concern and plan for them in advance with the other team members performing work in concert with its crews.

Also, as a safety measure and to ensure the site remained dry, the team arranged for the water level in the canal to be dropped in conjunction with the construction schedule.

In addition, constructing a water feature capable of creating large-scale water release effects very swiftly necessitated intricate construction within the concrete equipment room hidden behind the fountain’s stone finishes, which were installed by Sun Valley Masonry. In order to achieve this, all aspects of the fountain were designed to hide every visual trace of equipment room so that viewers are able to focus purely on the water, the finish materials, and the effects created when the two interact.

Lastly, one of the reflecting pools at the base of the simulated dam is able to quickly drain away to a storage tank so that the flat deck can be used for a variety of purposes.

Impact

OTL’s craftsmanship was key in bringing Papago Park Center, Inc. and WET’s vision for the fountain to life through a variety of sudden cascading flows simulating large water releases from the Roosevelt Dam which supplies water to the nearby Grand Canal, beautifully honoring this historical landmark.

Along with elevating the value of this iconic business park and representing its local cultural heritage, the fountain will continue to delight and inspire everyone who visits the center for many years to come.