Aquatic Consultants Getting New Digs

By Commercial Real Estate RICHARD METCALF Of the Journal

Aquatic Consultants Inc., after holding off for a year, has broken ground on a 16,900-square-foot office building at 4411 Irving NW, on a hill just off Eagle Ranch.

“Everybody’s dream is to have their own building,” said founder and president Paul Cassidy. “We finally made the decision to build our place.”

Cassidy bought the 3.5-acre site two years ago, but held off on construction until he had the resources to build an upscale office.

“We don’t have a lot of client visits to our office — we go to them,” he said. For the occasional clients who do visit, he said the company wanted its office to be polished and professional.

Designed by FBT Architects, the building will have a glass-faced entry into an open lobby with a slate floor.

The interior style will be a mix of traditional and modern materials, said architect Jared Larsen. For example, the lobby will have a wood tongueand-groove ceiling with exposed iron beams.

Just off the lobby — beyond a “water wall,” a piece of slate with water trickling over it — will be the conference room.

“It will have really great views of the mountains to the east,” Cassidy said.

The $3.6 million building will sit on about 1.7 acres and include 9,800 square feet of office. The remainder will be used for equipment storage. Reid & Associates, the general contractor, is expected to complete the building by July.

Aquatic Consultants currently leases about 6,000 square feet at 4415 Hawkins NE.

A sale is pending on the site’s remaining 1.7 acres along Eagle Ranch Road, which was marketed by Maestas & Ward Commercial Real Estate at an asking price of $14 a square foot.

Cassidy was a senior fisheries biologist with New Mexico Game and Fish when he started Aquatic Consultants in 1998. “It came to the point where I said, ‘If I don’t try this, I’ll kick myself.’ ”

The initial focus was management of lakes and streams. The company currently manages more than 700 lakes in six Western states.

Growth in recent years has come from the design and construction of lakes for fishing as well as related infrastructure and buildings. Customers are almost entirely private landowners and casino-based Indian tribes.

Locally, Aquatic Consultants is in the midst of the renovation of the lakes at Sandia Pueblo’s Sandia Lakes Recreation Area. It completed the renovation of 86 acres of lakes at Isleta Pueblo’s Isleta Lakes Recreational Complex two years ago.

The company has a staff of 25, primarily project managers and field supervisors, plus two construction crews. Cassidy expects to hire six more staffers by the end of the year.

Fire Academy expansion

Site work has begun on an $8.5 million renovation and expansion of the city’s Albuquerque Fire Academy at Nine Mile Hill.

The existing 13,500-squarefoot building, which sits on 16 acres and opened in 1991, will be expanded to nearly 49,000 square feet for training firefighters and emergency medical technicians.

The addition will provide space for offices, classrooms, showers, auditorium, computer lab and training simulators, said deputy chief Gil Santisteven.

The completed building will have room for a joint information center, if needed, through an agreement with Sandia National Laboratories and the Department of Energy.

Long-range plans include positioning the academy to serve as a regional training hub for central New Mexico, Santisteven said.

The project at 11500 Sunset Gardens SW is scheduled to be completed in May 2009. Funding is through the city’s quarter-cent public safety tax.

Yard to warehouse

Yearout Mechanical Inc., in keeping with an industry trend, is replacing its outdoor storage yard with a 25,600-square-foot warehouse.

“We need more controlled storage space for our higherend projects,” said president Kevin Yearout. “It’s basically putting a roof and walls around our storage yard.”

Founded in 1963, Yearout Mechanical has grown from a heating, ventilation and airconditioning business to system design and build- out. It has sheet-metal and pipe fabrication shops.

The $2 million warehouse is next to the company’s 50,000-square- foot office and manufacturing building at 8501 Washington NE in Alameda Business Park. Completion is scheduled in March.

The need for indoor storage stems in part from work for high- tech customers, including Intel Corp., Sandia National Laboratories and Louisiana Energy Services.

Another driving factor is projects seeking certification from the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, or LEED, program.

Material and equipment used in those types of projects need to be kept clean, Yearout said.

The company has just under 300 employees. Most work in the field, with about 60 working at the Alameda Business Park facility, Yearout said.

Richard Metcalf covers commercial real estate for the Journal. You can reach him at 823-3972 or rmetcalf@abqjournal.com.

(c) 2008 Albuquerque Journal. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.