Tierra Adentro of New Mexico Charter School
Albuquerque, NM
TEAM
MEP: Testudo Engineering
Civil Engineering: Bohannan Huston
PROJECT SIZE
38,000 sq. ft
Tierra Adentro of New Mexico Charter School (TANM), founded in 2009, is a state of New Mexico affiliated charter school with a focus on flamenco dance, arts, artisanship, and academics. Design Plus has been an active supporter of and volunteer for TANM since it’s inception. We volunteered our professional services to search, evaluate and advise for the selection of lease spaces to house the school, and assisted them with bringing two locations in compliance with Building Code and state of New Mexico PSFA requirements.
TANM had been looking for a permanent home for the last seven years, along with options for securing capital funds to build the facility. Design Plus connected the school governing council with one of our client/developer/contractors; Palindrome Communities and Pacificap Construction. This collaboration resulted in a successful pathway for the school to develop a brand-new facility which would accommodate their diverse program and space needs.
To allow for leveraging multiple funding streams (CDFI funds for the shell, State funding for technology, and private finance for the majority of interior TI) Design Plus developed the project with an exterior building and some interior specialized spaces such as dance and music studios using traditional construction methods, while the majority of other interior spaces such as offices, classrooms, and labs were constructed with DIRTT, a “smart” interior component-based wall system incorporating integrated power, IT and AV.
The constriction commenced in the height of the COVID-19 pandemic which greatly impacted costs and schedules. However, with collective efforts of the Design Plus team, the general contractor, and DIRTT team, we were able to limit change orders to $173,000 (2% of construction cost) and deliver the facility at $208/sf. The balance of funding saved from the project contingency was used to complete interior construction of 3 future classrooms.
