Sierra Point Hotel

The Sierra Point Hotel Project consists of a 36-story 600 room, five star, full service hotel, a three story low-rise support facility, and a two-story 800 car parking garage with a landscaped roof garden.

The narrow rectangular slab-like form of the structure includes a 110 feet high by 105 feet wide opening at the base.  The high slenderness ratio (height to width ratio) of the structure, 9:1 in the short direction, created a design challenge for the lateral and torsional resistance systems.  Furthermore, the proximity of the hotel to the Bay and the presence of mountainous terrain in the back drop were significantly considerations during the wind load analysis.

A staggered truss system was selected as the primary gravity and lateral load system. Although the staggered truss is widely used in the mid-west and southeast region of the States, it is not very common in this part of the country, mainly due to the high seismicity of the region. This modified staggered truss system did take into account the ductility and strength requirements of the current code and beyond. Subsequently, the steel tonnage was reduced by twenty-two percent, and the construction schedule was shortened by four months.

The existing soil on the site, garbage landfill atop a very soft and compressible bay mud, posed another challenge to the design team.   The foundation system would have to accommodate the differential settlement with adjacent structures due to the continuous settlement of the fill soils.  A precast prestressed concrete pile foundation driven to a depth in excess of 200 feet below grade was chosen to support the structure.