Buckhead Goes Vertical

Luxury living reaches for new heights in Atlanta’s Midtown and Buckhead areas.

By Debra Wood

Peachtree Road from Midtown to Buckhead retains its allure as one of Atlanta’s most desired addresses and has attracted some of the city’s most significant new projects.

“Buckhead is booming,” says Mickey Gamble, vice president of Bovis Lend Lease in Atlanta, which is building the $150 million St. Regis Hotel and Residences in Buckhead. “And there are several large projects in Midtown.”

Bill Pinto, president of Hardin Construction Co. of Atlanta, adds, “Midtown and Buckhead continue to be strong, probably the strongest markets [in Atlanta].”

Hardin began construction in April 2006 on 3344 Peachtree, a $139 million, 50-story office, retail and residential condominium tower in Buckhead.

St. Regis Hotel and Residences

General contractor Bovis Lend Lease began construction on the St. Regis Hotel and Residences for SR Hotel Development of Atlanta in December 2006. The 26-story, 636,000-sq-ft tower, designed by Rabun Rasche Rector & Reece of Atlanta, contains a parking deck, 10 floors of luxury hotel and 15 floors of residential condominiums. Each of the 52 condo units has its own floor plan. Owners had the option to work with one of four architects.

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The hotel features 150 rooms, including a 2,500-sq-ft presidential suite; 6,000-sq-ft spa; 12,500-sq-ft fitness center; a terrace on the amenities deck; two restaurants; 9,000-sq-ft ballroom with 100-ft clear spans; and 111,820 sq ft of parking.

The project will be completed later this year.

The structure consists of concrete columns, sheer walls and post-tensioned horizontal slabs and rebar.

“The building has 11 sheer walls,” says Thomas Replogle, project manager for Bovis. “Typically you see columns. The sheer walls make it unique and a challenge from a schedule standpoint because of the amount of vertical work we have to do to set the next level of slab.”

The sheer wall system keeps the building rigid and provides for a lot of open spaces, Replogle says. The design allows condominium owners freedom to install a wine cabinet or extensive book shelving, without underpinning the structural capacity.

High-end finishes, such as imported stone and a silver-leaf ceiling, will set the building apart and help it achieve top-level hotel ratings. The exterior will be clad in architectural precast panels welded to the structure.

Bovis expects to top out in April and finish the job by the end of 2008.

3344 Peachtree

Destined to be Buckhead’s tallest structure, 3344 Peachtree, a 1 million-sq-ft, mixed-use building in the Tower Place development, combines 535,948 sq ft of class-A office space with 361,068 sq ft of residential. The 82-unit condominium portion is called the Sovereign. The project also includes a 1,900-car parking deck for the offices and a 470-car garage in the tower for the residences.

Smallwood Reynolds, Stewart, Stewart and Associates of Atlanta designed the 635-ft tower, the tallest building to be built in Atlanta in more than a decade. Regent Partners of Atlanta is the developer.

The post-tensioned, concrete-frame building sits on 140 caissons. More than 415,000 sq ft of glass curtain wall clads the building. Each panel is customized to the structure.

“The building is designed as a piece of art or sculpture,” says Skip Loman, site vice president for Hardin. “Every floor plate is different. No floor is the same, and the edge of slab moves on each floor. Given the curving and leaning features, engineering and layout has been a real challenge.”

The floor plates fan out, giving the appearance that the building twists or swirls. At each floor the change amounts to only 2 or 3 in., but taken as a whole, it produces a dramatic effect.

Hardin brought the curtain wall subcontractor, Jamco of Atlanta, in early to assist in the skin-system design. Each piece of curtain wall was different and fit to the building like pieces to a puzzle.

The design team shared electronic files. Jamco designed the skin framework and developed the required edge-of-slab drawings needed by the other trades. Once the architects signed off, those drawings were sent to the formwork and reinforcing subcontractors and vendors. With the entire team working off the same drawings, it decreased the chance of misfits. Consequently, Hardin has experienced no problems attaching the skin to the structure.

Hardin topped out in November and was tracking one to two weeks early on the 119-week schedule, projecting completion early in July.

Holder of Atlanta is building the $165 million Mansion on Peachtree in Buckhead for City Center Properties of Atlanta. The 42-story, 605,000-sq-ft, octagon-shaped tower contains a 15-story, 127-room hotel to be operated by Rosewood Hotels and Resorts; 27 floors of multimillion-dollar residential condominiums; and three levels of underground parking and mechanical space.

A stand-alone, two-story restaurant is being built at the front of the project, and at the back, a terraced English garden, an indoor pool pavilion and three residential town homes are being constructed.

A 15-ft-thick mat foundation at the central elevator shaft and drilled piers, 8 to 18 ft in diameter with some drilled to up to 40 ft, support the concrete-frame building. The hotel portion employs post-tensioned, tabled concrete flat slabs. The condo floors are a poured deep-pan beam and slab construction, with an occasional post-tension beam.

Two sloped columns start at the first level and go up at an angle, traveling diagonally through several floors. They bring the load to the drilled piers without adding additional columns that would break up the lobby’s open space.

“With these, the reinforcing steel, the vertical rebar, had to be coupled together,” says Pete Pemantell, senior project manager for Holder. “There are couplers at every level, and the steel is basically continuous from where they start to where they finish. You are forming them on an angle. There’s shoring for that, because now it has a downward load.”

At the 15th floor, steel trusses form a transfer floor to shift loads from the outside of the residential floors to columns in the interior core.

“The massive steel trusses on the 15th floor allowed them to make the building a lot smaller,” Pemantell adds. “The trusses were so large, they couldn’t be hoisted with a tower crane and put in place. They had to be brought up in pieces and assembled on the 15th floor. We were basically shut down on the 15th floor for four or five weeks doing the transfer floor.”

The team then resumed its one floor-per-week schedule.

The skin consists of a precast concrete with punch windows. On the lower levels, fluted columns and trim surround the windows. Each residence has a terrace or balcony covered with imported green granite. Altogether, 19 types of imported stone were installed throughout the building.

Holder expects to finish construction in late March.

1010 Midtown

General contractor Brasfield & Gorrie of Atlanta started work on the $105 million 1010 Midtown mixed-use project for 1010 Peachtree Partners of Atlanta in August 2006. The 35-story, 1 million-sq-ft, curved tower, designed by Rule Joy Trammell + Rubio of Atlanta, features 38,000 sq ft of retail and restaurants; 441 condominiums; and a 270,270-sq-ft, 810-car parking deck.

“All the units facing Peachtree and on the south end of the building have a direct view down Peachtree into downtown Atlanta,” says Nancy Springfield, Brasfield & Gorrie spokesperson.

The city would not allow Brasfield & Gorrie to close the sidewalk on Peachtree during construction, so the company erected a covered and lighted, 13-ft-tall pedestrian walkway.

About 840 16-in.-diameter auger-cast piles, at an average length of 43 ft, support the concrete-frame structure. The project will consume 48,000 cu yds of concrete, 3,600 tons of rebar and 950,000 lbs of post-tension cables.

The project is scheduled to top out in May and wrap up by March 2009.

The project represents the first phase of the more than 3 million-sq-ft, $2 billion development, with offices and hotels, called 12th & Midtown. The development team includes Daniel Corp. of Birmingham, Ala.; Selig Enterprises of Atlanta; MetLife of New York; and Canyon-Johnson Urban Funds of Beverly Hills, Calif.

Useful Sources

3344 Peachtree
http://www.3344peachtree.com

12th & Midtown
http://www.12thandmidtown.com/

The Mansion on Peachtree
http://www.mansiononpeachtree.com/