Judges Award, Construction – 3344 Peachtree

Project Wins Top Honor for Construction and Best Mixed-Use Award

By Debra Wood

The $140-million, 2.5-million-sq-ft, mixed-use 3344 Peachtree transforms a prime parcel in Atlanta’s Buckhead section, combining luxury living with Class A office space in a 50-story, spiraling glass tower.

“The building has striking architecture,” says Jim Feldman, principal-development services for developer Regent Partners of Atlanta. “It’s a skyline building and one that has great appeal at street level.”

Regent has owned the land for 15 years. 3344 Peachtree, with 500,000 sq ft of office and retail space and 82 condominiums priced from $1 million, is the first phase of a larger development on the 26-acre site. At 635 ft, it is the tallest building constructed in Atlanta in nearly 15 years.

“Every single floor is a different dimension than the floor below and had to be laid out differently,” Feldman adds.

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The building curves out in some places and leans in on others. The building lacks square corners but features fins, notches and architectural elements. In one section, the building grows 15 ft from the ground to the top.

“The architect used the structure to create sculpture with the building,” says Skip Loman, vice president of Hardin Construction Co. of Atlanta, the project’s contractor. Hardin broke ground in April 2006.

Those unique floor plans, designed by Smallwood, Reynolds, Stewart, Stewart & Associates of Atlanta, give the building is spherical shape. They also presented challenges for Hardin, which it overcame with a unified set of electronic drawings that everyone—from the curtain wall engineer to the formwork, rebar and post-tension concrete contractors—worked off of to ensure the structure was within tolerance for the skin to achieve the desired shape.

“The architect released to us and the curtain wall engineers the CAD drawings,” Loman says. “From that, the curtain wall engineer overlaid [its] engineering drawing on the CAD drawings. The architects checked them and established the edge of slab for that floor.”

The geometry changed every day, says Billy McElroy, Hardin’s general superintendent.

“We blocked out the slab in strategic places and set up a laser that shot through the building, up 50 floors,” McElroy says. “Field engineering was incredibly challenging.”

Even so, Hardin poured one floor every five days on the first 26 35,000-sq-ft floors of office space and four days per 17,000-sq-ft residential floors. On average, one tractor trailer a day delivered rebar for the three to four daily concrete pours. The cranes worked an average of more than 70 hours per week, along with the two personnel and material hoists.

An interstitial transfer floor, at the 27th level, separates the office and residential spaces. Only three residential columns lined up with the office columns and down to the caisson foundation. Pouring the 10-ft-tall, 31- to 36-in. deep, 10,000-psi concrete beams with hundreds of post-tensioning cables took the team 10 weeks.

One-third of the cables were stressed to the 31st floor, another one third at the 37th floor and the final third at the 41st floor. The curtain wall stayed open in those sections of the 27th level.

“Then we had to hang stages off the top of the office building floors to close in those areas,” McElroy says.

At the 49th floor, Hardin put in another series of transfer beams to carry the load of the roof feature. The project consumed 60,000 cu yds of concrete.

Hardin turned over the first 25 floors May 1 and completed the balance in July, under budget. The company built out the condominium units. Owners were able to customize their finish selections. The condominium portion is called Sovereign, meaning above all.

As part of the project, Hardin built an 11-story parking garage, with three levels below grade. An amenity deck with a swimming pool sits on the 28th floor, the tallest pool in Atlanta.

“Skip and I got to go to the Super Bowl of construction with this project,” McElroy says. “It’s a once in a lifetime project.”

The office/residential mix is unusual in the city, but the developer saw a need for both.

“This building was designed and built by an Atlanta team,” Feldman says. “The contractor and all of the architects, engineers and major subcontractors are either headquartered here or have a major presence.”

Key Facts

Owner: Regent Partners, Atlanta
Location: Atlanta
Cost: $140 million
Contractor: Hardin Construction Co., Atlanta
Architect: Smallwood, Reynolds, Stewart, Stewart & Associates, Atlanta