1180 Peachtree

Developer: Hines
Owner: National Office Partners Limited Partnership, a partnership of the California Public Employees' Retirement System and Hines
Location: Atlanta
Cost: $120 million
Contractor: Turner Construction Co.
Architect: Pickard Chilton Architects, New Haven, Conn.

1180 Peachtree is a 41-story, 670,000 sq.-ft., commercial office high-rise building located in the heart of Midtown Atlanta. Designed by Pickard Chilton Architects, the building will be the new home for Atlanta-based law firm King & Spalding, which will lease approximately 416,000 sq. ft. of space on 17 separate floors.

The law firm's commitment to the new building was a major driver of the project's construction, said John Heagy, vice president of marketing for Hines.

"Honestly, we mitigated our long-term risk just based upon King & Spalding's occupancy," he said. "It's rare that a building of this quality gets built in any market primarily because of the incredible cost. It takes a unique tenant like King & Spalding to justify building a building like this."

The new office tower was built on land that was purchased from Woodruff Arts Center and developed by Hines, alongside what is planned to be the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra's new $300 million Symphony Hall.

1180 Peachtree will contain retail space on the first two floors, along with two high-end restaurants located at each end of the building. Floors three through 14 will comprise a 1,100-vehicle parking structure that is clad to blend in with the remainder of the building.

Hines selected Turner Construction Co. as the general contractor for the project in 2003, with the contractor's completion deadline in late 2005.

The 1180 Peachtree office building will be the tallest building constructed in Atlanta in more than a decade and was precertified for silver status in the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Core and Shell Development program sponsored by the U.S. Green Building Council, the nation's leading evaluator for green building. The tower was precertified based on its submission of documented plans to satisfy more than 30 green and high-performance requirements.

Going into the project, one goal was to construct a cost-effective curtain-wall system that was energy- and space-efficient and provided a unique character to the building. Working with a local curtain-wall manufacturer, the construction and design group decided on a system that puts the structure of the system outside the building. This provided for more leasable space inside the building as well as some shading from the sun.

The system also enabled the use of 10-ft., floor-to-ceiling glass inside all office spaces. A lighted veil extends 120 ft. atop the curtain-wall system, creating a distinguishing design characteristic while at the same time diminishing the heat-island effect on the building's roof.

Also, the schedule dictated that tenant build-out on floors 15 through 41 begin within 12 months of groundbreaking. To accomplish this goal, Turner and Pickard came up with the concept of splitting the structure in half and only constructing the part of the parking deck - the first 14 floors of the building - that supports the office tower.

According to Turner, the challenge here was to only form and place half of the floor plate for the first 14 floors, without leaving 20-ft. spans of reinforcing steel hanging off the side of the building. To do this, a construction joint was created just outside the tower footprint and the reinforcing steel was terminated using lentons.

Once the tower footprint was cast to the 14th level, a separate concrete operation was started to complete the first 14 floors of parking structure while the tower structure continued to the roof. Solving this dilemma cost more than $150,000 to implement but enabled the formwork to cycle more quickly and ultimately trimmed the schedule by an estimated 14 weeks.

Achieving LEED certification was another area that required increased attention from the design and construction firms.

Together, Turner and Pickard utilized energy-recovery systems, water-reclamation systems, lighting-control systems, low VOC paints, recycled materials, exposure of interiors to direct sunlight, low-water plantings and drip irrigation and extensive building commissioning.

The team accumulated enough points for 1180 Peachtree to become the first high-rise office building in the world to be precertified for silver status in the U.S. Green Building Council's LEED core and shell program.