Terminal warehouse
new york
PROJECT OF THE YEAR FINALIST and BEST PROJECT, RENOVATION/RESTORATION
Presented by Columbia Property Trust, L&L Holding Co., Cannon Hill Capital Partners
Owner/Developers: Columbia Property Trust, L&L Holding Co., Cannon Hill Capital Partners
Construction Manager: New line structures
Main design company: COOKFOX Architects
Structural Engineer: Engineering Consulting DeSimone
Geotechnical and construction/civil engineering: Langan Engineering
MEP Engineer: derivative engineering
Structural engineers/Demolition means and methods/Bracing/Bracing: Plan B Structural Engineers
Steel Scaffolding/Structural Scaffolding: Platform Solutions (PSNY)
Originally built in 1891, the existing building on the Terminal Warehouse property initially served as a comprehensive hub for shipping goods to and from New York. When its original use became obsolete, the building was later used for self-storage and was home to the Tunnel nightclub from 1986 to 2001. With the completion of the new terminal warehouse project, the property has been transformed into a 1.3 million square meter high-performance retail and workplace.
Completed on schedule and on budget, the four-year project represents one of the largest adaptive reuse efforts in New York City history. The redevelopment provided twelve floors of modern office space and cut out the center of the massive structure to form a central courtyard that is the city’s largest indoor park in a commercial setting. The courtyard is surrounded by a street-level shopping area that runs through a 700-foot-long historic tunnel. The removed floor area was regrouped into a six-story superstructure set atop a modern glass and metal frame on the west side of the building, with panoramic river views, terraces and higher floor-to-floor heights.
Photo by Alan Schindler Photography
Given its long and varied history, Columbia Property Trust’s development team, L&L Holding Co. and Cannon Hill Capital Partners knew from the outset that existing conditions, particularly the building’s structural systems, would need to be investigated.
“One of the first challenges was exposing the foundations – digging under the building while we were still occupied [with existing tenants] and seeing the old construction methodologies,” recalls Vincent Rende, vice president of development and construction at Columbia Property Trust.
Exploratory foundation soundings showed that the warehouse was built on piles embedded in an approximately 30-foot-deep fill that topped a layer of clay. Although deep, none of the piles reached the rock. Working with engineers, the team came up with a hybrid solution. The team was able to reuse selected perimeter foundations supplemented with new deep piles driven approximately 180 feet into the bedrock, particularly under the new super columns that support the overbuild. Combined with lightweight, hollow concrete, the feature allowed for the construction of a vertical addition. Structural improvements were also able to proceed without compromising the integrity of the historic substructure.
Photo by Alan Schindler Photography
To meet the demands of different interest groups and tenants, the massive structure was divided into quadrants. The design strategy allowed for the creation of a variety of spaces, while preserving significant portions of the existing historic building.
“We wanted to make sure we kept as much intact as we could while executing a Class A office building conversion,” says Adam Boggia, vice president of L&L Holding Company. “It was a delicate dance.”
In Quadrant A, all interior structural components were removed, leaving the historic facade intact. A new concrete structure was added, including shear walls, columns and hollow concrete slabs. The structure has been built inside the shell with the existing brick masonry facade, supported laterally on a new concrete perimeter beam. For the hollow concrete slabs, the engineering team implemented a lightweight Cobiax slab system in the new concrete slabs to increase column spacing, minimize foundation demands and reduce material. The system uses a hollow formwork inside the middle part of the cast-in-place slabs. Plastic voids within the slabs displace the need for concrete and reduce overall weight without compromising structural integrity, allowing up to a 25% reduction in material weight.
Photo by Alan Schindler Photography
Quadrant B consisted of steel structure, including columns and beams, as well as load-bearing masonry walls. The floor construction consisted of concrete slabs that extend to fit the existing steel beams. Modifications included the creation of double-height spaces and the screwing of concrete supercolumns through the existing space as a new support system for additional hollow concrete floors on site.
Quadrants C and D consisted of an existing heavy timber frame with timber columns supporting the framework and timber floor covering. Double-height spans were added, requiring bracing of existing columns. The existing wood joists were spaced very close to 14 inches on center to increase the space between the possible tracks for MEP. The floor joists were removed, shifted and “bundled” to create more open spaces under the floor covering and maintain greater floor load resistance. The strategy allowed the team to preserve as much of the existing wood as possible.
A custom interior bracing system with an associated exterior scaffolding system fully reinforced the building’s eight-story facade during the restoration work. More than 350 tons of steel for facade buttresses were installed before major demolition work began. Vertical steel frames were installed on both the existing and temporary foundations, with floor supports extending between them to hold the facade in place. The interior bracing was then optimized by attaching the exterior scaffolding to increase its strength and stiffness.
The team also adopted an ambitious sustainability strategy, pursuing LEED Platinum certification, International WELL Building Institute Gold certification and WiredScore Platinum rating. More than half of the original timbers were reused within the new development, conserving approximately 54,000 metric tonnes of sequestered carbon. Along with access to outdoor areas on each floor of the office, curtain walls and high-performance windows optimize heating and cooling with tempered insulating glass units, which also reduce noise levels from outside sources.
