The Plaza Colonnade is a 340,000 square foot, eleven-story high-rise office building. The Kansas City Public Library occupies the first two floors (49,000 square feet), while the remaining nine floors (291,000 square feet) are leased office space. A seven-story parking garage was constructed on-site to provide parking for 1,290 cars. The total construction cost for the project was $35 million.
We provided the mechanical, electrical, and plumbing design for the core and shell construction of the office, library, and parking garage areas.
The schematic design included an energy usage simulation of the building and building systems using the Trane Trace® program. The simulation was used to aid the architect in evaluating and selecting the most cost effective, energy efficient building materials for construction. For example, the simulations led to the selection of a Low-E glass with a 0.31 U-Value and 0.31 Shading Coefficient, a very efficient glass.
The mechanical system selected consisted of a self-contained air handling unit on each floor with water-cooled compressors. The air-handling systems are fan powered variable air volume (FPVAV). An energy recovery unit preconditions the outside air by recovering the thermal and latent (humidity) energy from the building’s general exhaust air and transferring that energy, minus the contaminants of the exhaust air to the outside air stream by heating or cooling, humidifying or dehumidifying the air depending on the season.
Power to operate the life safety system as well as critical building functions during a power outage is provided by a 750-kW engine generator. The system is designed and tested to automatically start and transfer the emergency building load to the generator through automatic transfer switches.
The MEP systems were designed to exceed minimum requirements of the 2000 International Building Code (IBC) for high-rise buildings.
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