Recycling And Renewal

Atlanta and the North Georgia region surrounding it have prospered in the past four decades, to the extent that at times the metropolitan area is singled out as a prime example of urban and suburban sprawl.

People and businesses have poured into the Atlanta region. New office parks, retail centers and housing subdivisions have been the logical result.

New construction has been the primary form of building activity during Atlanta’s extended boom, but the city does not consist solely of structures built in the past quarter century.

SHAKING OFF THE RUST
Despite metropolitan Atlanta’s growth—or perhaps because of it—the Atlantic Steel mill in Midtown Atlanta was not able to stay open beyond the late 1990s.

The mill, which had employed some 2,000 people as recently as the mid-1970s, was located near where Interstates 75 and 85 merge together north of downtown Atlanta. There was little question the 138 acres of land had value, but after nearly a century as an industrial site, environmental cleanup concerns were expected to be a factor.

As the mill was in its final years, Jacoby Development Inc. (JDI), Atlanta, made arrangements to purchase the property and formed 17th Street/Atlantic Station LLC.

This decade, contractors have been on site to perform demolition, site preparation and construction work for a mixed-used office, retail and residential development called Atlantic Station.

Jacoby Development and the other development groups with which it has worked have made resource conservation, recycling and ultimately green building a signature part of the project from the beginning.

In the fall of 2004, Atlantic Station received a Phoenix Award as a model brownfield site.

The next year, the 171 17th Street building received LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Silver certification. According to JDI, the office tower was the first LEED Silver Core and Shell-certified high-rise office building in the world and the first high-rise office building in Georgia to receive LEED certification.

Throughout the development process, attention has been paid to recycling, not only as part of LEED projects, but in other situations as well.

According to JDI, during the property’s reclamation some 132,000 cubic yards of concrete from the former steel mill buildings and foundations was crushed onsite and used as backfill. Additionally, some 164,000 cubic yards of granite that was excavated in order to create a level building site also was crushed and used as backfill.

Scott Condra, a senior vice president with JDI, was not part of the company at that time but worked for an engineering firm that worked in cooperation with JDI on the Atlantic Station project. For Atlantic Station, Condra says there were two crushers on site during the demolition and site preparation phases that enabled JDI to "use all that material as road base and as retaining walls." JDI, he notes, has continued that practice on other sites.

He says JDI founder Jim Jacoby had previously been involved in building big box retail stores on greenfield sites and wanted to do something very different when it came to striking out on his own and redeveloping the former steel mill site. "He decided he would rather be involved in projects in urban centers and to redevelop industrial sites—not only to clean them up but to have them be sustainable sites."

Prioritizing recycling, green building and sustainability "is not always the easiest course, but in the long-term we do make a profit," says Condra.

The timetable to build out Atlantic Station has almost certainly been affected by the lending and real estate situation of the past two years. However, Condra describes the 138-acre property as "60 percent built out." Its roster of retail and office tenants or property owners makes for an impressive list that includes Ikea, Publix and Target on the retail side and Wachovia Bank and law firms Arnall-Golden-Gregory and Burr & Forman on the office roster.

Condra says the project has had its naysayers and that JDI attempts to listen to criticism constructively. "At the time, there were people who had looked at Atlantic Station and how it was cut off from the Georgia Tech side of Midtown by the interstate. So we built a bridge across the interstate to connect the rest of Midtown to this site."

As another example, he notes, "Early on there was skepticism about being able to clean up the site, which has been a steel mill for 100 years. It was dilapidated, so a lot of people assumed it also was very contaminated. But when you uncovered it, it wasn’t."

A NEW MODEL
With Atlantic Station now in the property development stage, a lot of JDI’s demolition, recycling and site preparation attention has shifted to a project near Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport known as Aerotropolis.

Much like the Atlantic Steel mill site, Aerotropolis involves the redevelopment of a once large-scale industrial property: the Atlanta Ford assembly plant, located in Hapeville, Ga.

Ford began building vehicles on the site in 1947, and for many years it assembled its best-selling Taurus model at the plant. But in 2007 Ford chose the 130-acre site as among the locations to permanently idle.

Condra says JDI initially examined ways to reuse existing structures at the site, but eventually shifted its focus on how to best dismantle and recycle the site’s buildings.

JDI has worked closely with National Demolition Association member company D.H. Griffin, Greensboro, N.C., since that company submitted the winning bid as the key demolition subcontractor.

"We had known D.H. Griffin from the Atlantic Steel mill project from nine or 10 years ago, and they had made a favorable impression then," says Condra.

The demolition work for the massive former Ford complex started in July of 2008, with aspects of the demolition work lasting until September of 2009.

Among the materials harvested through the dismantling and demolition of the 2.8 million square feet of plant space were:

Condra says JDI’s own tracking shows a 99 percent recycling rate, a figure that can help the 130-acre Aerotropolis campus join its 138-acre counterpart at Atlantic Station on the path for LEED certification.

"The land is on the east side of the airport, adjacent to the new international terminal," notes Condra. "The southern portion of the land is so close to runways that it has a height limitation, so that 30 acres will be parking, including parking for employees at the new international terminal."

JDI has identified a solar power opportunity for the parking structure. "As opposed to having a static cover, we’re going to have solar panels that will generate between 6 and 8 megawatts of power," says Condra. That equates to "about one-third of peak hour electricity needs of the airport," he adds.

"North of the parking structure, we can build in height up to 20 stories, so we have planned a data center, Class A office space (potentially for airlines), as well as having hotels." Also likely is an entertainment district with restaurants tied in to the airport hotels and the region around it, says Condra.

JDI appears intent on adhering to its green principals and is finding kindred spirits among building owners and tenants. "Ultimately," says Condra," the real estate has to stand on its own, but we think these sites being in the heart of the city and at the airport and having access to sustainable energy are all positives." C&DR