Renovation of Obsolete Office Sparks Sustainable Solution

In an effort to ease energy expenditures, Washington state has mandated stark sustainability goals for its built environment. But when a government entity had to move its headquarters to meet efficiency targets, it didn’t break ground on a flashy, new “green-certified” office park, but instead turned to a landlord and design team bent on achieving those goals by renovating instead of razing.

When searching for a new home to streamline its footprint, reduce consumption and exemplify the efficiency it espouses in governing the state’s energy usage, the Utilities and Transportation Commission of course considered constructing a new high-tech office.

But as there are 6 million commercial buildings in the country already, according to a 2019 American Institute of Architects report, UTC questioned if it needed to add even one more.

When contemplating reuse, UTC sought the expertise of MJR Development, a private developer experienced both in leasing to the government in the town of Lacey, Washington, near the state capital of Olympia, and overseeing significant building rehabilitations. With Seattle-based architecture firm Weber Thompson guiding the design considerations for such an overhaul, the groups came together with a plan to meet several ambitious goals through renovation.

When designing for a more sustainable future, most people don’t think of 35-year-old masonry, Class-C suburban office stock. But MJR and Weber Thompson were able to envision a bold transformation of 621 Woodland Square Loop SE in Lacey, built in 1987, that would not only revive the outmoded structure into a model for energy efficiency in 2019, but help them dodge the need to sequester more carbon-intensive building materials (think concrete, steel, aluminum and plastics) into an already overbuilt market.

“When it comes to sustainability and high-performance, people usually think of a high-tech, glassy building,” Weber Thompson Principal Cody Lodi explained. “But a rehab project in which you take an existing building and bring it up to a higher level of performance — there’s nothing more sustainable than that.”

The process of converting the existing 24,000-square-foot building into a modern office with two new additional 20,000-square-foot wings — compared to demolishing it and constructing it anew — reduced the carbon strain on the site by 27%, Lodi told LoopNet. “Sure, you can bulldoze the site and start fresh,” he said, “but you're still adding more resources to the built environment.”

With the staggering volume of nonresidential buildings — which stood at a total of 90 billion square feet at the time of the AIA report — it’s crucial to get creative by tapping into the inherent value of unused or underutilized older buildings, Lodi said, especially when almost half of that stock is comprised of buildings that are more than 40 years old.

621 Woodland Square Loop wasn’t occupied when Weber Thompson got involved, nor was it even leasable, Lodi said, and it came with plenty of challenges for the team. “When you tear into any building, old or new, there are bound to be surprises,” he said, especially when a building was constructed to the code of a different era.

Speaking from his own experience, Lodi said, you might find a wall with waterproofing cladding on the interior versus exterior side, or deterioration of a footing, or tile that’s degrading beyond repair. You’ll likely need to replace the HVAC systems, he continued.

Depending on the stringency necessary in determining whether a structure meets code — in the case of this project, the jurisdiction required a full review — you might find there are accessibility shortcomings, or even that the structure doesn’t meet current seismic standards.

For this type of undertaking, he said, you’ll want a contractor with experience in renovation to be involved from the very beginning so you can troubleshoot issues as they come up. “You’ll also want a clever structural engineer on board from the beginning as you strategize what makes the most sense for your approach,” he added. In the case of the additions on this project, expansion joints helped mitigate “seismic issues that could cause the old structure and the new structure to tear each other apart in the event of an earthquake.”

Lodi’s team was able to retain the original floors of the building, install a new roof with an array of solar panels, add two wings on each side of the structure that nearly doubled the size of the building, and they were also able to completely refresh the building’s cladding, complete with new windows, and replace an elevator to create an accessible Class A office — all while hitting cost and carbon savings compared to new construction.

First, “there are definite cost savings when you're reusing existing structure, especially for below-grade aspects like foundations, which usually end up being pretty expensive,” he said.

But perhaps more important is discerning the integrity of what you have to work with and replacing only what’s necessary. “It’s about being strategic in working with your local jurisdiction,” Lodi said. “There are significant cost savings when you determine a structure can support new materials. In the case of replacing exterior cladding, we used concrete masonry unit and high-quality, high-density cementitious board to frame some large open windows.”

“EUI is kind of like the miles per gallon measurement of how a building processes energy. A typical office building would have an EUI of 55 to 65. We designed this building to have an EUI of 30.”

Cody Lodi, Principal, Weber Thompson.

The new cladding and the glazing completely transformed the look of the building so that it has a “strong, symmetrical and balanced façade that represented a government headquarters,” while still being cost effective, since it could be added to what’s already in place. “We were also fortunate enough to add new mechanical systems without substantial structural upgrade to the existing building,” he added.

A new roof welcomed the addition of solar panels, which substantially reduces the building’s carbon footprint from an operations standpoint. “Seattle, within the city limits, has requirements for providing solar roofs on all new projects,” he explained. “But with our practice having such a focus on high-performance and energy efficiency, we find that we're usually installing solar on a lot of our commercial office projects,” even outside the city.

Solar is especially important for UTC, he said. “They regulate energy prices, so it's good to have that story that they're providing renewable energy on their own building.” Most people would think that the Pacific Northwest would not be conducive to solar panels, he added, “but you actually get really good production off of solar up here because of our latitude; we get pretty good sun around the year.”

The elevator, on the other hand, needed to be replaced. “It’s important to have an up-to-code, efficient elevator. The existing elevator was definitely past its service life.” The team had to excavate a new elevator pit and install a new elevator, but the new one better serves the layout and function of the space, he said, and significantly reduces the building’s overall energy use, or Energy Use Intensity rating.

“EUI is kind of like the miles per gallon measurement of how a building processes energy,” Lodi explained. “A typical office building would have an EUI of 55 to 65. We designed this building to have an EUI of 30.”

The experience of adding a new elevator highlighted another aspect of sustainability and energy usage that Weber Thompson considers essential: “One of the things that we try to do with most of our projects, especially when they're 3- or 4-story buildings, is to disincentivize use of the elevator.” Of course elevators are necessary for accessibility, he said, but because elevators account for one of the largest percentages of a building’s energy use, it was important to focus more on creating a magnetizing, “feature communicating stair” that’s welcoming for people to use in the double-height lobby.

Another team, ARC Architects, worked concurrently on interiors via MJR’s tenant improvement allowance, but the teams collaborated extensively on aspects such as security, Lodi said, to create a welcoming but secure government building that has both public and private functions.

Reusing older buildings also benefits other businesses, Lodi continued. Rather than building new in an isolated business park, remodeling existing buildings reinvests capital back into ancillary businesses and the surrounding community.

Part of Weber Thompson’s role in the UTC project was reconnecting this obsolete building with the neighborhood. Just behind the site sits another MJR development, The Hub at Lacey, a 400,000-square-foot mixed-use campus that offers Class A office buildings, courtyards, retail, restaurants and parks.

The city planning department required a road along the back of the UTC project, with access to the building, to integrate the sites. “It was a really unique challenge where we kind of had to create two access points, one on each side of the building,” he said. The back entrance reconnected the area, joining the two sites to form a complex through a park that provides a walkway between the two locations and hosts weekend farmers markets and other public functions.

Weber Thompson, of course, used the opportunity to integrate more sustainability features with the help of landscape architecture consultant WBLA, Inc. “From a landscaping standpoint, one of the unique things that we were able to do is create a really large rain garden to treat the stormwater that's coming off the roof,” Lodi said. “Apart from being a place to capture heavy rainfall before it impacts the street frontage or the rest of the city, it’s also a place where, on the area’s very frequent sunny days, you could have furniture and have ways to sit outside for lunch and enjoy that rain garden under Lacey’s beautiful tall pine trees.”

With the goals of interconnectedness and honoring the surrounding landscape, Weber Thompson wanted to create a really welcoming entrance to the UTC building, Lodi continued. “We created a timber canopy that reaches out and brings you into the main lobby. It's a bit of an architectural nod to The Hub, which has a canopy with similar geometry that features glass and steel.

“We wanted to bring some timber into the architectural language just to reference the Pacific Northwest,” he said, “and bring some more warmth into the mix to contrast against the wall and the fiber cement and metal panels.”