Texas & SoutheastTexas & Southeast Construction NewsBest Projects2015

Best Interior/Tenant Improvement: Atlanta Tech Village

In 15 months, a Choate Construction Co.-led project team completely transformed an occupied, six-story office building in Atlanta’s Buckhead area into Atlanta Tech Village, a high-energy commercial space designed to foster collaboration for creative startup companies. As ATV founder David Cummings says about the space: “It’s not about office space; it’s about culture and community.”

Over the construction period, builders renovated 103,000 sq ft of existing space and added on 10,000 sq ft of event and meeting space as well as four kitchens, game rooms, a coffee bar and room for more than 200 companies.

One of the project’s bigger challenges involved adding a 4,200-sq-ft roof terrace that required extending two stairwells and two elevators to an elevation approximately 3 ft above the existing roof. To deliver the deck materials, Choate shut down Towerplace Drive and used a crane to lift steel onto the roof.

Lacking a loading dock or freight elevator, the general contractor and subcontractors built temporary loading docks in order to bucket-hoist materials. Multiple subcontractors used these temporary docks, but only one delivery could be made at a time. This fact, combined with restricted delivery times due to heavy traffic in the area, required project contractors to communicate closely with each other to determine schedules.

Metallic composite panels reface a large portion of the facade, while a concrete patio adorns the street corner.