In 2019, when Columbia Property Trust was mulling how to increase the height of its existing 90-ft, seven-story, concrete-framed office building at 80 M St. SE in Washington, D.C., it chose a mass timber frame over a steel frame for an addition atop the oldest high-rise in the Navy Yard neighborhood. That was a ground-breaking choice. It would mean that the facility would be D.C.’s first mass timber commercial office building.
Anthony Vieira, Columbia Property senior director of development and construction, says the team selected mass timber because the steel’s added weight would have required reinforcing the building’s piles much more extensively than the heavy timber option would involve. That additional reinforcement would have been much more disruptive to tenants, he adds. Vieira says the choice was based more on not disrupting tenants than cost savings.