350 E. Cermak History Teams With Technology to Achieve LEED Gold

[ By Jim Smith ]

Built in 1912, 350 E. Cermak has over one million square feet of rentable space and boasts significant electrical and HVAC infrastructure as well as robust telecom access critical to enterprise datacenter tenants.

To passersby, the old R.R. Donnelly building, located at 350 E. Cermak in Chicago, provides an excellent example of the gothic architecture that characterized the city’s style in the second decade of the 20th century. Built in 1912, the building’s majestic tower, vaulted leaded windows and elegant ornamentation are remnants of an early age when style was as important as substance to the Windy City’s business leaders whose names became synonymous with the structures they erected. Visitors to the building, however, are immediately transported to the high technology world of the present day as they discover that this historical monument is actually home to an advanced datacenter facility in the Midwest. Supporting the operations of some of the country’s largest and most well-known financial institutions and technology companies, the building also houses a LEED Gold-certified datacenter.

Due to the holistic scope of the LEED requirements, achieving the Gold level of certification for the 20,000-square-foot raised-floor space required the close coordination of several parties. Efforts between Digital Realty Trust (the building’s owner and operator), its customer—a global Fortune 500 customer—and OWPP, the project’s architect and design firm were key in transforming part of the former printing plant into a sustainable datacenter. Originally approached by its customer to help them develop their new datacenter in line with their overall corporate green initiative, Digital Realty and OWPP made the decision to use the LEED certification requirements to guide design and construction efforts during the course of the 12-month project. All parties agreed that the best practices that had been incorporated into the LEED guidelines made sense from a construction and operations perspective, and would deliver a more efficient datacenter to the customer upon its completion. However, all were faced with the practical reality that LEED standards did not lend themselves to redevelopment efforts and particularly not those that would be taking place within a 95-year-old historical building.

The first step was for Digital Realty Trust, the customer and OWPP, to review the five major categories and 45 total sub-categories under the Commercial Interiors (CI) certification to determine those that were most applicable to the overall goals of the customer from both a green and datacenter operations perspective. These early planning sessions were invaluable to the success of the project. All parties agreed on the areas most applicable to the project’s objectives while preserving the architectural integrity of the property.

LEED light reduction standards were achieved by segmenting the space into individually controlled 2,500 square foot segments to allow lights to be automatically used only when necessary.

In the world of datacenters, the two primary concerns are the powering and cooling of the computing equipment to be housed within the facility. As a result, energy and cooling efficiency are key design considerations in any datacenter construction project. The project team elected to channel these requirements into a specific focus on addressing selected certification requirements found within the “Energy and Atmosphere” and “Indoor Environmental Quality” categories. The team also determined that the need to preserve the external integrity of the facility directly tied to the guidelines’ focus on the use of local and recycled materials and chose to make this another major area of focus for the project. Once these decisions had been made, their requirements were incorporated into the overall design and construction plan for the new datacenter space to be added and served as the overarching reference point for all of the contractors and sub-contractors involved in the project from its inception to ultimate completion.

Although each major category of the LEED guidelines offered a number of worthy goals, the project team found trade-offs in terms of what items they elected to earn credits for versus the reality of the deadlines associated with delivering the facility to the customer. Nowhere was this more evident than in the area of the “Energy and Atmosphere” category that offers 11 credit eligible certification areas. In weighing the list of potential areas to address versus the requirements of both the project and the customer, the team chose to focus on three specific areas:

• Optimizing energy performance via lighting power
• Optimizing energy performance via HVAC configuration
• Energy user, management and payment.

The energy required to power a datacenter is an important consideration from the perspectives of green operation and on-going utilities costs. Both of these were key issues for the customer. In order to reduce the overall power level required to light the facility, the team elected to use a standards-based approach to achieve its objectives through its use of the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) standard for lighting partitioning (90.1-2004). Using all fluorescent lighting, the 20,000 square feet of space was segmented into 2,500-square-foot units, each with its own space control. This configuration allowed the project to capitalize on the fact that an entire datacenter space is rarely required to be lit at one time thereby allowing the customer to only illuminate a specific area as required. Implementing this configuration resulted in a power reduction for lighting of over 41 percent.

The team also elected to use another ASHRAE standard to achieve its power reduction goals in terms of the heating and cooling design for the space. As with lighting, the use of partitioning and zone controllers were instrumental in achieving the LEED defined requirements in this area. By segmenting the space into seven specific zones, each with its own control units, the site was built out to allow the temperature of each zone to be set independently of any of its counterparts. For the datacenter space itself, this capability was further augmented through the installation of 56 sensor units that are programmed to automatically adjust to fluctuations in temperature within the room.

The LEED standard for power measurement conveniently aligned itself with the customer’s requirement to be able to measure their energy usage within the facility. To achieve this requirement, metering devices from Digital Realty Trust’s vendor partner, Square D, were installed at key points along the datacenter’s main power delivery paths. The installation of these devices now provides the customer with real-time power usage data which enables them to better adjust their rates of utilization and modify their capacity planning accordingly to ensure that they are able to maximize the efficiency of the site’s energy utilization.

Due to the historical and architectural significance of 350 E. Cermak, the team’s decision to seek LEED points toward the building’s recycled materials certification target was a logical one. Although the visitor is seemingly transported 100 years forward in time just by passing through the building’s front doors, one of the overarching design goals of the project from the perspective of the customer, OWPP and Digital Realty Trust was to preserve the integrity of the structure as much as physically possible. This objective was primarily achieved through a mandated focus of using recycled materials to build out the datacenter’s internal structure where possible. This directive resulted in over 30 percent (well in excess of the 10 percent requirement as required to earn LEED credit) of the site’s framing and support requirements being fulfilled using recycled steel, rebar and roofing materials.

Due to 350 E. Cermak’s Chicago address, the team was also able to achieve another important LEED certification objective through its ability to source a large portion of the project’s materials from local and regional vendors. This reduced the negative environmental impacts of various long distance shipping methods. Sourcing everything from metal doors and glass to roofing materials from Chicago and other Illinois-based vendors enabled the project team to obtain over 30 percent of all materials via these “eco-transit” friendly providers. It should be noted that this 30 percent figure is non-trivial, especially in light of the total cost of approximately $29 million that was required to complete the entire project.

Achieving LEED certification should be the goal of any new building related project. The guidelines focus on efficiency, the elimination of waste, and materials utilization offer clear direction for the delivery of “eco-friendly” facilities. In designing and building the first LEED Gold-certified datacenter, our experiences have helped establish clear guidelines for LEED certification as a standard goal for all of our future development projects:

Each project must begin with one or more detailed planning sessions with the project team;

The specific goals and areas of LEED focus must reflect a marriage between the specific LEED objective and documented project requirements (as much as you’d like to, sometimes you just can’t do everything);

Matching LEED and project goals to provide a clear and easy to follow reference point for all project planning and building decisions.

By following these guidelines, firms taking on their own LEED certification related projects can achieve their objectives—even if they are trying to bridge the gap between 1912 and 2008.