225 Summit Avenue Transforming the White Elephant

[ By Richard A. Donnally and Bob Vujcic ]

The building's $8 million makeover included adding 15,000 square feet of space as well as an updated lobby featuring stone floors, stainless steel railings and new lighting.

In today's challenging commercial real estate market, many office building owners are sitting on "white elephants" that are difficult to rent and virtually impossible to sell at an attractive price. For this type of property, there may be only one viable near-term solution: renovate. For approximately 30 to 65 percent of the cost of a new building, renovation can provide owners with what is effectively a brand-new building that can be leased at higher rates than previously, while remaining competitive with rental rates for newly constructed properties.

DVA Architects recently completed an $8 million makeover of a 1960's-era office building in Montvale, New Jersey - the former divisional headquarters of Toys 'R' Us - which paid off handsomely for its owner, Paragon/Ivy Realty J.V., when Barr Pharmaceuticals signed a long-term lease for the entire 142,000-square-foot building.

The original building's one-way horseshoe-shaped driveway was completely cut off from the primary parking lot and main entrance.

The full-building renovation of 225 Summit Avenue added 15,000 square feet of useable space and a sleek, modern exterior façade. With upgraded common areas and interiors, the building was transformed from C quality to a Class A property in one of the most desirable corporate locations in the greater New York City area.

The most dramatic aspect of this project was removal of the existing concrete skin and old windows and installation of a new skin, consisting of neatly rusticated glass-fiber reinforced concrete (GFRC) panels along with high-performance aluminum storefront and curtain wall fenestration.

What Needs to be Fixed?

The building's original lobby was an empty single-story 1,000-square-foot space with low-grade wall finishes, no accent lighting and dated flooring emblazoned with the former tenant's logo.

The building's problems started at its main entrance. It is located on a major artery, but its 400-foot-long two-story front façade was nearly hidden from view behind overgrown landscaping with mature pine trees and shrubbery. A one-way horseshoe-shaped driveway lined with diagonal parking spaces provided vehicular access to the main lobby, yet this driveway was completely cut off from the primary parking lot and the main entrance, which was actually on the side of the building.

If visitors could find their way to the main entrance, they might have become even further confused. The building's original front door was set deep in the shadow of a windowless second-story "cube" projection in the middle of the façade. It lacked any design definition appropriate for the main building entrance.

The primary exterior skin of the building was comprised of five-foot-wide C-shaped precast concrete planks, which were stacked vertically with outward-facing flanges and "upside-down" arched windows, giving the building the look and feel of the business wing of a warehouse.

Inside, things were not much better. The original building footprint featured three wings connected by a 40-foot by 35-foot windowless passageway that also housed a stair, elevator and mechanical spaces, loading dock, toilets and a secondary lobby. The arrangement of the office wings and passageway created outdoor spaces that resembled dead-end alleys. The footprint as a whole created a lack of contiguous rentable space between the 15,000-square-foot front wings and the 20,000-square-foot rear wing. Leasing brokers characterized this layout as a handicap for both single- and multi-tenant floor configurations. Lobby interiors also left a lot to be desired. The front lobby consisted of an empty single-story 1,000-square-foot space with low-grade wall finishes, no accent lighting and dated terrazzo flooring emblazoned with the former Toys 'R' Us logo. The elevator lobby was accessed by a dimly lit, low-ceiling 80-foot-long hallway. The secondary lobby was not much more than a corridor vestibule.

Designing Curb Appeal

Part of the second floor of the building's main lobby was demolished to create a two-story space that incorporated an existing monumental stair.

The owner enthusiastically approved DVA's proposed concept for an "extreme makeover" of the building's façade. This process started with a chainsaw. By selectively removing and pruning existing trees and shrubs, the front yard was converted into a manicured green meadow reminiscent of modern office parks. New landscaping was installed to softly filter the view of the building from the road instead of hiding it.

The horseshoe-shaped drive-up to the front door was replaced with a four-lane boulevard driveway placed to lead directly to the main lobby. The new driveway terminates in a generously landscaped circular plaza/drop-off area accented with brick pavers. Roadways and sidewalks were re-graded and raised to eliminate steps in front of the entrance that were non-compliant with ADA requirements. A new executive parking lot was placed in front of the building and connected to the employee parking lot. Site lighting was reconfigured and replaced with modern fixtures.

The existing exterior skin renovation concept was based on the owner's desire for a look that would be "techie and slick." Obviously the existing single-pane windows had to go, leaving just one major design dilemma: a partial versus a complete replacement of the concrete wall panels. After a couple of early schematic studies and engineering analyses of the concrete panels and steel structure, it became obvious that an all-new exterior wall system would result in the best value-added solution for this property and would ultimately be the least costly solution.

Beauty that's Skin Deep

225 Summit Avenue's exterior and interior renovation transformed the 1960's-era office building to Class A space with a sleek, modern look.

The two sections of curtain wall were joined by a wing-wall, executed in a metal panel skin, which became the focal point of the entrance node. The lobby façade was then given the proportional significance it lacked in the original design. Combining a colonnade-based first floor, pier-less fenestration of the second floor, and a slightly enlarged roof parapet gave the remaining parts of the façade both length-to-height proportional adjustment and the sleek, floating, lightened exterior appearance that the owner desired.

The new windows and storefronts are energy-efficient, high-performance double-glazed blue-green tinted insulating glass, while the curtain wall is blue-green tinted reflective glass. Both types of exterior glass are silicone-glazed for a "slick" appearance. GFRC wall piers and spandrels panels, factory-framed with four-inch steel studs, provided ideal back-up for field-installed wall insulation and interior wall board. No additional stud furring was necessary.

GFRC was selected as the primary skin replacement material due to its light weight and minimum impact on the bearing capacity of the existing structural frame. Although only three-quarters of an inch thick, GFRC can be molded to include custom reveals, panel edge returns, sloped window sills and window head drips, providing a weatherproof veneer and joint sealant detailing, and is virtually indistinguishable from classic precast.

A New Footprint

The main lobby was converted to a two-story space by demolishing part of the second floor. Repositioning the lobby walls created a volume that was narrower and deeper than the original space. This re-configuration resulted in improved visual connectivity with the interior elevator lobby, while allowing an existing monumental stair to be incorporated into the lobby volume as its new focal point. The new lobby sidewalls feature interior glass to bring daylight into adjacent offices. Finishes include flush wood and metal paneling, stone floors, glass and stainless steel railings and new lighting. All other common spaces received similar treatments.

To reduce the renovation's overall expense, DVA called for upgrading rather than replacing the existing mechanical system, and re-using the existing roof with a new extended warranty.