Destination: Atlantic Station

Jan 1, 2006 12:00 PM, By Randy Southerland

One might never guess that this bustling urban retail development sits upon what once was a massive steel plant. In fact, few of the throngs of shoppers who crowd the broad avenues of Atlantic Station's retail district in Atlanta are likely to give a thought to its storied history, or to the massive changes that have taken place on this piece of one-time industrial earth.

The $2 billion Atlantic Station project is a 138-acre reclamation and redevelopment of the former Atlantic Steel Mill site. Located in the urban core of Atlanta along two of the city's major interstates, it is a testament to mixed-use development and so-called “smart growth,” high-density sustainable development.

The project was developed by AIG Global Real Estate Investment Corp. and Atlanta-based Jacoby Development. The community plan includes more than one million square feet of retail and restaurants, 5,000 residences, six million square feet of office space, 1,000 hotel rooms and 11 acres of public parks.

Atlantic Station began in 1997 with a $10 million remediation of contaminated soil using funds from a tax allocation district (TAD) to fund cleanup and infrastructure in this neglected and blighted area. Today, all hints of those early days are gone.

Much effort has gone into making it a reality, and few know more about how much effort and technical expertise it took to open Atlantic Station than those charged with responsibility for ensuring its safety.

Security is key

Officials from the local office of Johnson Controls Inc. were among the first to be called on when Atlanta-based real estate leasing and development firm Carter needed to install a variety of monitoring devices throughout the retail district.

The Atlantic Station parking deck lies directly underneath the main shopping area. The 38-acre, four-level (street and three below) central parking structure is designed to accommodate more than 8,000 automobiles. It provides the main entrance to Atlantic Station and serves as the foundation for the buildings above it.

The project called for a unified installation of monitoring equipment ranging from CCTV and access control to carbon monoxide [CO] detection and exhaust equipment.

“This was a highly complex project delivered under a constrained schedule,” says Patti Neal, Carter project manager.

With time such a critical issue and the public opening scheduled just a few months away, Carter wanted an integrator that could ensure a smooth project with no implementation issues.

“We had just 12 to 16 weeks to finish this project,” explains Steve Cory, Johnson Controls Atlanta branch manager.

Atlantic Station presented a formidable challenge in terms of both time and logistics. The grand opening for the retail district surrounding the parking deck was already set, creating a highly compressed schedule. In addition, the scope of the project went through several revisions leading up to the final document. Then, once work got under way, like a giant puzzle, the security installation had to coordinate with a variety of construction trades that had to finish their craft first before Johnson Controls could get started.

One of the major jobs — and perhaps the most time-sensitive — was getting the parking deck ready to secure a Certificate of Occupancy from the local fire inspector.

That task began with the installation of the company's Metasys Building Control System and CO Monitoring Sensors. Placed throughout the parking deck, these monitors detect carbon monoxide build-up from auto traffic and then activate a series of fans to remove the odorless but toxic gas.

In addition, Johnson Controls also implemented a fire alarm monitoring and activation system using the Metasys IFC-640 Intelligent Fire Controller.

“The overriding consideration on everyone's mind was to get the Certificate of Occupancy,” explains Rick Ford, Johnson Controls Georgia fire and security team leader, who served as project manager. “It was issued on the first inspection by the fire inspector, which was an extremely important goal because you can have all the businesses open, but if you can't park anywhere, it's not going to do you any good.”

Developing the system

From the beginning, the security team was determined to offer the client the best system installation possible. That meant making changes to the original design even as they installed the system around the work being done by the general contractor.

“Originally the design [of the parking deck] was for three fire alarm panels,” Cory says. “But we elected to split it into quadrants and put in four panels. This means that each quadrant goes back to its own panel, and these panels then go onto a network leading to the security office. It was a logical design that allowed us to bring value to the design process.”

Another important part of the project included the issue of “public safety and protecting the public as they live, work and play here,” Cory adds.

Security in the parking decks and at street level was enhanced by the installation of 150 Stentofon Alphacom Emergency Call Stations provided by Kansas City, Mo.-based Zenitel USA. These blue light call boxes serve two functions — security and information.

“The stations have two buttons,” Ford says. “One is for information where you can ask for directions and the other is emergency. They are designed not only to protect the infrastructure from a security point of view, but many of the call boxes focus the nearest cameras on the area during an emergency.”

The call station signals route back to the central monitoring station in the parking deck's security office. There, private security officers monitor Sony plasma monitors along with smaller LCD computer monitors. When an emergency call comes in, a Johnson Controls P2000LE Security Management System calls up one of 320 CCTV cameras provided by Pelco.

All of the retail buildings in the district feed into the system even as the individual tenant spaces provide their own monitoring and fire protection.

“Any kind of flow in a fire protection pipe in any of these buildings is going to be picked up at the building level as well as in the main fire alarm channel here,” Neal says. “So if an event happens where a building has flow [from sprinklers] or a strobe goes off in a tenant space, it calls the police, and it calls security down here.”

Designing and building the system proved to be particularly difficult because they were not working with a completed structure.

“One of the challenges of building out this system was that this was not here,” Cory says of the control room with its large plasma screens and uniformed officers.

Working backwards

In fact, because so much work was under way, it proved impossible to construct the system in the normal manner. Johnson Controls had to begin both design and implementation in the outer areas.

“Basically we had to take and install the systems pretty much what I consider backwards,” Ford says. “Instead of starting from a central point and moving out, we went to the outer edge and moved back in.”

That required considerable coordination with the other builders and contractors such as construction, drywall, electrical, plumbing and HVAC working side-by-side.

The coordination of contractors on one building is a challenge, but on a facility this size is huge,” Cory says. “It's a massive scheduling challenge.”

The nature of the tasks required that security know what others were doing. A worker putting up an awning on a building entrance could obscure the view of a camera. Even signage and landscaping could render a part of the security system useless if not handled properly.

A good example of the value of communication came about when the closet to house the computers and other security monitoring equipment was built. It had to provide a space no less than 9-ft. by 12-ft. to meet all clearances for proper installation and maintenance of equipment. When finished, the space had been shortened and rendered too small for their needs.

“We met with VCC and Carter, relayed the information and within a couple of days they were expanding this wall out to meet the requirements,” Ford says.

Innovative security

Contained within the control room are the brains of the system — a P2000LE Security System. In addition, CCTV is handled through 20 of Johnson Controls Digital Vision Network [DVN] 3016 Digital Video Recorders that combine varying recording modes with self-contained motion detection features, external alarm inputs and built-in relay outputs. Images are digitally signed and encrypted to protect against tampering. Images are recorded at a rate of four frames-per-second by the cameras and then are fed back into the system where they can be stored as long as 30 days.

“All 16 channels are recording all the time,” Ford says. “If you can imagine the amount of recording that's actually moving through time, it's a huge amount of data, but it only saves the video that contains motion.”

Additional security was provided through an access control system for 38 doors on the parking deck and within some of the areas leading up to the street level and inside the building. Access is provided through a series of smart cards and readers from Columbia, Pa.-based Integrated Engineering USA.

“That's to control the flow of traffic so that the public does not get into the non-public areas,” Ford says.

Taking on a project of this size and complexity and working within such a compressed time frame could be daunting. To make it work, Ford and his team looked not just at the big picture, but at the details as well.

“We not only took the whole elephant, but we took pieces of the elephant and broke it down so that it was manageable,” he explains.

The first issue was to avoid the inclination to try to solve everything at once. Instead, the approach was to modularize the entire project, break it down into manageable pieces and then assign lead system specialists to each area.

In all, they created a list of 3,000 different tasks on all the systems and tracked them using Microsoft Excel spreadsheets. If a camera was going into a specific location on the site, it was numbered and given a location. Then they tracked each one of the processes as the camera was installed, as the conduit was run, and the unit focused — all the way down to the circuit breaker number.

Today, throngs of shoppers crowd the streets and stores of Atlantic Station's shopping district. The consultants, installers and workers are mostly gone these days, but their work remains to protect and secure this massive project.

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ABOUT THE COMPANIES

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Integrated Engineering USA	31
Johnson Controls Inc.	32
Pelco	33
Zenitel USA	34

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