Higbee Building 6^th, 8^th and 9^th Floor Shell Building Renovation, Cleveland, Ohio

The Higbee Building is an 870,200 sq. ft. multi-story historical building built in 1931 that is connected to Tower City on Cleveland’s Public Square.  The flagship retail store was known for its tenth-floor Silver Grille restaurant and was prominently featured in the 1983 movie A Christmas Story.  The building was closed in the late 1990’s and since then, McHenry & Associates, Inc. has been involved with several mechanical and electrical shell building infrastucture renovations.  The third and most recent renovation project is currently under construction (2008-2009).  It involves the conversion of  6^th, 8^th and 9^th floors of the building (approximately 222,000 sq. ft.) to office lease space and is in the process of being submitted to the USGBC for LEED Gold rating under Existing Building Core and Shell. Our design services included:

- Design of a new central system water-source heat pump loop for the floors, including removal of an existing cooling tower and supporting steel structure on the 12^th floor roof and the installation of a new 1000-ton cooling tower on new steel framing.   New mechanical systems have been designed on the 11^th floor, including condenser water pumps, plate-and-frame heat exchangers, variable speed heat pump loop pumps and piping distributed to the floors. 

- Design of a new hot water fin tube radiation heating system, which involved removal of all existing steam heating systems on the floors, installation of new electric hot water generators on the 11^th floor and new hot water heating pumps, piping and perimeter fin tube to the floors.  All mechanical equipment on the 11^th floor has been installed on raised structural support framing with spring-type inertia base equipment pads because of the limited floor loading capacity of the floor and to reduce vibration transmission into the existing structure.

- New ventilation systems were incorporated into the building by installing 100% outside air and relief air handling units on the 14^th floor of the building, which previously housed large sprinkler and domestic water gravity storage tanks.  The air handling units have been carefully designed and are sectionalized to permit rigging from Ontario Avenue to the highest level of the building.  Each unit includes an enthalpy heat recovery wheel to transfer building energy/heat to the intake air for preheating and precooling of air to maximize energy efficiency. 

- Ventilation and relief air risers have been provided from the units through central utility shafts for tenant connection

- Design of new domestic water risers, sanitary/vent risers and condensate wet column risers in discrete locations for tenant connection.

- Design of new energy management and tenant electrical metering systems.

- Additional busduct power distribution was designed for the new tenant floors.

- Fire alarm, telecommunication and lighting control systems were extended to new tenant floor.

- Fire alarm, telecommunication and lighting control systems were extended to new tenant floor.

- This project has been submitted to the USGBC for LEED Gold rating under Existing Building Core and Shell.