Compared to the 33-story “skyrise” it was built to mimic, PNC Financial Services Group Inc.’s “mock-up” for its new headquarters tower is a high-tech hut.
Yet PNC’s director of corporate real estate, Gary Saulson, and two key members of the firm’s real estate team credited the small test lab built in 2013 on a parking lot in Green Tree as a crucial element in the development of The Tower at PNC Plaza nearing completion downtown.
Testing at the mock-up helped PNC test environmental components being planned for the new PNC headquarters, expected to open in the fall and achieve a LEED Platinum rating as a high-performance green building.
While he has often made the bold claim that the new building will be the greenest in the world, Saulson acknowledged the challenges that come with that in a press tour of the mock-up of The Tower at PNC Plaza on Tuesday.
“This is probably the most complicated building in the United States,” he said. “But we think we’ve figured it all out."
Saulson was joined by Lisa Adkins, a senior associate with Gensler, the architecture firm for the project, and Jeremy Snyder, an associate principal for Buro Happold Engineering, the project’s structural engineering firm for the project.
When asked to describe the mock-up facility’s importance in meeting the goals for The Tower at PNC Plaza, Adkins said, “it was critical.”
The facility featured all the various green components to be included in the office tower. The small structure was where the new tower’s green features — ventilation, lighting, energy use — were tested and tinkered with as well as revised and adapted.
Adkins said the process of putting up a small building to test the performance components of a major real estate development is done relatively rarely. The most recent example she recalled was when her firm was involved in building the new headquarters of The New York Times in Times Square.
She said a core component of sustainable design “is all about the environment you’re actually in,” making the mock-up a key tool in the new tower’s development.
Through it, PNC’s made adjustments both large and small.
“There were hundreds of thousands of decisions to make,” said Saulson.
That included everything from altering the shape of the structure to dropping plans to use solar photo voltaics and geothermal energy, techniques that didn’t bear out enough benefit and hindered the new building’s design for a solar chimney that will provide the building with ample natural ventilation while offering some heating.
After researching other major green buildings throughout the world, Saulson is still fully confident the $280 million building will achieve the highest levels of building performance when it opens to more than 2,000 employees later this year.
“This will be the greenest building in the world,” said Saulson. “I’m hoping that we will inspire others with what we’ve done to take it to the next level.”