Our client
As the fifth generation of a firm founded in 1919, FitzGerald Associates is committed to designing outstanding spaces for Chicago residences, community plans, retail facilities, hotels, corporate buildings, and mixed-use developments. This nationally recognized architecture firm strives to blend context and contemporary design into the careful, practical solutions they design for their clients, stakeholders, and communities. As a result, they won the 2016 CANstruction Chicago Structural Ingenuity Award known as Eroding Hunger. They have also won the 2016 Architect’s Newspaper Best of Design Award.
Project highlights
Their challenge
Our client needed a partner to provide engineering design services and LEED consulting for this two-structure, mixed-use project. The design needed to include 270 luxury apartment homes, 30,000 square feet of retail space, and amenities. The plan included a 28,365-square-foot, four-story north tower with above-ground-floor retail space and a south tower with 20 stories of residential space and a parking garage. In addition, our client planned to pursue LEED certification for this project.
Our solution
Salas O’Brien was engaged to provide engineering design and LEED consulting for the new project. Our team delivered full plan and spec designs for the mechanical, electrical, plumbing, and fire protection systems. To meet our client’s sustainability and environmental requirements, our design included special features such as a roof garden, storm-water collection, and high efficiency building systems. We also supported engineering design for a glass and steel bridge to connect the two towers, as well as a 428-space parking garage.
The results
Thanks to our team’s work, this new LEED Silver certified development features 270 luxury apartment homes. Now called “The Emerson,” the facility also houses a small-format Target store on the first floor of the north building, with a 15,000-square-foot retail grocery space, a 1,285-square-foot Starbucks store, a 660-square-foot pharmacy, and a 2,100-square-foot office and back-of-house space.
