Skyline Rising: 300 South Tryon

300 SOUTH TRYON

illa Cather once wrote, “Either a building is part of a place or it is not.

Once that kinship is there, time will only make it stronger.” What is it that creates that kinship between a building and its locale? How do architects design buildings which become part of the fabric of their communities, buildings with an inherent sense of “place”?

How should our buildings connect and contribute to the public realm, rather than erect boundaries to keep it at bay?

These questions are at the heart of every successful and authentic urban design.

Long before 300 South Tryon became an iconic tower in the Charlotte skyline, it was a place. This place lay fallow as a surface parking lot for many years, despite its coveted location in the heart of Uptown.

The lot, one of the last available vacant parcels on Tryon Street, was owned by a global investment management firm, and for years was most widely known as a popular tailgating spot for the nearby Carolina Panthers stadium. Conveniently positioned in the middle of the major Uptown economic center, the site was readily accessible to public transit and

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amenities including a public park and a minor league baseball stadium. The location was ideal; the only thing missing was the right timing.

Over the course of several years, LS3P worked with the Spectrum Companies, a legacy client, to explore a number of early concepts for the site, including a multifamily/office concept. Utilities had been relocated, the construction fence was in place, and H-piles were on site to begin shoring for excavation when the 2008 recession hit. It became prudent to hit the brakes and wait out the downturn. When the project re-emerged a few years later, the client had a new idea: an investment office building adjacent to a hotel. Postrecession, the Spectrum Companies called upon LS3P to reimagine the original concept and incorporate additional project goals: to create a distinctive new profile enlivening the skyline, to engage the public realm, and to deliver a high performance sustainable project. LS3P was eager to take on this challenge, and encountered a few surprise opportunities for creative problem solving along the way.

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The constrained parcel required strategy and close coordination with public entities, as a portion of the site was earmarked as part of a generous 40’ promenade and linear park connecting Tryon Street to the new urban park and the baseball stadium.

The team collaborated with the community to carve out this vital public amenity while designing for 700,000 SF of office space on an already tight site. The team was able to negotiate with the city to save space by extending the building parking underneath the linear park. The building’s proximity to light rail and bus stops, plus the ability to use spaces in an adjacent parking deck, provide exceptional access for this Center City project. This negotiation meant that the project only had to accommodate four levels of below-grade parking, requiring just one floor of excavation into the bedrock.

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That said, there is nothing easy about excavating four stories down and one floor into bedrock, particularly when this process requires drilling five feet away from a 100-year old building protected by the Historic Registry encroaching just slightly over the property line. Protecting the old corbeled brick foundations during the dig required a massive secant wall. Digging below the water table also required a permanent dewatering

system; other complexities included an old wooden duct bank housing existing utilities which hadn’t shown up on the site scans, poor soils in one corner of the site, and an old gas tank that needed to be removed, and even an underground riverbed. Utilities added another level of coordination, with outdated infrastructure on and around the site and an old electrical vault along the path of the new storm sewer.

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Construction stayed in the basement for more than eight months. When the building emerged from the ground, however, it was clear that 300 South Tryon was to be something entirely new for Charlotte. To begin with, the construction type was a bit of a hybrid. Instead of an all-steel or all-concrete structure, as is typical in the Southeast, the building had a concrete core with steel deck, column, and beam framing system. As the building climbed higher, flying concrete forms were tied to the core, with the core rising

ahead of the steel; this provided flexibility in the floor slab as the design was refined.

LS3P’s design included the podium for both the tower and the adjacent hotel provided by a separate entity. To create a column-free lobby, the design team utilized a full-story truss in order to transfer the 24-story load from above.

The truss, left exposed and protected with intumescent paint, became an eyecatching design feature providing visual interest in the second story office space.

With the structure in place, 300 South Tryon began to take shape. The client challenged the designers to create something unique, befitting its visibility and the unobstructed views from the park and stadium. Unbowed by the significant amount of pressure to get it right, the design team responded with a gentle curve on the north façade and a monumental “sailâ€? which doubled as a mechanical screen. The 25-story profile was instantly at home in the city skyline; moreover, from street level, the curve makes the building seem to disappear into the sky by rolling upwards and away from pedestrians, lowering the perceived height to a human scale.

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To add to the building’s impact, the tower included an exterior lighting package of substantial magnitude. The LED lights, installed in one-foot sections, are sophisticated and programmable enough to emblazon a name on the side of the building in lights, or to change colors and patterns for various events. Though these lights are typically installed on the exterior, the client wanted them on the interior–but did not want the lights to be visible from the inside.

LS3P added a special housing to install and shield the LEDs, an innovation that came with little added cost due to the innovative nature of the detailing.

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The showpiece of the tower, however, is really the lobby. Many of Charlotte’s highrise towers are envisioned as exclusive and private space, with secure lobbies accessible primarily to building tenants and visitors. This design called for an entirely different approach, resulting in a lobby that erodes barriers and creates authentic connections to the park and the city. Instead of a closed-off secure space, 300 South Tryon’s lobby blurs the boundaries between the indoors

and outdoors and serves as an active, welcoming neighborhood living room. The ground floor is permeable and light-filled, underscoring connections to the adjacent linear park and the Urban Garden by use of its interior trees. Further up, the 25th floor board room offers unobstructed views as far as the mountains on a clear day; the 24th floor cafeteria is a great place to watch a baseball game from above, while the outdoor landscaped terrace spills out from the dining and conference spaces.

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The building’s hidden design features are at least as important as the stunning lobby and the eye-catching façade. High performance sustainable design for investment office buildings is rapidly becoming a baseline expectation, and the demand for sustainable office space is driving higher occupancy and lease rates while lowering operating costs and raising resale rates for owners.

The 300 South Tryon team was committed to delivering a LEED certified project, and in the process raised the bar to LEED Gold.

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Achieving this target required an integrated design approach and buy-in from all team members, and the result is a high-rise with built-in efficiencies that make it more sustainable and more efficient to operate in the long term. High performance systems and glazing, renewable energy credits, and amenities to support alternative transportation such as electric car charging stations and an array of bike racks all supported sustainability efforts. An expert consulting team, a LEED consultant, and a dedicated owner’s representative were all critical to the process from lifecycle cost analysis to materials selection to LEED documentation. The high-tech equipment requires a different level of training, commissioning, and maintenance from the owner, but the payoff is significant in terms of efficiency, occupant well-being, and reduced environmental impact.

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All told, the project took 12 years from LS3P’s first conceptual design to building occupancy. The entire team–the developer, designers, consultants, and contractor– regard this as a labor of love; years in predesign, years in a holding pattern, and 28 months of construction. The project reinforced LS3P’s expertise in large, complex, high-rise projects on tight urban sites, the firm is currently delivering multiple towers concurrently for other clients.

To return to the question “What creates a kinship between a building and its locale?”

300 South Tryon reveals a few answers. A building which is authentically of its place is born of a deep commitment to participating fully in the public realm, of collaboration and innovation among all stakeholders, of a desire to create a design which is at once timeless and of-the-moment. When the timing is right, and the team is right, and the place itself is right–it is all worth the wait.

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