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February 22, 2001

Should technology drive building design?

By TROY W. THRUN
Sparling

“Pay me now or pay me later.” Not a phrase you would usually associate with cutting-edge communications and information technology for commercial office buildings. But it’s a phrase that rings remarkably true in today’s commercial design and construction arena in the Puget Sound area.

How much flexibility
do you really need?
Here are five questions to ask to make sure your building is tech-savvy:

1. Who are my targeted tenants and how will technology impact their businesses?

2. Should I expand that targeted market to include heavier technology users (i.e., data centers)?

3. Can I support multiple telecommunications service providers into and throughout the building?

4. Can I offer substantial additional power and emergency power to existing and future tenants?

5. How will my tenants react to interruptions in their operations due to infrastructure changes later on?

You probably have already had this discussion with current clients. You know, the discussion about how to accommodate their need for more power, more flexibility and more technology. You want to give them what they want, but you can’t. Your building was never wired or cabled for such advanced technological needs. To retrofit will cost big bucks.

This is not a problem that will go away. Your future clients will need faster, newer and better technologies and electrical capabilities, and they will expect the supporting infrastructure to be in place in your building. Some will want more than others, and their needs will differ (and continually change) from business to business. This is not a crystal ball projection; it will happen.

So how will you adapt to this trend? How will you keep good tenants and attract those who promise to grow and prosper in the future?

Of course, understanding that commercial demand for cutting-edge technology will drive office rental markets from here on is the first step. Back in 1981, Bill Gates said, “640K ought to be enough for anybody.” Of course we all know differently now, but we hear similar projections about technology today, especially in the wake of the recent cooling of dot-com markets. It’s hard to imagine that tenants would want any more than adequate power, fast connectivity capability and the standard bundles of CAT 5e cables. But consider the rapidly emerging fiber optic, Bluetooth and Terabeam technologies that are knocking on the door of the “industry standard” and in some cases outperforming what we once considered cutting-edge. These new technologies will require a different kind of infrastructure strategy.

Many building owners in the Seattle area are taking action to ensure that they stay competitive and able to attract the best tenants over the next few years. 2121 sixth.com is just such a project, and what owner Jim Lagerquist of Armada/Lagerquist has accomplished in technology potential for his future clients is worth studying.

This 18-story, mixed-use building has eight floors (approximately 160,000 square feet) of flexible high-tech tenant office space. Located near multiple ISP fiber lines, it maximizes connectivity capability. Here are a few of the building’s features:

    • 9,000-amp effective capacity fed from two vaults (This is about twice the amount for typical Class A office space.)

    • Space in the basement for a third utility vault for additional transformers and their associated switchgear (additional 6 MVA)

    • Space for six 1,250-kilowatt back-up generators, separate from life/safety generator (which supply back-up for the entire 9,000 amps)

    • Large connectivity spaces, called “meet me” rooms, at the top and bottom of the building for multiple ISPs and for potential tenants who want to provide services to other tenants throughout the building

    • Redundant conduit entries and cable risers for increased survivability

    • Large (9-foot by 12-inch slab opening) fire-rated shaft for main cable riser secured by building management and leased to ISPs and tenants

    • Large radio room for satellite electronics

    • Office floors in two zones: one at 135 pounds per square foot (psf) for data equipment and another 250 psf for power equipment like uninterruptable power systems (UPS) and associated batteries

    • 16-foot floor-to-floor height for plenty of shared headroom above and below-floor installations. (Most commercial buildings have 12-to-13-foot floor-to-floor heights.)

    • Overall seismic performance 1.25 times current seismic codes.

(For more details about 2121 sixth.com, visit their Web site: www.2121sixth.com.)

This kind of careful planning for technology capabilities in commercial buildings guarantees a strong leasing advantage now and in the future. It is more enticing for a potential long-term lease tenant to occupy space that allows them the ease of add/move/changes without costly infrastructure changes. It also is more enticing for a potential future sale of the building with little or no cost to upgrade.

The bottom line is that it is far more cost-efficient to plan for future technologies and to build basic infrastructures into your building now, rather than try to add or increase it later on. Planning for a wide range of possible needs could pay off tenfold in the future.

Our city offers numerous examples of earlier building designs that did not incorporate technology planning and which now are paying the price. In most of the downtown core’s older buildings, the telecommunications closets are drastically overladened with cables, and they are also undersized in electrical and cooling capacity. Buildings built before 1985 are feeling the pinch of PCs on every desk, server rooms for every tenant, additional environmental requirements for sensitive equipment and other needs. This realization of the cost of neglecting technology is not limited to the commercial sector. Ask any school district in the area how much they are spending on upgrades to power and technology and you’ll no doubt be surprised by their answers.

Clearly, the consequences of neglecting to plan for technology are financial. You might pay twice as much for inadequate systems, and that’s just in the cost for changes, not to mention the cost of lost income and disruption for tenants and owners.

The good news is that there are other examples in the Puget Sound area of buildings designed to encompass future technology needs. For instance, the Bellevue Technology Tower’s electrical, communications and technology systems — essentially the building’s central nervous system — were designed to continue operation of power and connectivity-support systems for an extended period during any type of power outage.

Downtown Seattle’s Millennium Tower, Westin Hotel and Fischer Plaza are other examples of commercial buildings that have incorporated an array of advanced technology potential for tenants.

It is important that building owners and developers understand what “future technology” means, both to your current tenants and to those destined to occupy your property in the years to come. What we’ve learned over the last 15 years is that future technology is an inevitable event, and not just a “possible outcome.”

Are you thinking about the electrical and technology needs of the tenants you hope to have five years from now? Ten years? If you are, your planning is bound to pay off. If you are not, be prepared to pay handsomely for retrofits in the years to come.

Troy Thrun is a principal of Sparling and heads up one of the firm’s commercial design studios.


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