Ellsworth Place Mall

The Project

Renovation and modernization of the original City Place Mall improved connections to surrounding streets, added new entrances, lighting, elevator, and escalators, and rearranged the mall layout to improve circulation. The original building design allowed for a vertical addition of an office tower. The current project updated the design and proposed footprint of a future nine-story tower expansion.

Structural Features

The existing building is comprised of two buildings, one being a concrete one-way pan joist system and the other being a steel framed concrete on composite metal deck system. The most noticeable additions to the building were the two 60-foot tall, curved pylon signs that mark the main entrances and support signs for the retailers along with stadium sized video screens. The signs have minimal exterior column supports and are braced back to the main building structure. Along with these large signs, several steel framed canopies with up to 10-foot cantilevers were added to other secondary entries around the building.

On the interior the renovations included adding several large openings for new elevators and escalators within the both the concrete pan joist and steel framed floors as well as several large areas of floor infills.

The renovations also included an upgrade to the lateral system to be able to support a nine-story vertical expansion for an office tower. To do this, several of the foundation new braced frames were added and some of the foundations were required to have their uplift capacity increased. This was accomplished by adding 25-foot-deep rock anchors and engaging the underlying bedrock.