Rising from what was once a vacant lot sprinkled with buildings in disrepair is this 26-story, mixed-use residential tower. Located across from Thomas Jefferson University, the building includes 322 luxury apartments, 20,000 SF of retail space and features a wealth of amenities for its tenants including a 2-story lobby, community outdoor spaces, a fitness center, a dog run and community terrace.
Bala’s MEP/FP group designed everything for high-efficiency. The building includes a high-efficiency vertical stack water source heat pumps in each unit, high-efficiency horizontal units in the common and amenity areas and condensing boilers.
Plumbing and fire protection features include fire pumps, low flow fixtures for LEED and recirculation domestic water systems with reheaters to maintain design temperatures at all fixtures.
The building has substations at the top and bottom, sharing loads throughout, in order to reduce the electrical cost. There are high-efficiency lighting designs and lighting controls to meet energy savings for LEED.
Bala’s independent commissioning group field tested the vertical stack water source heat pumps in the residential units, the building condenser water loop system with a 2-cell cooling tower loop on the roof and a boiler loop system to input heat into the condenser water loop. A 90 ton make-up air unit was also tested.