Partnering with commercial developers

Given the privately funded nature of museums, raising money is always a priority—money to operate facilities, acquire collections, expand space, and bring in new exhibits on loan. In recent years, museums have addressed these economic funding challenges by building new expansions that are as much about the architecture as the art within, often bringing in a "starchitect" to create a buzz about the museum, attract visitors, and appeal to potential donors.

An offshoot trend we have begun to see is the introduction of museums into mixed-use developments. Whether it’s high-rise office, high-rise residential, hotel, retail, or all of the above, partnerships between commercial developers and museums are becoming more commonplace.

Why the trend?

So what is it that works for a mixed-use development that many would consider at best a peculiar pairing, i.e., a museum client with a developer-led client? After all, the economic pro-forma drivers to achieve a stand-alone museum project are quite different than those for a mixed-use project. An examination reveals that such differences actually contribute to the trend:

Shortened schedule—Stand-alone museum projects can take up to 10 years from initial master planning or facility assessment through construction, with a lot of fundraising along the way. In mixed-use developments, the museum can gain space in much less time.

Enhanced expertise—It can be 25 years between major expansions for thriving museums, which leaves a museum with little in-house experience dealing with the design and construction process. An experienced developer partner can bring recent, practical experience to the museum in a co-developed project.

Museum appeal—Developers of all types are beginning to recognize the potential of sharing an address with high-end museum space. The museum is an appealing amenity that can attract building tenants and generate traffic to the destination and surrounding area—much more so than the typical retail franchise.

Shared costs—Two pockets are better than one when it comes to fixed development costs and ongoing operating and maintenance expenses. Since only 20 to 30 percent of a museum structure is dedicated to galleries, sharing the cost of building and operating spaces, such as back-of-house, loading docks, retail, restaurants, etc., is significant.

A peculiar pairing

While there are underlying advantages to these co-developments, a museum’s program requirements can present the following challenges to the design team and project budget when combined with traditional developer-led projects:
Different floor-to-floor spacing—Museum exhibition space requires tall floor-to-floor heights of 20 to 25 feet, while typical office or residential space requires a floor-to-floor height of just 13 to 15 feet. The potential exists to lose an entire floor of leasable office or residential space to gain a museum. Reaching an economic and programming compromise can be difficult.

Different environmental demands—Museum space requires increased environmental demands for security, light control, temperature, and humidity, resulting in a per-square-foot cost several times that of Class A office or high-end residential space.

Demand for increased control—Museum space also requires an environmentally controlled, secure path to transport artwork through the building to and from loading docks and galleries. This requirement, as well as demands on elevator capacities and sizes and the potential need for individualized loading dock areas, can significantly impact the design approach and infrastructure costs.

Disparate structural grids—The optimum structural grid spacing for an office or residential structure is much different than that for a museum, and different again for retail, parking, etc. Any time these disparate uses are vertically stacked, structural design gymnastics and some level of tenant or leasing compromise are required.

Variable floor loadings—Similarly, the 50-pounds per square foot (psf) typical floor loading for office or residential structures is significantly less than the 150 psf necessary for museum operations. Economically designing to criteria that work for all tenants can be challenging.

Different operational speeds—Museum decisions often involve committees, subcommittees, and a board of directors, lengthening the time it takes for any decision to be made. Developers, on the other hand, know what they want and how to get there. This disparity in operational approach can create pressure and friction for both parties.

Real-life applications

Let’s take a closer look at how three developments—all mixed-use, high-rise projects with differing strategies—have successfully managed the marriage of museum with mixed-use.

Museum Plaza, Louisville, Ky., developer, Museum Plaza LLC; architect, REX NY with Kendall Heaton Associates

Co-development details—Museum Plaza, a 1.57-million-square-foot, mixed-use building, is set to change the skyline of Louisville dramatically. The bold architectural design consists of three high-rise towers connected by a three-story, 150,000-square-foot "island" 24 stories above ground that houses 15,000 square feet of museum program. The development includes hotel, condo, and University of Louisville College of Fine Arts components.

The mix of elements is intended to help offset the cost of the island and museum, with the overall goal of drawing people to the downtown Louisville area. The owner bought the less-than-desirable site from the city for just $1, then hired Joshua Prince-Ramus of REX—known for his innovative work on the Seattle Central Library—to produce an iconic mixed-use structure. The architecture of the towers is purposely simple, in part to focus attention on the island (and, therefore, the museum).

Primary structural design challenges—Fitting the museum program within the island increased design complexity and challenged the construction budget. The unique layout of the towers creates significant cantilevered framing conditions, requiring multi-story-deep trusses. The placement of the galleries was a significant driver in locating these trusses to create tall, column-free gallery spaces. In addition, the gallery floor loading (150 to 200 psf) mandated heavy-duty floor framing supported by the trusses, increasing the steel tonnage for both the floors and the trusses. Magnusson Klemencic Associates (MKA)—a structural and civil engineering firm with offices in Seattle and Chicago—worked extensively with the architects to find the best location for galleries (backspan of trusses versus cantilevered ends of trusses) to maximize efficiency of the structural system and reduce costs.

Equally challenging was finding space within the island to locate a very large mechanical equipment room serving the many and disparate needs of the island program: everything from museum to swimming pool/spa areas.

Threading ductwork through the heavy-duty structure was an exercise that required compromise—and an extensive coordination effort—by all design team members.

Seattle Art Museum (SAM) Expansion/WaMu Center Co-Development, Seattle; owners, Seattle Art Museum and Washington Mutual Bank; architects, Allied Works Architecture (SAM), LMN Architects (associate architect, SAM), NBBJ (WaMu), Callison (WaMu T.I.)

Co-development details—The Seattle Art Museum (SAM) was looking to expand its existing 150,000-square-foot Venturi-designed museum, and Washington Mutual Bank (WaMu), the nation’s fifth-largest banking institution, wanted to consolidate 5,000 employees in a new downtown headquarters. SAM owned the land adjacent to its existing museum, and WaMu was interested in the location. In a win-win business deal swapping land for space, WaMu got a new 42-story, 1,380,000-square-foot office building and SAM received 300,000 square feet of expansion space in a 16-story extension immediately adjacent to its existing facility. Under the terms of the agreement, SAM will initially occupy four floors of the 16-story tower, with the option to expand up to eight more floors in the future; WaMu will occupy the space in the interim. This arrangement gave SAM expansion space in less than half the time it would have taken for execution of a stand-alone museum project.

Primary structural design challenges—The location and volume of space needed for the museum galleries forced the 42-story tower to be squeezed into a very narrow footprint on a site underlain by tunnels and areaways, and in an active seismic zone. Further complicating the process, WaMu and SAM had different architects (four total), different owners’ reps, different budgets, and different programming goals. Yet for the deal to succeed, it was critical that the needs of both be met in a single structure.

A performance-based seismic design approach was employed to eliminate the need for a backup perimeter moment frame and produce a building with the required layout flexibility for both tenants. Development of a new structural system, incorporating a ductile concrete shear wall core with concrete-filled steel pipe columns connected by "buckling restrained braces" accomplished the height-to-width ratio necessary to meet site and programming parameters.

Extensive and complex sequential analyses—and two sets of design documents—were completed for the incremental conversion of 12 floors of office space into six floors of museum gallery space, with portions of existing floors literally cut away and structural loads rerouted. The structural system also had to address the removal and addition of entire elevator banks, multiple escalators, and a complete HVAC system (with corresponding penetration and routing implications).

One Museum Place, Atlanta; developer, John Wieland Homes & Neighborhoods/Overton Murphy Interests, LLC; architects, David Chipperfield Architects with HKS, Inc.

Co-development details—One Museum Place is a 435,000-square-foot, high-end luxury condominium development in two towers of 23 and 17 stories located across the street from Atlanta’s High Museum. David Chipperfield Architects won a design competition for the project, which houses 15,000 square feet of contemporary art museum space. The museum component will be gifted to the High Museum, which will be in charge of operating and maintaining the museum.

The owner’s love of art and architecture was behind the inclusion of a museum in the condominium project. The development concept assumes that condo buyers looking for very high-end, luxury residential space will recognize the added value of a building designed by a famous architect, with a museum "downstairs" and one of the city’s major cultural centers across the street.

These amenity factors will also differentiate the complex from others available in the Atlanta market.

Primary structural design challenges—The challenge for this project was incorporating all of the museum programming needs without having those needs drive (and defeat) the development pro-forma. One of the key structural challenges was producing a design that allowed the structural column grids of the two towers to pass through the museum floor and continue down to the below-grade parking structure without major transfer conditions. The solution was to create a façade module for solid versus glazed areas that could translate into various structural grids needed for the different project uses. A rigorous façade module developed in 5-foot increments was ultimately selected.

Unlike the Museum Plaza project, the museum component could not dictate the design for the structure. Since the condo units were sold as core and shell, the architects and owner wanted column-free interior spaces to provide potential buyers ultimate flexibility in unit layout. The grid developed offered a 45-foot clear span in one direction between units and a 30-foot clear span in the other. This grid was then threaded through the museum floors and successfully meshed with the optimum 30- by 30-foot parking grid, achieving the desired museum, residential, and parking layouts.

Conclusion

Despite the many challenges presented when a museum co-mingles with commercial development, there is enough upswing potential that more of these deals are being struck. As a history of economic successes and failures is acquired, new development formulas are likely to emerge. Ideally, museums will see an increase in public exposure from these unusual settings while maintaining their core identity, and developers will realize added draw and benefits courtesy of their new neighbors.

Greg S. Briggs, P.E., S.E., LEED, is a principal at Magnusson Klemencic Associates and leads the firm’s Museums Specialist Group. He can be reached at 206-215-8368 or gbriggs@mka.com.