The Mansion on Peachtree – developed by City Centre Properties – is the first building in Atlanta to have a purpose-built hotel with luxury condominiums residing above.

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“A mentor of mine once said to me, ‘In your lifetime, if you’re in the construction or development in­dustry, you’re lucky if you get to work on one legacy project’; well, in my career, I’ve been blessed with being able to work on such a legacy project, The Mansion on Peachtree,” says Ron Daneault, president and CEO?of Daneault and Associates?Inc.

As the project director – or owner’s representative – for the $185 million mixed-use development in Atlanta, Dan­eault and his team serve as the liaison between developer City Centre Properties; the city and county; three amenity operators; 43 architects, engineers and con­sultants; three general contractors and 72 subcontractors performing services at The Mansion on Peachtree, which open­ed in spring 2008.

Designed by Manhattan-based architect Robert A.M. Stern with local architect of record, Milton Pate Architects, and man­aged by Rosewood Hotels & Resorts in Dallas, The Mansion on Peachtree is the first building in Atlanta to have a purpose-built hotel with luxury condominiums residing above, City Centre President Clark Butler says. “Atlanta was due – probably overdue – [for a project like this],” he told the Atlanta Business Chronicle last year. “The Mansion is a lifestyle building. It’s for people who want great service and have the economic ability to live in the building.”

Living Large and Luxurious
With condo prices starting at $3 million, Daneault says The Mansion exudes luxury, although it’s a term often misused in the industry.

“It’s a luxury product, but everyone’s definition of luxury is dynamic, because times are changing and people’s perceptions are changing,” he remarks. “You have to impose your thumbprint on what the definition of luxury really is, and I think City Centre Properties succeeded.”

Some of the project’s design features include 12-and-a-half-foot ceilings, crown molding and premier city views, for example.

The Mansion certainly lives up to its moniker, Daneault adds. The 616,000-square-foot building is 610-feet tall and currently stands as the tallest hotel in the Buckhead district. “The 42-story single-tow­er property imparts an understated elegan­ce and refinement that reflects the am­b­­ian­ce of the world’s finest private residences,” according to City Centre.

And private it is. If residents choose not to valet park their vehicles, they can pull into the development’s two-level parking deck and take a private elevator directly to their units.

They can dine at the property’s two five-star restaurants or relax in its world-class spa and fitness center. In-home dining, catering, housekeeping, car detailing and around-the-clock concierge services are also provided.

An Octagonal Layout
Danault describes the property as an oct­agonal-tiered structure that somewhat re­sembles a wedding cake – the square foot­­age of the levels decreases as the eye moves upward.  “The uniqueness about the octagonal shape is that it affords a lot of opportunities to put balconies in areas other than your traditional one on the corner,” he notes.

The lowest level consists of a loading dock and back-of-house areas, with the two-level parking deck situated above. The parking facility can hold 260 vehicles.

Next are four levels of amenities that include:

• Check-in and concierge;
• Meeting rooms;
• Boardrooms;
• Ballroom;
• Banquet kitchen;
• Fitness center;
• Indoor pool;
• A restaurant and bar called Neo; and
• 29 Spa, which is a 15,000-square-foot spa facility with 14 treatment rooms, steam rooms, saunas and whirl­pools.

After the amenity floors come 10 stories allotted to the hotel with 96 rooms and 31 suites, including a presidential suite. Last, there are 27 floors of condominiums with a total of 42 condo units. The condos range from 3,400 to 6,000 square feet. The largest penthouse unit is 10,000 square feet. Also included on the property are three approximately 5,000-square-foot garden villas located adjacent to the garden at level one, and a two-story standalone celebrity-owned restaurant called Craft.

No Cookie-Cutters Allowed
With Atlanta-based Holder Construction serving as the primary general contractor, work on The Mansion began in March 2006. The building is a poured-in-place con­crete structure with precast and castone skin and punched aluminum and thermal window openings. The parking levels are conventionally reinforced concrete. “The hotel levels up through level 14 are post-tension reinforced concrete,” Daneault says. “Then on level 15, there is a pretty unique transfer truss system that’s literally the size of some bridge steel you see on roadways.

“This was to transfer column loads from the narrower portions of the building to the wider portions of the building. So, there are structural steel girders introduced into a concrete frame to transfer the load of the weight of the narrower building above down to the wider building columns below. Then, above level 15, where the condos are, we used conventional reinforced concrete.”

The reason for this, he says, is because the condos are sold as shells, which all­ows the owners to customize their homes.

“The owners can be as custom as they want to be,” Daneault notes. “If they want to locate a restroom in a particular location, they can core drill wherever they want without worrying about cutting a post-tension tendon because they’re just cutting through the rebar.

“I think the uniqueness of this building is that City Centre will sell the condos as shells so that buyers can do almost anything they want,” he adds. “This is no cookie-cutter condo in that every unit on the north side is not the same and every unit on the south side is not the same – they can all be one of a kind.”

Safe and Sound
Construction on The Mansion went off without a hitch, Dane­ault says. However, as is the case with most city construction projects, challenges mainly involved lay-down space and material delivery timing.

“The building was street-locked,” he notes. “There is Peachtree Street in the front of the building, Stratford Road on the other side of the building, and we had an existing building on the back and the other side of the building.

“It wasn’t a greenfield site where you could put a crane here or other material there with plenty of room for staging; everything had to be brought to the site and used on a daily basis.             “Logistics and coordination relative to hoisting and transportation were key. The project superintendent has to be a very good logistician.”

When working on a confined site in the middle of a bustling city, safety for workers and the general public is a top priority, Daneault continues. “The general contractor had a full-time, on-site safety representative that was very diligent at making sure the subcontractors as well as the general contractor were very safe,” he says, noting that this was achieved by maintaining “a very clean site.

“It’s interesting to say you have a safety department – and a lot of contractors have one – but the key thing is that if the superintendent doesn’t have the mindset to enforce that, then it’s just a statement in a brochure,” he remarks.

“The superintendent on our project is a gentleman named Randy McGill, and he was very diligent on safety to make sure that we sent the workers home at night to their families in a healthy condition. You can have a safety director, but if you don’t have a superintendent that en­forces it, you don’t have anything safety-wise.”

Teamwork Pays Off
Daneault credits the project’s success to the entire team.

“A lot of companies get trapped within their own infrastructure and the way that they operate,” he points out. “Things have been done a certain way forever and although there is an important need to have strong vendors and mechanisms to keep the process going, you have to un­derstand the project and product type that you’re working on.

“Whether you are the owner, the consultant, the operator, the general contractor or a subcontractor, everybody has some­­thing to bring to the table to get the project done,” he continues. “I think ultimately it’s the project superintendent and the project subcontractors that deliver the product that the owner and operator re­quire. On this project, we had an excellent superintendent and many cooperative subs that truly delivered a fantastic product.”