Montgomery Park Sustainable Adaptive Reuse

Developers and tenants embrace green strategies while renovating an abandoned Montgomery Ward Catalog Building in Baltimore into a sustainable business center. By Naomi Reetz

• Location: Baltimore, Md.
• Size: 1,300,000 square feet
• Developer: himmelrich associates
• Project architect: notari associates
• Lead tenant: maryland department of the environment for 270,000 square foot

The 1925 art deco-style Montgomery Ward Catalog Building in Baltimore is one of seven regional distribution warehouses around the country that were built following the expansion of the company’s catalog business. Alike in design and construction — U-shaped, eight-stories tall, and made of reinforced concrete — these vertical warehouses were designed to move product from train to storage to delivery.

Sixty years later, with declining sales, Montgomery Ward shut down its 1,300,000-square-foot warehouse in Baltimore. It had been an abandoned Brownfield site for 15 years until Himmelrich Associates, a local developer, purchased it. Baltimore-based Notari Associates was then brought in to conduct a life safety assessment of the project to determine its adaptability to office use and ended up acting as project architect.

The sustainable adaptive reuse of Montgomery Park was achieved through the development of intimate knowledge of the building; its infrastructure, patient planning, and application of Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) sustainable strategies. Taking the time to become familiar with the building’s elements and condition ensured an ultimately satisfying and cost effective project. The State of Maryland enacted a program of smart growth, providing the project with tax credits worth 40 cents on the dollar, thereby solidifying its economic viability.

Embracing Sustainable Strategies

Around the same time as Himmelrich Associates bought the building, the Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE) began looking for new space for its operation. In a bid to promote sustainability, MDE required that their new site followed the principles prescribed by the LEED Green Building Rating System. Himmelrich Associates were committed to securing the 270,000-square-foot user as their lead tenant in Montgomery Park. This commitment to sustainability resulted in a building that embraced the strategies set forth in the five categories of sustainability defined by LEED:

• Sustainable Sites
• Water Efficiency
• Energy and Atmosphere
• Materials and Resources
• Indoor Environmental Quality

The renovation of the building required little structural modification. The primary focus was the redefinition of the building’s orientation, and the replacement and upgrading of all of the building