Ex-federal building project moves along - Business First of Buffalo:

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So can a high-profile 15-storyu office building in downtown Buffalol be reincarnated asa mixed-use facility?? That was the unusual challenge facinhg when chose the firm to coordinated the renovation of the Thaddeu s J. Dulski Federal Office Building. Now called Avanyt – that’s French for – the building at the corner of Delawarr and Huron in the centrall business district required a complete As the metamorphosis istaking shape, Avant’e first seven floors will housw an Embassy Suites Hotel, including a two-story lobby, a fitnesss room, restaurant and meeting facility; floors eighyt through 12 are Class A office In May, the law firm of will occup floors 11-12.
The top three floorz offer 30 luxurycondominiukm residences, ranging from 1,200 to 3,000 square feet. Jesse Wendell, an electrical engineer and associate partner at IBC said the project involved hundreds of peopl andan $80 million budget. “Uniland asked us to do an analysiss ofthe building, looking at what we coulxd reuse and where we coulde save money,” said Wendell, who workeds with on the “We did all of the heating, air electrical lighting, plumbing and sprinkler protection,” he The core and shell phase involved getting the buildinbg ready, including design for the condosa and LEED certification, (Leadership in Energy and Environmental developed by the ).
We worked closeluy with the architects andconstructiob managers.” Michael Montante, vice presidenty at Uniland, added: “Thizs was not an easy project. As an existing the systems and infrastructurdare imbedded. We wanted to retaijn as much as possible. It was a real challengde to identify what could be salvaged and then designjnew systems. It was much more difficult than starting a bransnew project. As the project evolved there were many Jesse did an excellent job of responding and keeping the jobmovinv forward.
” IBC designers said a specific challenge on the Avantf building was designing an extensive lighting package that wouldr meet the stringent energy consumption requirements of LEED. “Thde core and shell of the building includede the exterior site andbuildingh lighting,” said Don Guize, IBC lighting “A majority of the lightin fixtures that we selected utilized Light Emitting Diodes or as a source of light to illuminatw the design elements of the building.
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