Law Offices of Whiteford, Taylor & Preston, LLP

BKM provided MEP design services for the new corporate headquarters for the Law Offices of Whiteford, Taylor, Preston, LLP, located in a signature building in the heart of Baltimore’s central business district at 7 Saint Paul Street.

When the upper floors of this building became available, WTP looked to increase their space, while simultaneously upgrading their image. As a result, they now occupy more than 90,000 square feet on five full floors. This state of the art facility includes multiple video conferencing rooms, business hubs, lounges, and meeting rooms. The renovation was highlighted by the seamless transition from the existing server room to the new 5,000-square-foot IT support suite and network command center. The information backbone of the firm was provided with redundant cooling systems and protected with an FM-200 system.

The existing building was equipped with two 500 ton centrifugal chillers, piped in series; however, the building was recently modified to utilize Comfort Link district chilled water. The district CHW provides year-round cooling to the first floor bank and public spaces, as well as off-season cooling (Oct-May) for the remainder of the building. Central Station VAV air handlers are located on each floor, serving looped medium pressure mains. Terminal units consist of cooling only VAV boxes for interior spaces, and Parallel Fan-Powered VAV boxes with electric reheat serve the perimeter. Condenser Water mains (extending between the roof-mounted cooling towers and the chillers located in the lower level) are oversized to allow for water-cooled supplemental DX units to meet various tenant needs.
Design features were employed to reduce the energy use, including the replacement of original pneumatic analog controls with new electric actuated DDC and connected all five floors to the building EMCS and improved terminal unit zoning to minimize simultaneous heating/cooling.