Changing Lifestyles
The Shops at Atlas Park Bring High-End Retail to Queens

By Lynne Viccaro O'Leary

Demolition is under way to transform the site of the Atlas terminals at Cooper Avenue and 80th Street in Glendale, N.Y., into a 10-acre mixed-use site called The Shops at Atlas Park.

But it's not another shopping mall. The goal of this project is to establish a village experience for residents of the surrounding neighborhoods of Forest Hills, Rego Park, Elmhurst, Maspeth, Middle Village, Glendale, Ridgewood and Woodhaven. The project also aims to meet residents' demands for high-end retail goods and services.

Construction costs are put at $120 million for the project.

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The complex is estimated to recover about $6 million in tax revenue that New York City is currently losing to Nassau County in retail sales and bring almost 2,000 jobs - 750 of them permanent - to the area.

The site has been owned and managed by New York-based ATCO Properties & Management Inc. for more than 80 years. Once a thriving industrial hub, the area has experienced a steady decline of manufacturing businesses, prompting ATCO to reconsider what to do with the land.

Instead of selling the property, the company decided to reinvent it as a "lifestyle center," said Damon J. Hemmerdinger, ATCO's vice president.

"We want the residents to view the Shops at Atlas Park as a familiar and comfortable place," he added. "The buildings will have historically evocative architecture and simpler detail, organized around a 2.3-acre park to draw residents in."

Plans include the renovation of four of the 20 existing structures on the site while demolishing the remaining buildings. They, in turn, will be replaced by an elliptical park in the center of the site, as well as construction of an additional four buildings that will be between 13,000 and 93,000 sq. ft.

Atlas Park will also include the development of 1,200 parking spaces, with 400 of them located underground.

There will be an eclectic mix of office (110,000 sq. ft.) and retail (275,000 sq. ft.) space, as well as a 12,000-sq.-ft. day-care center and 13,000-sq.-ft. food market. "We're looking at a tenant mix of approximately one-third regional, with the balance being nationally known upscale retail occupants," Hemmerdinger said.

The Vision

Hemmerdinger said the project's priorities are the landscape, tenant branding and architecture, in that order. The importance of landscape further clarifies the meaning of "lifestyle center."

From its genesis, The Shops at Atlas Park was envisioned as a pedestrian-friendly European village shopping experience with whitewashed architecture and open-air terraces organized around a park, said landscape architect Rick Parisi of New York-based M. Paul Friedberg & Partners.

"This will include an entrance pocket park, a specialty food piazza and outdoor café dining," he added. "The elliptical park will have a programmable plaza fountain that will include a child play [area], shade gardens for walking and sitting, and lawns for sunbathing or listening to concerts."

Parisi said the park was designed as a green interpretation of a European piazza. "The intention was to create a landscaped envelope for programmable activity including mimes, street performers and small musical groups," he added.

The park will be as user-friendly as possible. "The park will not have a hedge or a curb," Hemmerdinger said. "Residents are meant to walk on the grass. We will use trees and street lamps to define the space. The point is to draw people into the center of this site."

Because the project is built over a below-grade parking garage, designers and engineers had to deal with an access problem.

"The first design challenge was to provide vehicular and ADA pedestrian access into and throughout the site while the adjacent grades varied between 10-12 feet," Parisi said. "This was further complicated by the need to provide access to a lower-level garage located below the majority of the project while maintaining the existing street-level grades and the upper-level garden. We accomplished the access by introducing a 4 percent access road from the lower portion of the site and framing this road with the new buildings."

After this framework was developed, the most important task at hand was to provide an inviting pedestrian transition from the garage to the upper-level gardens and shopping village.

"This was accomplished by introducing four multilevel open greenhouse structures that emerge in the upper-level gardens and one open stairway defined at the lower level by a waterfall and at the upper level by a programmable geyser," Parisi added.

No part of the development can move forward before the parking structure is constructed.

Tim Tracy, vice president of New York-based Desman Associates, a garage consultant and engineering firm for the project, said a six-story parking structure was designed to hold 800 cars along with an 182,000-sq.-ft. underground parking garage for 400 cars.

Because the park and buildings will be sitting on top of it, the garage is planned to be cast and plate concrete with the deck made of precast concrete. Although the six-story garage is an independent structure, it will be connected to Building 6 of the site with 1½ garage levels per retail level.

The Materials

The new building materials will consist predominantly of light stucco finishes while the exterior of the existing red brick buildings will be preserved, Hemmerdinger said.

"We are designing the buildings with simpler detail so the branding will pop," he added. "The concept is that at a distance, the buildings will create a single bold gesture. The eye will go straight to the tenant merchandising."

The site paving includes earth-tone colors of tinted concrete for the sidewalks and pathways, precast paver areas that define active outdoor rooms and decomposed granite spaces that define passive areas, Parisi said.

"The site walls, steps and lawn amphitheater seat walls will be earth-tone colors of precast concrete," he added. "The programmable fountain is defined by a two-tone precast concrete grade-level sloped plaza that can be flooded or drained as a stage for performances.

"The lawn amphitheater includes three concentric precast concrete seat walls orientated around the fountain/stage. The greenhouse materials include aluminum and glass with lower level glass block wall fountains, stainless steel railings and precast concrete veneer walls."

The buildings themselves will be constructed using better-quality materials and conventional steel framing like that of an office building rather than a retail facility, said Rod Gibble, president of Rodney D. Gibble Consulting Engineers, New York City, the structural engineers for the project.

"Retail facilities are usually built with lighter materials - metal studs and Dryvit," he said. "For the new construction section of this project, Atlas is using stucco and brick masonry, keeping in context with the existing buildings and the neighborhood, for only an incremental increase in costs."

Buildings 2, 4, and 5, which will be located on top of the parking garage, will be concrete reinforced with conventional steel framing on top. "These buildings will be steel framed rather than using steel joists, similar to that of Class-A office buildings and universities," Gibble said. "The exterior skins will be composed of masonry stucco and brick."

Demolition for the Shops at Atlas Park began in the spring and are largely complete. By this month, two of the three remaining manufacturing tenants will be relocated, with the last tenant moving out by end of this year.

Excavation will soon begin for the parking structures, as will site remediation.