Case Study
OT: SPISouth Padre Island, TX
- 31-story condominium building
- completed in 2007
- 148 condo units
- $404-$580 per square foot
- retail cost of units $674,000-$2,100,000
- 1480-1856 square feet per unit (floors 4-24)
- penthouse units (floors 25-31) vary in size from 3025-3615 square feet per unit
Project Overview
Ocean towers Condominiums (OT: SPI) is a towering 486 foot, 31-story, condominium project under construction on South Padre Island, Texas. Completed in late 2007, this structure is the tallest structure in the Rio Grande Valley.
The decision to change the plan from the initial swing door option to using the Smoke Guard® system resulted in a financial benefit of more than $1 million to the developer.
Project Analysis
During the schematic design phase OT: SPI developers, Domit Development, completed an analysis comparing the use of swing doors on magnetic hold opens to the Smoke Guard® system to provide vertical smoke protection at the elevator shaft.
Swing Doors
Four gasketed 20-minute swing door and frame systems in corridors, with sidelites, on each floor.
- Required additional corridor space around elevator core
- Inconvenient for tenants moving large objects
- May impede or confuse tenants in emergency egress situations
- Increased maintenance costs in common areas
- Deploy on all general alarms, often false alarms
- Doors may be blocked open to avoid nuisance deploys
Smoke Guard ®
Four Smoke Guard units at the elevator openings on each floor:
- Enabled repositioning of elevator shafts
- Eliminated structural concrete beam throughout the full height of the building
- Added 122 square feet of useable space to plan on each floor-3,294 square feet in the building
- Virtually invisible solution
- Reduced maintenance costs on 3,660 square feet of common areas
- A financial benefit of more than $1,000,000 (1.2% the cost of the project) to the developer