Atlas – Omaha, NE

Constructed in 1975 as St. Joseph Hospital, the building had undergone various renovations and additions over 42 years as a healthcare facility. Initially designed for future expansion, the structure allowed the structural engineer great freedom to convert into the state’s largest single-structure of market-rate apartments.

Structural highlights:

• The existing eight-level teaching hospital above a parking deck with six open-air atria and courtyards was steel-framed with brick veneer exterior walls.
• Its many cantilevers and angular walls were created by layering steel beams over lowered girders. The structural engineer worked with the architect to design around or modify this web of existing framing to create the new floorplan.
• The primary vertical and lateral load-resisting system of a steel column and girder moment frame was maintained as the base of the building’s structural system. Secondary beams, large areas of floor slabs, and the exterior walls were removed and revised for the new design.
• Where the story height allowed, a new floor of apartments and another of parking was inserted. Due to height constraints, the floors’ structural systems needed to be as thin as possible, while incorporating the necessary fire rating. A long-span concrete slab-on-metal deck supported by load-bearing, unit-demising walls worked well beneath the new residence floor, and a cast-in-place reinforced concrete, flat slab sits under the new parking level. The building’s structure supports these new floors with the existing columns and girders.

To learn more about the project, contact us.

Aerial Photo Credits: Photographer Bradley Simonsen. Photos courtesy of NuStyle Development.