Signia by Hilton HQ Hotel and Convention Center Expansion
Using sustainable engineering to stabilize new structures.
Project Facts
| Location | Atlanta, Georgia |
| Owner | Georgia World Congress Center Authority |
| Size | 920,000 SF |
| Status | Completed 2024 |
Overview
The Signia by Hilton headquarters hotel at the Georgia World Congress Center needed a 976-key, 40-story tower, a 6-level amenity-rich podium, and a two-story ballroom and event space expansion. Walter P Moore developed sustainable and cost-saving strategies used throughout the project to bring it to fruition.
Services
About the project
The new Signia by Hilton tower has spectacular views in all directions, serves as a key connection between the convention center and the Home Depot Backyard/Mercedes-Benz Stadium, and includes over 100,000 SF of new meeting and convention space.
Various sustainable and cost-saving strategies were used throughout the project. First, the hotel tower is constructed on top of the original Georgia Dome pile foundations. Through rigorous collaboration with the contractor, over 200 existing piles totaling over 13,000 feet in length were salvaged and reused to help support the massive new building.
Another particularly complex part of the new structure was the management of floor vibrations for the ballroom, where dancing and other rhythmic activities take place. The new 2,600-ton, two-story, steel-framed ballroom expansion structure sits on top of an existing two-story parking structure.
Rather than use conventional, heavy steel trusses to manage floor vibrations for the new elevated, long-span ballroom floor, small steel hanger posts were installed to tie the ballroom floor to the existing plaza level below so that the two levels act in unison to dissipate any noticeable ballroom floor vibrations.
Finally, the Walter P Moore team specified and designed Buckling Restrained Braced Frames (BRBFs), a proprietary braced frame system, that are highly ductile. They also effectively lowered seismic loading on the new ballroom structure to mitigate structural strengthening of the existing parking deck below.
