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2600 Grand Avenue at
Crown Center

Kansas City, Missouri
Completed 1991

Investment office building with parking
 

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Construction of this 13-story office building launched the southward expansion of Crown Center, an 85-acre mixed-use complex owned and developed by Hallmark, leader of the greeting card industry. At a quarter-million square feet, with 22,000 s/f per floor, the client's program was typical of investment buildings in cities across the country. Thus its very ordinariness posed the design challenge: to make something common into something special.

2600 Grand fronts on a new public park, designed as a setting for the building by the renowned landscape architect Dan Kiley. In order to address this park while also acknowledging the major streets bounding it on both sides, the south face of the building is faceted, shaping its otherwise conventionally orthogonal floor plan into a more interesting but equally functional form. This design gives the building a distinctive identity both externally and internally, while maintaining the spatial efficiency that has secured its success in a highly competitive rental market.

Major Components

280,000 s/f offices; 4,900 s/f lobby; 220,000 s/f attached garage for 690 cars, comissioned art (Kenneth Snelsen sculpture)

Awards

Pei Cobb Freed & Partners services

Master Planning; Architectural Services through design development for core & shell; Architectural Services through construction administration for curtain wall and light column; Design review of public interiors for balance of work performed by Executive Architect

Executive Architect

PBNI Architects, Inc., Kansas City, MO

Structural

Weiskopf & Pickworth, New York, NY

Mechanical / Electrical

Smith & Boucher, Overland Park, KS

Landscape

Office of Dan Kiley, Charlotte, VT

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