CityLine Sunnyvale AMC and Whole Foods

Sunnyvale, California

CityLine Sunnyvale is a mixed use development located in downtown Sunnyvale just south of the historic Murphy Avenue District by the joint venture group STC Venture LLC which is comprised of  J.P. Morgan Asset Management, Hunter Properties and Series Regis.  Included in this multiuse 36 acre development is a new two story retail facility and associated renovated parking structure which Hohbach-Lewin provided full structural engineering services working with SGPA and International Parking Design.  The retail building houses a 52,000 SF Whole foods on the ground floor and a 12 screen AMC movie theater on the upper story.  Strict deflection, vibration, and acoustic design criteria drove the 2^nd floor level that separates the theatre from the Grocery Store to be constructed out of Cast-in-place post-tensioned concrete.  Special Reinforced Concrete Shear walls resist seismic forces at the lower level.  The upper floor utilized long span structural steel framing to accommodate the theater layout with Buckling Restrained Braced Frames (BRBF’s) as the Lateral Force Resisting System.  The interface between the two different systems was one of the biggest challenges and involved capacity based design to predict the seismic demands exerted by the BRB’s into the concrete structure below.