BELL MOBILITY CENTRE & BELL CANADA CAMPUS
Developer: MSW Developments and H & R Reit
Architect: Page + Steele Architects Planners
This innovative project, consisting of three low-rise office blocks, joined at the ground floor, and a three storey call centre, all constructed over two levels of a subgrade parking garage, which extends to the west, under an expansive surface parking area, is located at the north side of Burnhamthorpe Road, east of Dixie Road, in Mississauga.
The ground floor of the Bell Mobility blocks, (phase I), contains a customer service centre, and in the lower level, there are amenities. The call centre building, (phase II), is linked below grade in order to partake of the amenities.
Phase I included over 1900 parking spaces, 900 of which were below grade. Phase II, which was built with a very tight occupancy deadline of thirteen months, added 450 parking spaces in a two level subgrade parking facility.
The P1 parking level in phase I is primarily a 200 mm thick, reinforced concrete, flat slab, with 150 mm deep drop panels over the columns. In phase II where the spans are larger, the P1 parking level is primarily a 220 mm thick reinforced concrete, flat slab, with 200 mm deep drop panels.
In phase I, the ground floor, beyond the office blocks, serves as an expansive surface parking deck and is constructed as a 230 mm thick, reinforced concrete, flat slab, with 150 mm deep drop panels, and 400 mm deep capitals over the columns.
In both phases, the concrete for the parking level slabs and the ground floor was specified to have a twenty-eight days strength of 35 megapascals, and in the parking levels, and the areas of the ground floor, that could be exposed to deicing chemicals, the concrete has also to satisfy the criteria for a class “C1” exposure.
Extensive areas, at the south-east, and north-east of the ground floor, of phase I, are framed with structural steel trusses, beams, and purlins, to support 125 mm of concrete on 38 mm by 0.91 mm thick composite steel deck.
Within the atrium of phase II, there are two elevator shafts, with four glass enclosed elevators. The elevator lobbies are accessed, on the second and third floors, from reinforced concrete bridges, and there is a structural steel hanging staircase, floating in the atrium, which is suspended from the bridges, and continuing down to the ground floor of the atrium.
To minimize the column sizes in phase I, the columns’ concrete was specified to have a strength, at ninety days, of 45 megapascals, in the
office blocks, below the second floor, and 40 megapascals above the second floor.