A Capital Idea

By Mike Ryan
From the August 2024 Issue

The Capital One Center is a vibrant 24.5-acre mixed-use corporate, retail, and cultural arts destination spanning five blocks in Tysons Corner, VA. Anchored by the headquarters of Capital One, the site brings the larger community together with restaurants, shops, artwork, games, and events in a modern live-work-play paradigm.

Today, a highlight of the property is Capital One Hall, a large interior meeting facility that doubles as an affordable event space for community arts organizations. Another focal point is “The Perch.” Known as “the park in the sky,” it’s a greenspace 11 stories high atop of Capital One Hall where visitors can enjoy a beverage at Starr Hill Biergarten, play a round of golf at Perch Putt — an 18-hole miniature golf experience featuring food trucks and a Tiki Bar — or walk through the beautiful Great Lawn.

The Capital One Center is quickly transforming the skyline and cultural landscape of Fairfax County, VA. To see more of this project, view the gallery of images below. (All photos courtesy of Ruppert Landscape.)

Here’s how my company, Ruppert Landscape, helped transform this multi-level project, including The Perch, into an attractive, high density, urban lifestyle hub.

Project Goals

In 2019, Ruppert Landscape was brought on to create a landscape design for an environmentally conscious area where people could live, work and play. With this in mind, three goals were identified as priorities for the project: to improve the busy urban area’s walkability and connectivity; to demonstrate how the area’s old office parks can be reimagined; and to tie the project to the city’s stormwater management plan.

Walkability/Connectivity

Designed with walkability in mind, the site has pedestrian friendly streets, green public spaces to lounge and play, everyday conveniences, and shopping/dining options. As is often the case with installation projects within a busy urban area, pedestrian and vehicular traffic on the site had to be managed daily. Additional considerations were made due to the use of a crane throughout the project’s duration.

Visual connectivity was achieved with a streetscape that includes a consistent, contemporary, and low maintenance plant palette. Trees like red maples and elms, and perennials such as black-eyed Susan, purple cone flower, inkberry, reed and switchgrass were planted throughout the five-block area.

Three goals were identified as priorities for the project: to improve the busy urban area’s walkability and connectivity; to demonstrate how the area’s old office parks can be reimagined; and to tie the project to the city’s stormwater management plan.

Reimagining Old Office Parks

Sustainability was a large consideration in design and materials selection. To minimize urban heat island effects, we installed shade tree canopies (90 large caliper), glavel (or foam glass gravel — a recycled, lightweight, and insulating green roof aggregate), as well as a vegetated greenroof. “Cool building” products, including a natural stone veneer with a high solar reflective index (SRI), were used on walls and benches in the rooftop area.

To create a more sustainable landscape, special focus was given to preserving water resources, sourcing local vendors, and using both native and adaptive plant material.

Stormwater

The site needed to adhere to Fairfax County’s Environmental Sustainability Committee requirements. To mitigate and manage stormwater runoff, we installed 17 bioretention planters around the project’s perimeter. The granite edges, created using shop drawings and manufactured in China, had a three-month lead time and experienced a supply chain delay due to COVID. Installed with indigenous vegetation and absorptive soils, these features enable stormwater to be slowed down, absorbed, and filtered before entering natural waterways.

Meeting Multiple Challenges

1. Scheduling & Safety

Detailed planning, scheduling and safety measures were required to ensure this urban job could be completed safely with minimal disruption to the area. With its location in the heart of Tysons Corner — an area with a high volume of bus, vehicle, and pedestrian traffic—safety and proper traffic control were essential. Deliveries required lift plans (for crane use) and a traffic control plan — presented to the general contractor — which included barricades, barrels, signs, and flaggers. Precautions were set up every morning and taken down every evening to reduce roadway and parking garage impact.

Throughout the project’s duration, two full-time Ruppert employees were dedicated to facilitating the delivery of the hundreds of truckloads of material that came to the site. This entailed scheduling, coordination, stopping traffic, navigating trucks into (and then out of) the jobsite and unloading materials.

2. The Timeline

Adding to the challenges above was a compressed timeline that was not in our control. When we began our work, the project was already six to nine months behind schedule with a hard opening date that couldn’t be pushed.

We performed $1 million dollars’ worth of work every month for five months, utilizing over 11,000 labor hours. For reference, it would take a six-man crew nearly an entire year to work that many hours. Prior to November of 2020, we were utilizing approximately 50 team members who were operating in two shifts a day — from 7 a.m. until 10 p.m. — for two months. Additionally, we weren’t able to work in a fluid manner and had to pivot constantly when areas became available for us to perform our tasks.

3. Multiple Levels

Since work was being performed on two elevations simultaneously, multiple mobilizations per task were required and careful planning with various other contractors on site. Crane use, in particular, required close coordination between multiple people including the crane operator, radio technician, receiver, and personnel offloading the material—as well as the general contractor who had to ensure there would be no interference by, or danger to other contractors.

There were only two points at ground level from which we could hoist material to the rooftop while still enabling all the ground level work to continue safely. The craning of all materials for the 11-story high Perch — which included concrete, stone veneer, 16,400 square feet of pavers, site furnishings, 135 large-caliper trees, 1,800 shrubs, 4,600 perennials, and 5400 square yards of artificial turf — was done in small bursts of time, as materials arrived. Materials were then transferred using pallet jacks, Georgia buggies, and wheelbarrows.

Twenty yellowwood trees lining the lawn area, had rootballs that weighed 1000 pounds! They were hoisted to The Perch using a crane and then moved on dollies and hydraulic lifts. Once installed, all trees were secured to ensure firm establishment of their roots and mitigate shifting due to windy conditions at the rooftop level.

With the skypark built over-structure, soil, drainage, and grade changes were extremely important. To that end, 16,300 cubic feet of polystyrene, 26,000+ square feet of drainage mat, 13,500 square feet of geomembrane liners, supersacks of 5,450 cubic yards of glavel, and 1,775 lineal feet of PVC piping were installed to reduce weight, mitigate runoff, insulate, and create a strong planting foundation.

Additional assistance was provided by a concrete pump truck and by a pressurized blower truck with a hopper and 4″ pipe. It was controlled by a single crew member on the roof — blowing over 2,300 cubic yards of special lightweight soil and 230 cubic yards of mulch to the Perch planting beds.

The Perch’s irrigation installation included 23 different zones with just over 25,000 lineal feet of various irrigation drip lines, fixed spray and rotors. All were carefully configured to keep plant material thriving in the lightweight soil mix, where upper deck temperatures are 10˚ to 15˚ warmer than street level.

Now completed, the Capital One Center is quickly transforming the skyline and cultural landscape of Fairfax County, VA, enabling all who visit to enjoy this greenspace while working to minimize the environmental impact on the city and its waterways.

4. COVID & Supply Chains

With COVID at its peak during the construction of this project, supply chain delays were prevalent. Granite curb and stair treads, quarried in North Africa and manufactured in China, required a three-month lead time and experienced some delays. Other materials, like the glavel aggregate, could only be procured in bulk from a manufacturer in Germany. It arrived via the Port of Baltimore — and after some early delays, started arriving quicker than it could be placed. With no substantial onsite storage, we secured offsite storage that was 20 miles away and would have smaller quantities of supersacks delivered once they could be placed.

Manpower challenges were also a major issue. While COVID caused the quarantine of several key personnel, there were also ongoing H2B visa challenges and increased competition for workers amongst all labor sectors causing work slowdowns and jobsite shutdowns. These labor challenges required a shifting/sharing of resources between multiple branches to bring the project to fruition on time and on budget.

5. Concrete Conditions

To pour concrete in The Perch, both the crane and a pump truck were required. But the water-cement ratio for this option caused some unwanted changes in the concrete’s color consistency (a challenge we communicated to the owner/developer prior to installation). Unfortunately, there were several areas we had to rip out and reinstall. In other areas, we were able to solve this challenge by applying a stain to the concrete.

Given the timeline, concrete and masonry finish work had to be completed in cold weather, which also provided challenges. To ensure the water, sand, and cement were above the requisite 40˚ required for curing, we scheduled deliveries later in the day so temperatures would be higher, and brought in tents, heaters, and warming blankets, while working in close coordination with site inspectors.

Scope Of Work

To bring the Capital One Center project to fruition, we ultimately installed a total of:

55,000 square feet of concrete flatwork (walkways, subslab, ADA ramps),
7,400 lineal feet of walls and stairs
5,000 lineal feet of curb/gutter
875 lineal feet of veneer on planters/walls;
27,400 square feet of pavers;
1,675 lineal feet of granite curb and stair treads;
6,450 square feet of caulking;

1,000 tons of stone;
18 tons of sand;
6,200 cubic yards of soil;
230 large-caliper trees;
3000 shrubs;
7,700 perennials;
an extensive irrigation system that covered all green areas on the ground and on the 11th floor park level;
and over $300,000 worth of site amenities.

National Aquarium Unveils Harbor Wetland

Now completed, the Capital One Center is quickly transforming the skyline and cultural landscape of Fairfax County, VA, enabling all who visit to enjoy this greenspace while working to minimize the environmental impact on the city and its waterways.

Ryan is a branch manager with Ruppert Landscape in the company’s Washington D.C. Landscape Construction Branch. He has been with the Ruppert organization for over eight years and holds a bachelor’s degree in horticulture from Virginia Tech. Ruppert Landscape, founded as a family and employee-owned business, is a leading provider of commercial landscaping services. Headquartered in Laytonsville, MD, Ruppert has 2,300 team members who serve customers from over 45 branches primarily throughout the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, and Southeastern U.S. The company prides itself on its strong culture, commitment to its employees, attention to its customers, and giving back to the community. 

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