The Piazza – Northern Liberties

Northern Liberties, PA

Piazza Alta is a 1.2 million square foot, 12-story-plus tower offering 695 luxury rental apartments ranging from studios to three-bedroom, plus penthouses transforming the Northern Liberties section of Philadelphia.  It was the latest addition to the major, mixed-use development complex named The Piazza developed by Post Brothers and was the largest development of its kind at that time.  Klover worked with Post Brothers and their architect, BKV Group, to design, build and install prefabricated cold formed steel framed walls using state-of-the-art BIM Modeling that allowed for greater flexibility, lower per square foot costs and faster construction schedules that were invaluable in a high density, urban environment.   The project showcased Klover’s ability to deliver innovative solutions to large scale, difficult projects. 

Klover prefabricated and installed a total of 4,286 individual panels consisting of 512,000 square feet of walls.  Each panel is unique to its placement in the building which allowed BKV to have easier design flexibility in the various buildings used on this site and their relation to the topography of the existing neighborhood.  The prefabricated wall installation began in September of 2020 with completion occurring in March of 2023. Prefabrication of the panels began six months prior to the start of installation and continued throughout the project.   

Klover was instrumental in the extensive Building Information Modeling (BIM) and coordination throughout the project that allows for efficiency and collaboration among the developers, architects and other contractors on the projects.  Any design or project coordination conflicts can be discovered and fixed in a virtual environment before the actual work is done avoiding errors, cost overruns and schedule slippage.  Design changes due to conflicts were incorporated into the design of the entire building in a cost-efficient way without taking away from the client’s real estate value.  This allowed the project to become more of a “Design-Build” concept giving the client and Design Team more time to make decisions or changes prior to fabrication and/or construction. Klover worked with the engineer to change certain steel details so that the walls and floors of that tower could be panelized to accommodate this change.  Klover’s design team spent thousands of hours on this project.   

One of the primary challenges of doing such a large project in an urban setting was the coordination and logistics of the shipping of the panels themselves.  The oversized load panels had to be shipped through the narrow and traffic-filled streets of Philadelphia.  This required special permits and detailed coordination as only two tractor trailers were allowed on the site at any one time and shipments had to be done at times of the day allowed by the city.  Philadelphia requires a police escort for oversized loads so deliveries must occur at the scheduled time to meet the escort or risk cancellation of the delivery for that day.  In addition, there was no storage facility onsite for the panels so they had to be stored at Klover’s facility until needed.  Installation of the prefabricated panels onsite contained its own challenges.  The use of two separate tower cranes to install the panels had to be closely coordinated with other subcontractors to keep the project running smoothly and on time.  To ensure safety on the panel installation, Klover utilized our special rigging and signaling training certifications that are unique to Tower Crane use in the City of Philadelphia.