Westchester’s Ridge Hill
Yonkers, N.Y.

Thornton Tomasetti provided structural engineering services to architect Studio 5 Partnership for the New York metropolitan area’s largest mixed-use outdoor shopping center, which opened last month. The project encompasses 13 separate retail structures, including a 12-screen movie theater and a 150,000-sf existing office building that was converted into retail at the ground floor. The complex’s structural system is typically steel-frame construction accommodating a variety of external building envelopes: precast, brick veneer, glass curtain wall, EIFS, zinc panel and stone veneer. Five precast concrete parking garage structures, from five to seven stories, provide 4,600 spaces for parking. We created a foundation matrix to address the 80-acre site’s wide-ranging grade and rock elevations and implemented a variety of foundation solutions. The significant topography changes also created wind “speed-up” effects, which resulted in higher wind loads on the structures. The client’s desire to minimize construction material costs was addressed in many of our details for retaining walls, grade beams and slab haunches for building perimeter conditions.