Located at 10 Columbus Circle, the new $2.5 billion center is a 2.8 million-square-foot, multi-use facility featuring 750-foot twin towers. Construction of the center, which began in September 2000, was completed on time and on budget. The center first opened its doors to the public in November 2003.

The Time Warner Center includes The Shops at Columbus Circle, five floors of retail, entertainment, and restaurant businesses; Jazz at Lincoln Center, a 1,970-seat performance and education facility; the five-star Mandarin Oriental Hotel; The Residences at the Mandarin Oriental, condominiums in the north tower; One Central Park, condominium residences in the south tower; and a 504-stall valet parking garage.

The center, which also serves as the new global headquarters for Time Warner, houses broadcast facilities for the live transmissions of CNN and CNNfn.

Siemens technology is used throughout the center. The company's building management system controls and monitors HVAC equipment and a chilled water plant that serves each of the center's tenants (e.g., the shops, hotel, residences, etc.). The building management system consists of a network of microprocessor-based controllers and central workstation computers, including communications on a dedicated network of fiber-optic cables designed to provide enhanced reliability.

An interface developed by Siemens integrates the company's building management system with the hotel management system at the Mandarin Oriental. This interface allows the hotel's chief engineer to view and control - through the central workstation computers - hotel system information such as room status (e.g., rented/unrented) and room temperature in order to deliver optimum room comfort.

The Siemens system is also capable of remotely controlling the center's HVAC units through a web browser, so that condominium residents, for example, can change the temperature in their living quarters via the Internet.

In addition, the system's remote notification capabilities allow alarm messages to be sent to an engineer's or technician's pager, PC, or phone, when they are away from their workstations.

Siemens also installed chilled water and steam meters, which are used for the tracking and billing of energy usage by the center's tenants.

Publication date: 06/28/2004