ATLANTA--Jack Guynn, president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, today announced that the Bank has chosen the local architecture firm of Smallwood, Reynolds, Stewart, Stewart & Associates to design its new Atlanta headquarters building. The New York-based architect Robert A.M. Stern will be the project's lead designer. The Bank conducted a nationwide search before settling on Smallwood, Reynolds, which has been in business since 1979.
In making the announcement, Guynn said, "While the final decision was based on many considerations, two factors weighed heavily in favor of this local architecture firm: its experience with projects of comparable scope and technical complexity and its proven ability, in association with Robert Stern, to create classical, timeless building designs."
Smallwood, Reynolds, Stewart, Stewart & Associates has designed the building and grounds of 1100 Peachtree in Atlanta's Midtown area, Resurgens Plaza in the Buckhead section of Atlanta and the headquarters of Jefferson-Pilot Life Insurance Co. in Greensboro, N.C.
As a practicing architect, writer and professor at Columbia University's graduate school of architecture and director of its Historic Preservation Department, Stern is well known as a strong proponent of modern classicism in architectural design. Examples of the work of Robert A.M. Stern Architects include the University of Virginia's Darden School of Business and 222 Berkeley Street, an office/mixed-use building in Boston.
"We have a prime piece of land in the heart of Midtown to develop for our headquarters," said Guynn, "and we are also excited about this team's ability to integrate our new building and its site with this very special area in the city of Atlanta."
Guynn (pronounced "gwin") added that Smallwood, Reynolds, Stewart, Stewart & Associates and Stern had "demonstrated a thorough understanding of the Bank's technical requirements."
Another Atlanta-based firm, Newcomb and Boyd, will provide engineering consultation for the Atlanta Fed building project. In addition, the Bank is committed to having the participation of small firms or socially or economically disadvantaged businesses, and, of the other 16 design consultants that have been proposed, the majority fall into this category.
The Atlanta Fed announced eight months ago that it had purchased an 11-acre site at Tenth and Peachtree streets for a new headquarters building that would contain approximately 750,000 square feet. Now that the architect has been chosen, the next major announcement will come in about one year when the Bank unveils the design for the building. Plans call for Fed employees to occupy the building in the year 2000.
The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta serves the Sixth Federal Reserve District, which encompasses Alabama, Florida, Georgia, and parts of Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee. As part of the nation's central banking system, the Atlanta Fed takes part in setting national monetary policy, supervises and regulates numerous commercial banks and provides check processing and other payments services to depository institutions and the U.S. government.