At Bailey’s Crossroads, near Arlington, Va., a three-building office complex known as the Skyline buildings had begun to show its age. Erected in the 1970s, the trio of aluminum clad, 15-story structures had dulled from a collection of sleek black towers into a strand of mud-colored eyesores.
To clean up and contemporize the buildings, which had since been surrounded by a neighborhood of gleaming new buildings, then-owner Charles E. Smith Co., of Washington, D.C., hired William Pegues, FCIC, of Weihe Design Group, a firm also located in the nation’s capital.
After two years of work and the application of Coraflon ADS coatings, a revolutionary field-applied coating system from PPG, the Skyline Towers looked brand new.
To fulfill the project’s mission, Pegues contacted his PPG architectural representative who recommended the application of Coraflon ADS coatings, a fluoropolymer resin-based coating that is field-applied but has the UV resistance, durability and extensive color selection associated with factory-applied coatings.
In fact, the durability of Coraflon ADS coatings was one of the key selling points for the building owners and the architect, who wanted a long-term solution for maintaining the buildings’ appearance in place of the stop-gap painting projects that had sustained them through the 1990s. PPG was able to address their concerns by providing a long-term warranty that covered adhesion, color retention and chalk resistance.
During the course of the restoration project, over 750 gallons of Coraflon ADS coatings, custom-blended to “Beaver Creek”, were applied to the three buildings, covering approximately 450,000 square feet of surface area.
The work on Skyline One, the oldest of the three towers, began in 2001 with a hand-stripping and sanding assisted by an acetone solvent wipe. Afterward, a conventional acid-based wash primer was applied by brush and roller, followed by a recoatable epoxy primer. Coraflon ® ADS coatings were then applied with an air-assisted electrostatic spray. Work on Skyline Towers Two and Three was completed the following year, although stripping was not required for those buildings.
In addition to expanding the durability, color options and renovation opportunities for older metal-clad buildings, Coraflon ADS coatings are also a pioneering product in the area of environmental sustainability. Coraflon ADS coatings comply with national EPA rules governing the release of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) for architectural coatings and industrial maintenance.
The project’s owner is Vornado Group (formerly Charles E. Smith Company). The architect was Weihe Design Group, Washington, D.C. Coatings applicators were Universal Building Service, Germantown, Md., and John B. Conomos, Bridgeville, Pa.