Spencer Plaza - The Building

The Building

The plaza is an 8-storey shopping-cum-office complex of approximately 1.068 million sq ft, consisting of nearly 600,000 sq ft of air-conditioned shopping units and 400,000 sq ft of office units. The shopping arcade is located on the ground, first and second floors in all the three phases and the office units are spread between the fourth and the seventh floors. The car parks are spread over the basement, ground, second and third floors, in addition to double basement parking lots in the third phase of the building.

The first phase of the building consists of about 300,000 sq ft, including about 125,000 sq ft of centrally air-conditioned shopping space and 100,000 sq ft of office units together with about 75,000 sq ft of service areas. The second phase consists of about 400,000 sq ft, with a provision for about 600 cars at the basement, with shops with various sizes ranging from 300 sq ft to 2,000 sq ft. The third phase covers another 300,000 sq ft.

There are over 700 shops in the plaza and over 22,000 people visit the plaza everyday with the number increasing to 40,000 on weekends and to 60,000 on festival days. The complex has three counters to keep track of footfalls. Over 20,000 two-wheelers check in to the parking lot on weekends.

Technical and safety aspects

Being a high-rise building, the complex has wet riser system and electronic fire alarm system installed. The underground sump has a storage capacity of 100,000 litres. A ring main surrounds the building from the pump room, and there are 5 wet risers running from basement to the second floor and 3 wet risers running from the fourth floor to the seventh floor. These risers are located at strategic points in each floor. The pump room has three pumps, one jockey pump, one main pump with electrical driven motor and one main pump connected with diesel engine. The electronic fire detection system comprises smoke detectors and manual call points located in various points in common areas in all floors, sub-stations, electrical rooms, A/C plant and so forth, which are connected to a centralized computer located at the enclosures of the chief security officer. In addition, there are also many portable fire extinguishers to fight different types of fires, installed at each floor in different locations. The rear periphery of the building has fire escape stairs, with the fire escape routes displayed with signboards at various points of the building. The car ramps can also be used as fire escape routes. The building has two entrances, one from Binny Road and another from Anna Salai, for fire engines.

Fire safety include water capacity of 1.2 million litres, fire sprinklers, smoke and heat detection systems and fire extinguishers. The in-house fire department has six firemen per shift.