Agents of Change: Teams repurpose underused buildings
In November, the first renters will move into the Stehli Silk Mill and begin a dramatically different era for the 127-year-old structure.
The Lofts at Stehli Silk Mill in Lancaster, PA will include 165 apartments that feature 14-foot ceilings, oversized windows, modern interiors, and four-inch-thick, hardwood floors that still show marks made by massive milling and weaving equipment. The 250,000-square-foot complex will include an array of tenant amenities plus 20,000 square feet of boutique fitness, retail, and restaurant space.
To complete the transformation, CAM Construction had to repair extensive damage that occurred when a previous owner removed large sections of the 900-foot-long roof without imminent replacement and allowed hundreds of windows to be broken, leaving the building exposed to the elements.
The building, naturally, needed complete, new utility services and MEP systems. The property – which included railway tracks, crumbling pavement and the relics of a boiler plant – had never included any stormwater management or erosion-control measures. Consequently, CAM had to clear and regrade the 11-acre site.
Yet CAM Construction and other companies relish the distinctive challenges of repurposing properties. Conversion projects require expertise in creating unique architectural and engineering designs, overcoming the inevitable litany of unforeseen field conditions, completing bespoke construction requirements, and navigating a maze of permitting requirements. Yet those conversions enable properties — whether they are grand, historic buildings or commonplace, disused ones — to become entirely different and desirable spaces.
Creating workforce housing
CAM Construction is also currently preparing to transform the former Dunbar Elementary School Annex in east Baltimore into Caroline Street Lofts. The four-story building includes many qualities that make it attractive for a residential conversion.
“It has a lot of nice, interior features,” said Angelo Munafo, Vice President of Real Estate Development. “There are really cool, glazed brick wall assemblies in the corridors and stair towers. There are beautiful terrazzo floors that are indestructible. We have 14-foot ceilings and almost a continuous wall of windows on both north and south elevations of the building.”
Furthermore, the location bordering Johns Hopkins Hospital makes the property ideal for workforce housing.
But that’s not to say the transformation is easy. At the beginning of the project, CAM had to remove nearly 60 dumpster loads of trash.
“People had raided the building and removed all the copper,” Munafo said. “They ended up ripping off some of the asbestos pipe insulation, so we had to identify all of that and properly abate the material.”
And the company is currently developing a fix for the challenge in the basement. It regularly has a few inches of water on the floor, stemming from both the high water table in the area and a leaking, city water line.
CAM Construction, however, has built expertise in navigating the distinct challenges of historic conversions, Munafo said. Its best practices include partnering with architects and engineers to develop efficient, cost-effective designs and developing deep knowledge of the different codes that apply to different types of properties and conversions, and how different preservation and permitting authorities interpret those codes.
CAM also self-performs significant, unplanned work on its conversion projects.
“Accomplishing this unique work requires not only experience, but also much creativity and ingenuity. These projects require substantial manpower to fill in the gaps between trades which you don’t encounter on new construction or even simpler renovations,” he said. “There are a lot of items that CAM will self-perform to control costs and execution quality, and avoid getting hit with heavy change orders from subcontractors. At Stehli Silk Mill, our team ended up completing an endless list of skilled tasks, ranging from structural wood beam and decking replacement, salvaging and repurposing native materials, miscellaneous brick infills and openings, installing 850-plus historically accurate windows, and painting various existing steel features to accent and preserve them.”
Office-to-lab conversions
On a pair of newer buildings in Rockville, Plano-Coudon Construction has been completing a series of conversions to address changing needs for commercial space.
Demand for office space in the four-decades-old buildings had dropped, so owners opted to transform some empty offices into spec laboratories.
The labs which range between 3,000 and 9,000 square feet each, include basic services (not medical gas). One lab includes space for a future, GMP (good manufacturing practices) facility, such as a clean room.
“There’s not a lot we have to do with that space other than clearing it out, giving them the highest ceiling possible and connections to heat, power and water,” said Merissa Detwiler, Senior Project Manager. Blank GMP space “seems to be gaining in popularity and becoming a more frequent request from tenants. They want space that is compatible with putting in a pre-manufactured, clean-room box.”
Simple designs, however, don’t guarantee simple construction projects.
One building, formerly fully occupied by Comcast, contained a large amount of low-voltage cabling as well as a first-floor server room still occupied by Comcast. Crews had to carefully work around that equipment, especially during the installation of two new DOAS units.
“That’s a lot of really sensitive equipment so we had to work with the design team to figure out different ways to run the ductwork,” said Matthew Groce, Project Engineer. “We didn’t want to trigger an outage.”
In the second building, the project team had to align its work to avoid any disruption to the operations of another tenant – a surgical center.
The relatively modern buildings still presented some challenging field conditions.
“A lot of walls didn’t have framing that went all the way up to the deck. Some stopped a little above the ceiling and were held in place by the ceiling grid itself,” Groce said.
Since the project included replacing the ceiling, crews also had to replace those non-standard walls.
“The steel was definitely one of the bigger challenges we had,” Detwiler said. “The design for one project included adding supports for new roof screen steel located at each end of the building. The new steel penetrated the roof to be supported off existing joists. However, because of how the existing joists were constructed, it wasn’t an easy fit. There was a lot of reworking the new steel, a lot of coordination with the engineers, a lot of extra time. There were situations where we had to add a support because there was no joist in place or there was a piece of existing HVAC equipment that couldn’t be relocated so we almost had to put a steel bridge overtop.”
The unique challenges that arise during conversion projects “make it really important for clients to pick a contractor who has done this kind of work previously and really understands how to deal with unexpected conditions as they arise,” said Lisa Tenley, Vice President at Plano-Coudon.
The company has also expanded its collaboration between pre-construction and project management on conversion projects.
“After the first spec lab project, we met and went through all the lessons learned and things that we need to account for in that type of project,” Detwiler said. “We worked with precon to make sure we have allowances with the client to accommodate things that come up so it doesn’t hurt the client’s numbers or ours.”
Building community
Occasionally, a conversion project aims to make a marked difference in a community.
Following the 2015 unrest over the death of Freddie Gray, Tim Regan, CEO of The Whiting-Turner Contracting Company, and Calvin Butler, then CEO of BGE, initiated plans to transform the vacant Target store at Mondawmin Mall into a community empowerment center.
“The project as a whole presented a major challenge, as it involved managing several concurrent sub-projects,” said Douglas Townsley, CEO of DEL Electric.
For DEL, those projects included the gutting of the Target store as well as construction of a Whiting-Turner conference center onsite, offices for CareFirst, and the Touch Point Empowerment Center (a community meeting space and entrepreneurial support center).
The work needed to be organized to avoid disrupting the operations of existing tenants in the mall or impeding access by workers and shoppers.
“Additionally, the entire face of the building in the renovation area was removed which involved additional coordination to keep all systems operational,” including electrical and telecommunications connections and power to exterior and emergency lighting, Townsley said.
Fortunately, DEL’s Director of Project Management, Scott Cluster, had worked on the original construction of the store in 2007 and had insights into what the project would entail. The project team, however, still had to grapple with one formidable condition.
“The biggest challenge was trying to bring a distribution into the existing facility,” Cluster said. “On the backside of that facility, there is a significant grade difference. We had to do an excavation inside that building that was 13 to 15 feet deep to be able to get down to the level needed to bring the infrastructure into that building and up. The biggest concern was maintaining safety for everyone and preventing anyone from ending up in a precarious situation.”
The result, however, was worth the effort, Cluster said. “That whole project is geared towards helping the community. Knowing what this building is about gave DEL and our team a real sense of pride completing this project.”