As cities across our nation desperately seek affordable housing solutions, repurposing abandoned 20th-Century buildings has become a hot topic among city planners, architects, real estate investors, environmentalists, and construction firms. Members of the real estate value chain in America’s cities are looking for low-cost options and are investigating vacant office spaces and schools as particular possibilities for conversion to multi-family residential. Studies about which buildings are best suited for this “adaptive re-use” are increasingly popular within architecture and engineering firms. Additionally, environmentalists promote adaptive re-use as one way to reduce the carbon footprint that would otherwise be created by a ground-up construction project.
However, as CCI recently learned during the conversion of Colorado Springs Helen Hunt Elementary School to twenty-four transitional housing units, repurposing 20th-Century buildings to create modern-day residences can present challenges. Some of these challenges are obvious and largely tied to changes in building codes since original construction, but other challenges are not-so-obvious and can become headaches mid-project.
CCI’s Project Manager shares his thoughts on some of the challenges faced during the Helen Hunt project and the lessons learned.
A primary take-away from the project is that exploratory pre-construction investigations should be broader: Take core samples from many areas within the 20th-Century building because conditions can vary among the building’s walls and ceilings, due to undocumented (or lost) records of repairs, remodels, and additions. For example, take enough core samples to learn exactly what materials lie within all of the interior and exterior walls and between ceilings and floors. Plaster, drywall, tin, newspaper, wood, wood shavings? Ensure that many cores are taken during the planning phase, then also ensure that the re-use project’s architectural design accurately reflects the composition of materials within the structure in the cored locations.
Additionally, be prepared to abate for lead paint and asbestos from day one, which means even during the taking of core samples. Get the right abatement team in place from the start.
Also, be prepared to hire an experienced third-party engineer who is willing and able to review the current building’s structure and the adaptive re-use build, then provide a stamped “Engineering Judgment” to the local authorities having jurisdiction. In other words, since century-old structures do not meet the exact specification of modern building codes, a third-party engineer may be needed in order to certify that, ultimately, the composition of the project’s walls and ceilings, the fire ratings of its final materials, and etc. will provide the same level of protection and safety for residents as one built strictly to today’s code. Along those lines, as the general contractor, be ready to serve as the bridge, so-to-speak, between the third-party engineer and the local building inspectors.
Lastly, and as CCI is learning on another project involving the adaptive re-use of an education building, ensure that the project’s owner and the design team is aware of—and planning to meet—new energy code requirements being implemented in cities and states across the country. Even interior tenant remodels may be required to meet new energy requirements, which could dictate costly scope changes, like revamping an entire HVAC system from a natural gas to electric energy source and replacing all exterior windows with more energy-efficient glass.
In conclusion, adaptive re-use may be one solution to not only America’s affordable housing needs, but also to reducing construction’s carbon footprint. And it is one way to preserve local architecture and historic design elements, like transitional archways
