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Douglas Towne

New Storage Space Has a Fast, Discounted Past


"When renovating an existing facility, especially an older one, everyone knows there will be some unexpected existing conditions that will be encountered,” Ryan Lee, project manager for Perlo Construction, says. “This project just happened to have a significant amount of structural conditions that needed to be addressed.”

Lee is describing a 46-year-old building that was occupied by a Kmart for 40 years and then converted into Phoenix Indoor Karting, a go-cart racing facility. Perlo Construction has been rehabbing the structure at 3401 West Greenway Road into a climate-controlled storage facility since November 2018. The firm has encountered two significant structural issues since work began.

The first was discovering two broken glulam beams that were about 3-feet tall by 35-feet long. “We had no clue how or when this happened, as these are some huge beams,” Lee says. “We immediately put structural shoring under them and then installed a large I-beam and columns under it for the final fix.”

Perlo Construction subsequently found another hitch in their rehab project. The company was working on the front entry and excavated to locate some existing wall footings to tie into. “We discovered that a portion of the structural masonry wall did not have an existing footing,” Lee says, in disbelief. “Somehow the wall didn't even have a stress crack, so we excavated and installed a new footing to correct the issue.”

Keeping the site secure proved challenging. “We installed temporary security fencing around the entire site, but due to the location and lack of traffic, we had to battle job site theft,” Lee says. “We resolved this by boarding up all openings, adding security cameras, putting up trespassing and security signage, and installing motion lights.”

Many entities working seamlessly together to address these challenges. The team included Jared Langenhuizen, director of construction for Wentworth, architects Kelly Ferguson and Scott Telschow of Robert Brown Architects, Sergio Jaramillo Jr. of JTA Engineering, Don Freeman, Perlo’s Phoenix market lead, and Bevan Barney, Perlo superintendent.

To read the rest of this article, you are invited to purchase the digital issue here.

This article originally appeared in the Arizona Contractor & Community magazine, July/Aug 2019 issue, Vol. 8, No.4. The Arizona Contractor & Community magazine is a bi-monthly publication.

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