From wood framed to ICF, from pitched roof to flat, from 4 units to 5 and 8000 square feet to 9000. The design has changed, but the concept has remained the same. A multi unit commercial building with retail entrances and store windows with a roll up door for warehousing.
When I first started thinking about this project I had my designer already in mind, an extremely talented friend, Elyse, that owns Elyse McCurdy Home Designs. I can not say enough about her design and style, I was excited to work with her. I reached out to her before I had my hands firmly on the vacant commercial property. The project size and square footage put this commercial project outside of her scope of work. Bummer! In turn, I will be looking for another project to work with Elyse on. She offered names and suggestions of other local and talented individuals to call.
I landed on INEngineering out of Brockville to take on this project. During the initial consultation I liked Andrew’s approach and I like the idea that Andrew’s firm is going to be taking me from survey to final architectural drawings. All of the resources in house to submit my site plan proposal, and permit drawings. As Andrew and his team have started me down this process, the evolution of the design has started.
Before I started the process with InEngineering I had proposed a 4 unit 8000sq ft building to the municipality. Before even connecting with Andrew this idea had shifted to slightly smaller units and a larger footprint. I initial told Andrew I was looking to build a wood framed, pitched roof, 5 unit, 8300-8400 sq ft build. The wood component is due to my experience with residential framing and my comfort level as the general contractor.
Andrew attempted to appease my design concept while incorporating more traditional commercial building elements such as a flat roof for HVAC and non combustible elements to the build. The design at this point was not what I expected.
Andrew was able to share the restrictions of a light framed commercial building. This type of structure would essentially limit the use of the building. Since the business park allows for anything from retail through light industrial and warehousing uses it might not be best to limit potential businesses within the building. I shared further my visual design ideas, and we settled on an ICF (Insulated Concrete Form) building with an open web steel truss roof (a traditional flat commercial roof). It was a departure from the wood framed but will provide a highly efficient commercial building with exceptional strength and sound dampening.
The next set of renderings I received I knew we were on the right track. Based on inspirational photos that my wife had found, the new renderings play on the old brick storefront look that is prevalent through Almonte yet has some more up to date styling with black accents. The design of the building is a departure from your standard metal business park building. As we work through the site planning process I will see how it impacts the design of the building, but I am excited to bring a beautiful building to Almonte that local businesses will be proud to be apart of.