WILLOW BUSINESS PARK

Long Beach, California

 

Willow Business Park is an example of some of the land planning we have done. This 36-acre development is a mix of office buildings and industrial buildings. The client desired the optimum site utilization within the constraints of the market demand. Working closely with the client and their market analysts enabled us to come up with this highly efficient plan, both economic and aesthetic.

 

To reduce exterior maintenance costs all of the buildings were structurally designed utilizing tilt-up concrete construction, including the office buildings. Instead of painting the concrete we utilized various smooth and heavy textures and forms in natural concrete and added aggregate finishes. In order to maintain a level of design uniformity glazing systems and glazing were kept the same throughout the project. To add a contraposition to the concrete we had the landscape architect provide soft flowing berms with low growing ground cover and granite boulders to match the raw concrete finish. Coral trees provided color and sculptural flowing limbs and trunks to contrapose the linear concrete forms. Concrete monument signing with addresses and names cast into the concrete and then set into the berms provided non-obtrusive but highly visible signage.

 

Understanding that market conditions are always evolving we introduced the concept of "convertible industrial buildings" to our client. What we did was design the industrial buildings to accommodate a two-story office building conversion. The tilt-up concrete exterior walls were provided with knock out panels which could easily be cut out and replaced with a commercial glazing system. A second floor could be built inside with a hydraulic elevator and voila, in just a short time an industrial building has been transformed into a two-story office building. The design challenge is to make a well designed industrial building morph into a well designed office building. It actually worked surprisingly well. Roughly speaking this equates to increasing the rent potential by 2.5 times and the gross square footage by 2 times resulting in a redefined building grossing 5 times the revenue. Just imagine the overall gain in project value

 

By working out of the industrial building box we were not only able to meet our client's current expectations; we were able to exceed them in the future.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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