Tag Archives: book review

Reading “Big Box Reuse” by Julia Christensen – Chapter 7

The PolyBlog
March 10 2018

Chapter 7 looks at an old KMart building, now repurposed as a county library in Lebanon, Missouri. The building is shared with a museum and a cafe. What I love about this example is a quote on page 146:

But the fact is, basically everyone in the community of Lebanon really was involved in the renovation and design of this site. Public school students designed and painted the murals, local electricians designed systems and wired light fixtures, local artisans laid carpet and even designed mosaic tile floors for the hallways. The community here came out for the cause, donating time, money and services to the development of its new county library.

Is that unusual? No, of course not. Lots of towns have done the same thing with recreation centres, or libraries, or museums. What I find compelling is that reusing a box building rarely attracts the creative types, unless the option is to raze it and start over. Yet in this case, the building had some really key selling points — way more space than the library needed, way cheaper than building from scratch, and the previous owner was a school board who could transfer title to them easily (they donated it, after receiving it as a gift themselves). And initially, the reaction would be what you would expect. Everyone wanted a beautiful beacon, a shiny new library, and what they had was an empty KMart. Not much to inspire the community, right?

But a core planning group built street buzz, the local newspaper and radio got on board, and the project focused on having a quick, early win — making sure the facade didn’t look like Kmart. In this case, they used metal in red, blue and yellow to give it a wholly modern look. They gave early tours, when it was still chalk outlines. They designed and merged the concepts for a museum and cafe, tied to learning, tied to local history. They have free meeting rooms for community groups.

Or as the author claims, it went from a community institution to a community centre. One that doesn’t look like Kmart.

Reading “Big Box Reuse” by Julia Christensen – Chapter 6

The PolyBlog
March 10 2018

Chapter 6 looks at repurposing a Kmart building in Austin, Minnesota into a combination museum and corporate headquarters/office space. Unlike previous examples in the book, this one was done as a design competition between four architectural firms with relatively open-ended paramaters.

In the end, there has been extensive renovation of the exterior lands and surfaces. Interestingly, however, the lack of exterior light made the interior designs for the museum actually work better — they had total control over the look and feel of the exhibits, including lighting. For the office area though, large windows were cut, and skylights added. And, everything in the office space is movable. Walls, furniture, everything. Giving them a healthy amount of dynamism.

Overall, though, the most interesting part was that while they kept the “building” structure, the resulting look and feel makes it look like anything BUT a big box store. Different roofs with slopes, bricks added to the exterior, etc., all hide the original look and feel. Yet the building is relatively the same place, at least structurally.

Reading “Big Box Reuse” by Julia Christensen – Chapter 5

The PolyBlog
March 8 2018

Chapter 5 looks at a Head Start program in Hastings, Nebraska. The initial catalyst was unusual — the original location (an old hardware store) was wiped out by a tornado and the local community was growing rapidly through immigration, outstripping the original need. The program needed a new location, and an empty Kmart building was available.

Part of what I found interesting in this chapter were the complicated real estate deals in place…a commercial company owned the building, Kmart owned the lease, and a local man owned the land. So, Kmart would rent the space and pay the company, who would then pay the local man. A tri-partite “ownership” of sorts for the property, making it more complicated if someone wanted to buy. Who is selling to them? All three or just one or two? In the end, it was all three. A local company bought all three components (essentially land, building and tenancy), and then “flipped” it to someone else. In this case, the Head Start program.

The other part that I found interesting was the importance of the location. Just as Kmart wanted a busy intersection, easily accessible, so too does a program that serves the city and county. Like the previous chapter, they want a good location to serve lots of people for ease of access.

And finally, they can rent out extra space to groups that are efficient or effective, or just plain synergistic, for their own mandate — other educational services — while still giving them lots of flexibility in design.

Reading “Big Box Reuse” by Julia Christensen – Chapter 4

The PolyBlog
March 7 2018

Chapter 4 starts a second section of the book dealing with networks, particularly with the idea that the location is not just the “store shell” so much as the building, a parking lot, and beyond…the whole background.

This Chapter did a quick overview of three Charter schools in Buffalo (NY), Charlotte (NC), and Laramie (WY), most of which want to fly under the radar — two of the spoke only on the question of anonymity, although they were happy to give tours, etc. What I found particularly interesting with these examples was that they started with a relatively new entity — the fledgling school — looking for a site to lease. They didn’t have the money to buy, couldn’t build, etc. and basically didn’t have the full capital to take on the whole project at once. As a startup, they could commit to a lease, and then grow the business and organization towards later purchase.

Some of the aspects that were not immediately obvious:

  1. Repurposing an old vacant school was often an obvious and alternate choice, but with challenges for renovations to bring them up to code for electricity, plumbing, etc.;
  2. The Walmart or Kmart sites were immediately fully accessible for persons with disabilities, with options for everything on a single floor, wide hallways, etc.;
  3. Lighting was often an issue for interior rooms, so design often defaulted to hollow squares where the centre could be a gym or cafeteria, leaving the classrooms around exterior walls where windows could be cut out; and,
  4. While the big box stores were up to code, often the plumbing for washrooms were limited to a couple of areas and the plumbing was buried in concrete, so extra trenches have to be dug early to reach the extra requirements for a school.

I also found the idea of community not an obvious element, not so much of the Big Box, but of the nature of a Charter school. Since they are not limited to geographic catch-basins (like neighbourhoods for typical schools) but rather open to the entire city to attend, transport often becomes incredibly important. Meaning the extra parking spots for drop-off and pick-up make things much easier. Equally, because so many of the kids need transport-by-parents, the Schools need to offer extensive before- and after-school care, way more than normal schools. Which means they need spaces for that to function. However, contrasting that, many “blended” families or non-cohesive families (divorced parents with shared custody for example, living in different areas of the city) find the option great, since they don’t all live in a single “local” neighbourhood.

Overall, though, I think it was the “initial lease” and the ability to build as they grow which made it so interesting. In some cases, walls around the interior school belied the fact that behind was just empty “open” warehouse-like space…ready for the next round of school rooms to be built or a gym or a special area for technology, automotive, or creative arts, all of which can be built and worked on without disrupting the rest of the school — the school can be open while other renovations are going on. Our son’s school has just gone through massive renovations within an existing space, and it really disrupted life around them. But once they reached a certain critical mass, the last areas were empty spaces that could be worked on separately. Unfortunately, that required moving some kids to portables, something that doesn’t need to happen in a Big Box that can just build, build, build inside. Plus they are doing it inside, even when weather is bad. Certainly a totally different project than trying to renovate an old abandoned public school.

Reading “Big Box Reuse” by Julia Christensen – Chapter 3

The PolyBlog
March 2 2018

Chapter 3 is an interesting chapter on Wisconsin Rapids. The town profile is basically that of an old mill town, with a huge philanthropy base from two key families in town who owned the mills in days gone by, and a mostly summer tourism influx. Other than that, it is has a strong aging population and huge summer crowd, with upwards of 20% seniors in the general population.

The big box in question is again a former Walmart, and as with the examples that belied my original expectation of “out of business” big box stores, this is another one where the initial store was successful and eventually moved to a bigger store in other location, leaving the previous one sitting empty. What made this a bit unique in my view though is that the Walmart is relatively “downtown”.

So here’s the basic skinny…Walmart left, and a shell remained. It had a leaky roof, but the rest of the place was structurally sound. A community group was trying to build a seniors centre where three large service providers could co-locate to serve mostly shared clientele across their base. Yet their first instinct was not to occupy the old box space but to build something entirely new. When they couldn’t secure funding for that, they looked at the Walmart space and found ways to reconfigure it to attract funding.

For example, one of the regional groups was more likely to fund them if they were revitalizing an existing space than building new. Public support would be key to all the funding options, and a huge effort was made by media, government, advocacy groups to get everyone on board. Many were opposed to it being “Walmart-quality” and the optics, but once the designs were in place, it seemed viable. In the end, they had pretty creative financing.

Reading the chapter, it is obvious that “something” was going to happen, the question really was “where”. In the end, the Walmart space was way more costly than building new, but the redevelopment aspects attracted different sources of money. But for me, I found three really interesting factors to be:

a. The importance of the aesthetic redesign so people would stop seeing it as the Walmart space;

b. The renting out of space to non-retail renters which allow the three core service providers to basically generate some income to cover usage costs for other parts of the building (i.e. sustainability); and,

c. The creative idea to tear down PART of the building so that the remaining space would all be used, and there wouldn’t be the appearance of “empty unused space” as the facility was actually bigger than they needed.

This example comes closest to what I hoped for in the initial premise of the book — examples where an existing SPACE gets repurposed and flourishes (as opposed to simply repurposing land or putting in a different retailer).

Onward…