November 24, 2010 - Over the past few days, Mr. Brooks completed most of the dirt work on the pad site with the help of his Ford (New Holland) 60hp tractor with 8' box blade. The tractor is 11 years old, but you would not know it by looking a it. He also has a ten year old Bob-Cat Skid loader with tracks that look new as well. "No one but me uses any of my equipment" he said "and that's why they look like they do".
The north part of the pad where the building will go is about 3 feet higher than the south side. This required quite a bit of dirt to be moved around. He began his work by removing all of the topsoil and roots that remained from the initial removal of over 28 trees and lots of underbrush. Luckily, the dirt below the topsoil was good, and it would not require us to bring in any select fill. It also meant we would not have to truck any dirt to the back of the property. This will save us some time and money in the next phase of the project - setting the piers and forming up the foundation walls.
Posted by on November 28, 2010
November 15, 2010 - Sometimes it takes "out of the box" thinking to come up with just the right solution. Since the inception of the project, we had the Creative Co-Op building to the south of our studio. Since we have 3 acres to our south, and just a 1/2 acre to the north (ie. in front of our current building), it seemed to make the most sense to put it in the back. For the past couple of weeks we have been battling with this choice. What seemed to make so much sense in the computer, was giving us fits in the real world. The south placement would require a retaining wall, a fire lane, and other access issues that involved us (and our future tenants) making compromises.
Truman and David Cox posed the question of turning the building 90 degrees. At first I resisted (we had spent months moving things around and now it was "time to lock things down and get going on construction". There was no doubt that the suggested orientation would help, but for every problem it solved, another appeared in its place. That is when we came up with the idea of moving the building in front of our current studio. Instantly, we no longer needed the retaining wall, and fire access lane. By also turning the building 180 degrees, we could move the access ramp to the west side, and provide Silver Rock Productions with a much nicer entry option.
Posted by Vic Cherubini on November 15, 2010
November 2, 2011 - It is hard to believe that almost a month has passed since we did our last blog entry on the project. Over the past few weeks we have made significant progress.
Earlier this year there was a glut of shipping containers and Hi-Cube Cargo Containers (Ocean Worthy Quality) were running about $1900 each for units that were just 5-6 years old. A variety of market forces has turned the container business upside down, and for the past 3-4 months, the price of containers has shot up 25-30% and the quality of the units has gone down. I checked with the container company that was so helpful to us in the past (EMS Containers) and talked with both Kevin Smith Jr and Sr. who were both helpful. Unfortunately, their inventory of 7000 units earlier this year was now 1800 units and most of them were being held for their customers.
Posted by Vic Cherubini on November 05, 2010
