QUEEN EMMA
QUEEN EMMA: Built November 2019 – December 2020
Owner - AHE Group
Architect - Design Partners Inc. Contractor – Swinerton Builders |
73 units of Adaptive Reuse located in Honolulu, Hawaii. This iconic mid-century build sat empty deteriorating in the salt air for decades after two failed attempts at rehabilitation.
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CHALLENGE
SOLUTION
RESULT
A beautiful landmark building restored bringing 73 units of affordable work force housing to downtown Honolulu.
- Difficult to access the extent of damage to the masonry and cast-in-place concrete structure.
- The building is at property line on 3 sides with a very small (17 stall) parking lot. On the mountain side there were no windows because of fire superstation setback requirements.
- In order to plan for any excavation on the site an extensive archaeological investigation would be required that would take over a year with uncertain results.
SOLUTION
- GLI assisted the owner in an assessment with the assistance of a structural engineer and developed our own budget. This gave us the confidence to agree to an Allowance with the contractor for the work that came in under budget in the end.
- We hung scaffold off the side of the building and cut large holes allowing light and ventilation then moved the exterior wall of the unit in five feet to meet fire separation requirements.
- We agreed to the constraint that we could not excavate more than 3” releasing us of the requirement of the archeological report. Because we were not utilizing the basement for occupied space we were able to penetrate the foundation walls into the right-of-way to bring our utilities in without excavating trenches on our property.
RESULT
A beautiful landmark building restored bringing 73 units of affordable work force housing to downtown Honolulu.