5102 N Central WBA Studio / Main Street Shops
5102 N Central Ave is one of our many adaptive reuse projects which fulfills my dream of having a Studio on Main Street. Central Avenue is the center of the City / Metropolis. In the 50’s, our building was ‘the city’s edge’ where pavement stopped, and north were only ranches / dirt roads and Camelback Road (to south) was the northern-most east-west paved street in Phoenix. It was purpose-built for the Uptown Mehagian’s Furniture store as a N-S zero-lot-line structure perpendicular to Central with load-bearing concrete masonry walls supporting 40’ clear span bowstring wood trusses. An addition was built shortly afterwards as its TV Repair shop, which WBA now occupies as ‘a back-alley Studio’. When we purchased it in 2010, the beautiful bow-string trusses in both spaces had never seen ‘the light of day’, so we dropped the plaster ceiling, put insulation on the roof, threaded new mechanicals and lighting thru newly exposed structure, and illumined all with daylight by installing skylights at all found openings in existing roof deck. Masonry walls were sandblasted, 1×6 diagonal wood-board roof deck / trusses pecan-shell-blasted to warm-up-wood and original concrete floor was glass-bead-blasted. All furniture designed / built by WBA for its 2nd Studio (just down the street) was repurposed here with new ebonized finish. Upper-projected-canopy-façade (above storefront) repurposed steel-angle-braced-frame (8’ tall / 4’ wide supports) with 4 x 8 (tatami mat of America) back-day / night-lit acrylic XRay panels creating a dynamic backdrop of light and shadow for PHX businesses Neighbor (an outdoor furniture company) and Satellite Coffee. We may Flip-a-Strip (see competition) with three multi-family housing units above ‘our little sliver-of-a-Strip’ someday.
5102 N Central WBA Studio / Main Street Shops
5102 N Central Ave is one of our many adaptive reuse projects which fulfills my dream of having a Studio on Main Street. Central Avenue is the center of the City / Metropolis. In the 50’s, our building was ‘the city’s edge’ where pavement stopped, and north were only ranches / dirt roads and Camelback Road (to south) was the northern-most east-west paved street in Phoenix. It was purpose-built for the Uptown Mehagian’s Furniture store as a N-S zero-lot-line structure perpendicular to Central with load-bearing concrete masonry walls supporting 40’ clear span bowstring wood trusses. An addition was built shortly afterwards as its TV Repair shop, which WBA now occupies as ‘a back-alley Studio’. When we purchased it in 2010, the beautiful bow-string trusses in both spaces had never seen ‘the light of day’, so we dropped the plaster ceiling, put insulation on the roof, threaded new mechanicals and lighting thru newly exposed structure, and illumined all with daylight by installing skylights at all found openings in existing roof deck. Masonry walls were sandblasted, 1×6 diagonal wood-board roof deck / trusses pecan-shell-blasted to warm-up-wood and original concrete floor was glass-bead-blasted. All furniture designed / built by WBA for its 2nd Studio (just down the street) was repurposed here with new ebonized finish. Upper-projected-canopy-façade (above storefront) repurposed steel-angle-braced-frame (8’ tall / 4’ wide supports) with 4 x 8 (tatami mat of America) back-day / night-lit acrylic XRay panels creating a dynamic backdrop of light and shadow for PHX businesses Neighbor (an outdoor furniture company) and Satellite Coffee. We may Flip-a-Strip (see competition) with three multi-family housing units above ‘our little sliver-of-a-Strip’ someday.