purcell business centre
nelson, bc
In 2000, Pacific Insight Electronics, a Kootenay manufacturer of electronics and lighting for the automotive industry built a new, prefabricated, steel-frame, industrial building just east of Nelson, to house both production and offices, having grown out of their downtown Nelson location. One of the largest buildings in the Regional District of Central Kootenay sat empty after Insight was sold to a US-based company and its production moved to Mexico. Insight closed its doors in 2019 and the building sat empty until the summer of 2022, when it was purchased by a Vancouver-based developer.
We were approached by the developer to design and coordinate the building retrofit. The 67,000 sf building will be logically divided along primary steel framing lines into unique units on the east and west ends of the building and 14 similar 25’-wide units between. We designed a mass timber entry canopy and proposed re-cladding at the building’s most prominent unit. Each unit will be retrofit with a bank of glazing to daylight reception and overhead doors for industrial access along the south facade.
Our role in adapting this building to its new use is generation of as-built drawings, configuration and building code interpretation, design of new components, and resolving envelope and firestopping assemblies for retrofit the existing fibreglass roll insulation assemblies. We’ve also coordinated engineering of the new sprinkler system, fire alarm, mechanical system, and structural retrofits.
designed by f2a architecture ltd
ongoing
