On the clear crisp morning of Wednesday, December 12th, the ULI group met at Building 103 in the Presidio of San Francisco, located next door to the Walt Disney Family Museum and in the famous Montgomery Street army barracks. The group spent some time getting to know each other over coffee and pastries. Promptly at 8:30am, our presenters began with a historic overview of the Montgomery Street barracks. The barracks were originally built in 1895 to house soldiers and have since been changed to accommodate several different uses.
Here we begin our tour of the retrofit and renovation of the building for its newest use as the new Presidio Trust headquarters. Jeff Gherardini from Plant Construction Company, Paul Littler and Zander Sivyer from Holmes Culley, and Robert Wallace from the Presidio Trust talked to the group about the retrofit process. We watched slides of the construction which showed the use of fiber-reinforced polymers instead of the traditional concrete shear walls or steel frames, the construction highlight of building 103. This was applied over main posts in order not to lose square footage and era detailing, while reinforcing the buildings structure for earthquake protection. The result is a LEED-Gold certification and a Preservation Design Award from the California Preservation Foundation.
After talks about the cost of the project (a cool $ 10 Million) and of the different retrofits and uses of building 103 compared to the other office buildings and the Walt Disney Family Museum, the ULI group split into two tour groups lead by Presidio’s Robert Wallace and by Bruce Laynon. We were shown the preserved and exposed support beams, the beautifully integrated modern glass conference room and the era refurbished stair case and bannisters. The entrance was magnificent with modern light fixtures. The attics, which were never used in the past, are now extra office spaces with original exposed support beams. It’s amazing what a good artistic eye can bring to a building over 100 years old.
We ended the tour on the building’s front porch where Robert Wallace showed us the Main Parade grounds and the future vision of the Presidio to be mixed use, historically preserved buildings.
Authored by: Sabrina Ma, Roux Associates, Inc., San Francisco