FACILITY SPOTLIGHT


to 2024, and plans for 16 to 18 more projects in the next 36 months.


Expanding into the Toronto market was something


the partners had wanted to do for a long time, given the high density of both residential and businesses. In 2016, Vaultra began looking at the current site, which is a total of seven acres. Gunasingham says the com- pany went through “typical” negotiations for the land, which ultimately cost approximately $10 million.


“There was a former factory on the site that had


burned down, so our first challenge was doing reme- diation with the property,” says Gunasingham.


Keith Ho, project manager with Fieldgate Construc-


tion Management in Toronto, says his company did not work on the remediation, but once it got into the dirt moving process, found there was still some contami- nation in the soil on the site. “A lot of dirt was re- moved, and we had to bring more back in,” he says.


According to Gunasingham, the remediation on the


site alone cost approximately $2 million. The next hurdle Vaultra had to deal with was creat-


ing a design that would be acceptable to the city. Vaul- tra hired Pearce McCluskey Architects, Inc., in Toronto for the job. Robert Spurgeon, associate principal for the firm, says the firm was founded in the 1950s. They became involved in working on self-storage projects about seven years ago and have been working with Vaultra for the past seven years.


“Initially, the challenges were in working with the


city in the approval process,” says Spurgeon. “Older self-storage facilities tend to lack street appeal, and it was important for Vaultra and the city for this project to have a fresh look that blended in with the neighborhood.”


In addition to the aesthetics, Spurgeon says cities


have an issue with self-storage facilities because they create few jobs for the area.


The city also stressed that the look of the Center-


field facility had to be complimentary to most of the surrounding businesses, which are in the design and decorating industry. “There are furniture manufactur- ers and just a lot of businesses that are in that whole design and decorating theme,” says Spurgeon. “Our client also wanted a facility that may bring in some of those businesses as customers, so we had to think beyond the traditional boxy self-storage look.”


The result was a modern building that resembles office space


rather than self-storage. The look was sure to please city planners, as well as blend in with the design/decorating theme of the sur- rounding business community. Still, the city had to be handled care- fully. “Self-storage is a very delicate topic for them,” says Spurgeon. “Ninety percent of self-storage facilities are not built in areas zoned for self-storage, so we had to go through the variance process.”


A challenge for the site was that the city wanted to eventually


run a road through it. “We had to redesign the parking and loading area to the side, keeping all the grading that needed to be done in mind for Phase I and the planned Phase II of the project,” Spurgeon recalls.


There was quite a bit of redesign required by both the client and


city. “It was quite the process with the city,” Spurgeon says. “The city makes comments on the materials, but they didn’t have much comment on that; they were very pleased with the quality.”


Raising Eyebrows One of the challenges to the project was helping his client save money while keeping the same design quality of the aesthetics to the building. “There was a lot of cost versus design while still keep- ing it functional,” says Ho. “There was a lot of value engineering while keeping the same look and quality.”


Spurgeon points to the Kingspan insulated metal panels the firm


designed for the exterior of the building, which helped the project maintain a thermally efficient design. The panels also solved the problem of some of the supply chain issues the project faced dur- ing the initial phase of the COVID pandemic, as well as helping the project stick to a strict timeline.


In a study of the panel’s use on the Vaultra site, Kingspan writes


the panels are an “all-in-one solution to multi-component wall sys- tems, which increase the speed of the build. They require for fewer trades on site, making for simplified installation.”


Further, the study explains on this site, all the panels used on


the site could be used horizontally or vertically, providing the ar- chitects more design flexibility. Spurgeon and his design team used two different types of Kingspan panels to give the exterior a darker gray and white mix. More architectural design was achieved using Kingspan’s accent fin in the flat box shape.


In addition to Kingspan, Spurgeon says Vaultra decided to go with


new structural component systems, and there is only one company in North America that is currently selling the product.


“Vaultra is always pushing the boundaries for self-storage design,


security, and flexible office space options,” says Spurgeon. Once the design and materials were finally approved by the city,


the building permitting process went smoothly. 12 January 2022


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