Back on July 2, 2024, work began to renovate the Archives’ satellite site in East Vancouver and we are thrilled to say that the work is finally complete.
This secure staff-only facility houses approximately 25% of the Archives’ holdings and has been in operation since early 2017 as temporary space. With no single-site option available to house these records and those at the Archives’ main facility in Vanier Park, capital funding was dedicated to a major upgrade of the satellite to provide a stable storage environment for the records and capacity for another 10 to 15 years of growth. The renovation includes installation of a new HVAC system to replace end-of-life heating fans and provide dehumidification, a complete shelving replacement to increase capacity from 14,500 standard 1.2 cubic foot banker box spaces to 28,500, a lighting upgrade, installation of a new frozen storage vault and a long-awaited paint job.
Storage originally looked like this. Narrow, library-style shelving, unpainted walls, barely any working lighting, and remnants of orange spray-on insulation from a previous tenant’s time. The plastic over the shelving bays protected the records from several floods that occurred during a renovation of the unit above four years ago, and from the dust and insulation particles that didn’t get filtered out of the space.
We worked with Carscadden, Stokes McDonald Architects between November 2022 and February 2024 to design the space, from schematic design through to tender drawings. While a lot of the work involved the minutiae of the mechanical and electrical systems, we had a lot of fun working with Hi-Cube Storage Products to design the new shelving layout. They came up with a combination of 8 and 9-shelf high compact mobile shelving units for the side of our space with a stronger concrete floor slab and 10-shelf high static units for the rest of the space. Here is the final schematic drawing.
In anticipation of a mid-2024 construction start, all 8,600+ boxes stored at the satellite were consolidated on the west and central sections of existing shelving and remained there, covered in plastic, for the first phase of the renovation. Conservator Paola Merkins worked on site every day of the renovation, both to ensure the records stored on site were not accessed or damaged during the construction work, and to oversee the site’s daily operations, as it remained a working warehouse throughout the duration of the project.
In May 2024, Scott Construction Group came on board as our general contractor. The first job: tearing down the empty shelving in the first third of the unit, stacking it on pallets and wheeling it to the loading bay, then re-stacking it into a dumpster. We needed two of these to carry it all away.
Next came demolition of a wall shared with 1,630 sq ft of new space carved out of a vacant unit next door.
After that, a crew scraped (by hand!) all the orange insulation off the ceiling. The space ended up looking like this.
Weeks of ductwork and electrical conduit installation followed, as well as pulling of giant cables for powering the HVAC system. The entire electrical system had to be gutted and replaced.
By September, everything we needed for the compact mobile shelving floor arrived and Hi-Cube Storage Systems crews began installing the first of three sections of raised floor and rails. During this, the new lights went up and the ceiling and walls were painted.
By early November the first section of raised floor was finished.
Then the mobile unit carriages were laid out and the uprights started to rise.
And the rails for the second of three sections of raised floor were laid out.
By Christmas Eve, the second section of mobile shelving was complete, and the third section of raised floor was installed.
In the meantime, in December, DBM Refrigeration built the new freezer box that would become our new frozen storage vault. There are two like it at our Vanier Park site, both at capacity.
In early January, all 8,636 boxes of records that had been stored in the central and west sections of the space were moved to the new mobile shelving.
And the last section of mobile shelving was installed in mid-January.
Then the process began all over again with the demolition of the remaining original shelving.
In just a few days, the area was clear and ready for the insulation to be scraped off the ceiling.
In late February, crates of static unit shelving arrived and jammed the space, and the trades worked around them for several weeks, installing ductwork and lighting, grinding and sealing the concrete floor, and, eventually, giving everything a fresh coat of paint.
Cabinets for the frozen storage vault also arrived and DBM began installing the unit’s electrical and refrigeration systems.
In the meantime, a wall was built to section off the loading bay from the storage area.
Finally, in April the space was ready for Hi-Cube crews to begin installation of the sections of standard-depth static shelving.
And Hi-Cube crews returned in late May to install the oversize static shelving and map cabinets.
By this point we learned there was a delay in delivering the HVAC system’s air handling unit. Originally expected in April in order to complete the project in mid-May, we were now looking at early July for delivery. In preparation, large perforations were made in the roof slab for ductwork and electrical and plumbing conduit, and the curbs for the air handling unit, the fan coil and the freezer compressor were laid out on the roof.
At the same time, the control system for the new programmable LED lighting was installed. It proved to be a bit more complicated than we were expecting.
On the day of the air handling unit’s arrival and crane lift in early July, the weather was spectacular.
The rest of the month and into August saw the final mechanical and electrical hook ups for the HVAC system and the freezer, installation of new office carpet and a small kitchen renovation. Unfortunately, it was discovered that the air handling unit leaked and allowed water to flow into the loading bay. The issue took weeks to resolve, delaying commissioning of the unit until well into October.
We spent September compiling a deficiency list which was submitted with similar lists from our mechanical and electrical consultants. In October, the lists were consolidated by our architect and presented to the general contractor. Most architectural deficiencies were addressed in November and on December 2nd we held a grand opening for the Archives staff.
HVAC commissioning continued through December, and the last of the deficiencies were addressed in early January. The space now looks like this.
We reached substantial completion on January 6th, and archivists returned to processing records in the space on January 12th. A year of HVAC commissioning is ahead of us, but we are delighted to be back working in this now beautiful climate-controlled space, which should give us storage capacity for Vancouver’s documentary heritage for a decade or two.
We are deeply grateful to our project manager from the City’s Real Estate, Environment and Facilities Management department, Cherry Dearing, to Glen Stokes of Carscadden Stokes McDonald Architects, and the many, many trades involved in the project.
Photos by Paola Merkins and Heather Gordon
