case study

PROPERTY MANAGEMENT SAVES THOUSANDS ON SEISMIC RETROFIT

Urban-Blox owns a portfolio of soft story buildings required to comply with new the LA Department of Building and Safety soft story seismically retrofitted ordinance No. 183893. Urban-Blox reached out to Lockwood Builder’s to engineer, buildand upgrade their portfolio to meet the new seismic ordinance. By controlling both the Design and Build process, Lockwood Builders was able to value engineer and structure their retrofit to perform the least amount of construction possible with $0 out of pocket, while providing outstanding customer service and completeing the project quickly, safely, and with minimyum disruption to the property and residents. Most importantly, Urban-

When approaching a retrofit, Lockwood’s professional engineers research and consider all the the options of each property that will bring the property into compliance with the least impact to the structure and financial impact to the owner. From knee braces to shear walls to grade beams, and steel moment frames the engineered solution will be custom tailored to suit the specific needs of the property. Upon analyzing one of Urban-Blox projects, instead of using a traditional moment frame, we used cantilevered columns – new concrete footings, with a grade beam for support. As a 2 story, 6-unit building, we explored the option of knee braces or shear walls, however in this case, neither solution distributed the loads to LADBS guidelines. In this Case, Urban-Blox was still able to save close to $10,000 in construction costs through our meticulous engineering – utilizing cantilevered columns.

Hoping to use their available capital elswehere, Urban-Blox used PACE Financing to fund their project. PACE financing is a government sponsored program in which you can pay for specific building improvements through your property taxes, paying $0 out of pocket, and even reimbursing engineering costs along the way. Coupled with the additional $38 per unit per month (for 120 months) as well as a decrease in their insurance policy, Urban-Blox was able to upgrade their property at a highly discounted rate, while paying $0 out of pocket.