Harbour House
An enterprising £1.3m project to create a new self-storage warehouse through the re-purposing of a formerly redundant building has provided a much needed facility for the developers as well as for other businesses on the island of Guernsey.
The new warehouse, now known as Harbour House in Mont Crevelt Road, St Sampson’s, was previously disaster recovery facility. The building’s potential was spotted by the developers, the Fuller Group, who purchased it and then re-modelled the interior to create the storage units.
Alex Fuller, managing director of Fuller Group said: “When we took the building over, it was an under-utilised building designed as a disaster recovery facility for large banks on the island. The 40,000 sq. ft 2 storey building was constructed in 2000 and was intended to serve as emergency accommodation to house bank staff and equipment in the event of a major disaster. However, it was never used, and although it was unsuitable for many purposes, it was ideal for self-storage.
“When we took the building over, it included server rooms and a large open warehouse space with a massive open expanse of desks and computers. In effect, it was a wasted facility on an island where both land and buildings are scarce. I think that it was made redundant through advances in technology such as cloud computing, as well as other changes such as the introduction of hot desking.”
Main contractors, QCL, carried out the works to transform the building.
Constructed within an existing granite perimeter wall, the building is of concrete beam and column construction, with external elevations in profiled metal cladding and a metal framed roof.
Five warehouse units have been created on the ground floor – one of which is taken by Fuller Group’s subsidiary company, Brock Self-Storage. The remaining four units, ranging from 2,500 sq. ft to 4,500 sq. ft, have also all been taken, having been let to local businesses.
The 20,000 sq. ft on the first floor is also leased by Brock Self-Storage and partitioned into approximately 250 storage units and a new passenger goods lift created to provide access to those units.
Further works on the project included the creation of more openings into the building, as well as the stripping out of cabling and the installation of new electrics to service all of the new units, including new LED lighting. New fire sensors, emergency lighting and WCs were also installed.
In addition, new roller door entrances were added and all of the original external profiled metal cladding was replaced, as it was rather dated.
Probably the largest element of the works comprised the creation of an undercover parking area (as there was no parking space previously). This required the removal of an entire wall to facilitate undercover parking within the building.
Alex Fuller commented: “The main challenge of the project was that because the building trade on the island is working to full capacity, it was very hard to get things done within the required timeframe. However, the main contractors did a very good job and we are very happy with them. In addition, all of the units were let even before we completed construction so, all in all this has been a very successful project. The building was a very good acquisition.”
Fuller Group is a property investment and development company based in Guernsey with investments in the Channel Islands, the UK and the Caribbean. The group’s portfolio is diverse and is currently concentrated in the retail, leisure, residential development and self-storage sectors.
Island Formwork & Construction
Island Formwork & Construction specialise in all aspects of concrete finishing and Formwork. We can also provide drainage, groundwork and demolition services.
We have been operating for 2 years with a small but dedicated team with many years of experience across all construction trades.
Our involvement in the Harbour House project included us supplying labour for the initial rip-out and demolition of the outside walls. We laid new kerbs, putting in new ramps as well as drainage, and installed a new lift shaft base.
We are proud to have worked on a range of projects for a diverse client base including Perrot Court for RG Falla, Gas Works (IEG) for Geomarine, and a bunker conversion/extension for Bridge Developments. We also have worked on a number of private cesspits and drainage projects. We are currently completing a rip-out for GBS at Circuit House (the old intersurgical building) and will be starting work there on new drainage and new concrete slabs around the property.
We pride ourselves in our quality of work, attention detail and competitive prices.
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