A ten-unit strip mall, burned out and rebuilt

The Challenge

Fire tore through a ten-unit strip mall in Burbank. Storefronts were gutted and boarded, the roof burned through in sections, and what was left of the structure sat open to the weather with debris where the ceiling had been. Ten tenancies, and no two the same: a bakery, a Chinese restaurant, a dry cleaners, a pizza place, a clothing store, a smoke shop, and the rest general commercial space. Every week the plaza stayed dark cost someone rent.

Our Approach

We worked it as a structural rebuild first and a finish job second. The damaged roof came off down to the joists and was reframed from the deck up, set with a crane over an occupied street, then a new membrane went on over the whole run. Framing that survived was cleaned down and sealed with shellac, which locks in smoke staining and the odor that otherwise keeps coming back through new finishes months after a tenant moves in.

CMU demising walls went back in between the tenancies, with wood-framed walls and roof structure through the rest of the shell. A fire rebuild goes back to current code, not to what burned, and here that meant a new ADA-compliant restroom in every one of the ten units, a code-required fire sprinkler system throughout, and a screen wall on the roof to conceal the HVAC. Knowing which upgrades the code actually triggers, and documenting them in the claim, is the difference between a settlement that covers the rebuild and one that leaves the owner short.

The Result

The plaza reopened as a working retail centre. All ten suites went back finished and open for business: food tenants got their kitchens and hoods, the rest got clean open floors ready for fit-out. The exterior came last so the plaza reads as one building again, with a new tile mansard, signage across the whole run, fresh stucco and a resurfaced lot.

This is the work behind the insurance side of the business: a structural contractor who can assess what the fire actually did to the frame, then rebuild it and finish it under one license, instead of handing the building between an engineer, a framer and a finish contractor.