Reuse + The Big Box

Every town in the USA has a district populated by gas stations, big box stores and fast food chains.  It is a landscape so familiar, it vacillates between the reassuring and the deadening.  Vast in scale, a typical big box store averages 100,000 sf on a 14 acre site.  

The typical life of a big box results in a building far outliving its use.  By intervening early, the entire property is re-imagined as a self contained neighborhood.  After a stint as a manufactured housing factory (producing units for the parking lot) the box store itself is converted.  Streets are cut through and the resulting parcels sold as ‘lots’ – ready for a custom designed home or completely fit out.  Including future vertical expansion a typical box store site could accommodate 127 units.