A New Kind of Service Station
Clockwork and Shea remake a Minneapolis garage into a 21st-century office space
Typically, growing businesses look to the future, not the past, when considering how to expand their headquarters. Clockwork Active Media Systems, however, is not a typical business. No, the Minneapolis-based Web design firm chose, of all things, a 76-year-old former auto service station to house its operations. Working with their existing landlord Andre Volna and design firm Shea, Inc., Clockwork turned the Rayvic Company building — long a neighborhood icon — into a “new kind of service station,” as Clockwork President Nancy Lyons puts it.
Following the closing of Rayvic in May 2008, the year-long transformation of the site culminated in Clockwork’s unveiling of their new headquarters at an open house this May. The finished product comprises colorful and creatively designed offices, conference rooms and open-space workstations. The design gives a respectful nod to the past while allowing Clockwork room to work and grow into the future.
Before Clockwork and designer Shea set to remaking the interior of the service station, Volna’s Apiary, LLC prepared to deliver a “vanilla shell” to the incoming tenant. That involved a pre-purchase environmental review (which “turned up nothing,” Volna says); the removal of three 10,000-gallon underground tanks (the most expensive aspect) and hydraulic hoists for lifting cars; leveling the floors put in during four separate additions over the years (the most challenging part); and the other “heavy lifting of decommissioning it as a service station,” says Volna.
The $1.3 million purchase bought up most of the block at 1501 East Hennepin — nine separate parcels, including the service station, two residential and one other commercial building. Volna put up another $200,000–$300,000 for improvements, he says.
Volna, who owns half a dozen buildings in the area and offices just behind the new Clockwork site, cited a larger developer as an inspiration and standard — albeit on a larger scale — for such a project. “In my mind, when I look at something like this, I ask myself, ‘What would Hillcrest Dev do?’ and then I try to do that,” he says. ‘Nothing but potential’
While Clockwork and Shea largely took over the interior build-out from there, Clockwork’s involvement began with a tour of the existing station — gas pumps, car lifts and all. Design, planning and construction overlapped, allowing for collaboration. “When we walked through it, it just seemed ideal,” says Clockwork CEO Michael Koppelman. “We saw nothing but potential,” says Lyons. As Volna did the heavy lifting, Clockwork and Shea were able to communicate design ideas, which could be negotiated and enabled in the basic shell. Bathrooms were built to include showers for bike-commuting employees, for example.
The completed design does incorporate many aspects of the service station. As Rayvic was closing shop, Lyons “stalked the online auctions” to purchase signs and memorabilia, like the wall-mounted toolboxes that are now used for storage. “They asked us to be inventive of how to throw things back to what this building was as a garage,” says Cori Kuechenmeister, Shea’s designer on the project. “How can we make a fun twist, or utilize [things that would be in garage] in a way that would actually work for them?”
In Clockwork, Shea had a client whose 35 employees had outgrown its existing offices. “The collaborative process was suffering,” says Lyons. While Clockwork’s creative, playful nature left many design possibilities open, the company had diverse spatial needs — open, collaborative workspaces; “heads-down” private spots; conference rooms for a diverse client base; and community areas for lunches, meals, workshops, events and open houses.
Outfitting issues
The final design of the 10,000-square-foot building has a raw, industrial look that features a lot of open space in the former service garages (which now house workstations and a communal kitchen), as well as more private offices and seven conference rooms. A “more conservative” one near the “gears” offices (as Clockwork refers to its upper management) features artwork by “Feisty Girl” Tanya Garvis, while another features the funky metal sculptures of House of Balls artist Allen Christian. Artists Charles “Chank Diesel” Andermack and Frank Stone also contributed to the interior design.
To offset the construction costs, Clockwork worked out contracts to redesign the Web sites of Shea and the artists. Koppleman says there have been only minor issues with outfitting the old service station for office use. “We’re still trying to figure out how to optimize the temperature control,” he says. While they “might struggle in the winter,” he says, “it’s the biggest issue, but it’s minor.” Early work also included tearing up the street to put in the 100-megabit fiber optic cable for the company’s Internet. On the other hand, the building’s retro aspects offer some great amenities, like the nine fully operational garage doors that can each be opened on a summer day. The design leaves room for Clockwork to double in size — perhaps even up, by way of lofting near the towering, open ceilings, says Kuechenmeister. Should another future tenant ever come in, the sheetrock walls would be easy to pull out, says Volna, who says he had considered partitioning the building into separate offices before Clockwork’s interest. But Clockwork doesn’t intend to go anywhere soon. “We don’t want to do this again,” says Lyons. Koppelman and Volna both noted that the project not only benefits the tenant and landlord, but the Minneapolis neighborhood that valued Rayvic for so many years. “We inherited a neighborhood,” says Koppleman. The greatest sign of that is the Clockwork name painted on the exterior facing East Hennepin Avenue. It’s not only an obvious tribute to the old Rayvic façade, but a symbol of Clockwork’s brand as a “different kind of service company,” Lyons says. It’s not bad advertising, either. “We get calls every week from people asking who we are and what we do,” says Lyons.
Finance and Commerce 2009
