Christian Hurttienne has purchased the long vacant machine shop located at 521 and 609 Old St. Jean, Detroit, 48214. We are architects, planners, general contractors, developers, educators and Detroit enthusiasts with the intent to rehabilitate the building into our offices and light manufacturing space to bolster our goals to build new affordable housing in the City of Detroit while training and teaching our emerging workforce of local Detroit residents.
In Detroit, there remains significant challenges to repopulating the city. Among those is the lack of adequate housing for both new residents as well as existing residents seeking to stay and grow with the city. The fundamental issue facing the lack of supply in relation to the demand is the now extreme cost of construction. We endeavor to better control cost through increasing efficiency, utilization, methods-sequencing and leveraging inventory manipulation toward a translation into more expedient and lower-cost time-to-market; ‘Insourcing’ Trades and Services rendered directly by the CH family of companies.
It is our intent to pre-manufacture building components within this 2-Building, 40,000 sqft facility upon 3 acres on Detroit’s Lower Eastside. This will include ‘panelizing’ wood framed wall, floor, and roof components using semi-automated means along a largely traditional assembly-line method of assembly. Traditional ‘panelized’ framing services readily available currently in the marketplace stop at pre-manufactured framing. We intend to integrate installed mechanical, electrical, and plumbing systems into our panels to be then shipped to site for final erection of the building mass. We believe this method will greatly increase the efficiency in the construction process, combining the integration of multiple trade disciplines and inspections in a controlled and coordinated environment, lowering costs to market.
Additional supporting roles will be played by both warehousing and shop functions. Inventory, as an asset, will be leveraged as a driver toward the monetary benefit of building MORE. Shop space dedicated to associated trades, millwork, and other specialty fabrications will then extend our unfair advantage by controlling costs through product fabricated within our means and forces.
We seek to transition this long vacant and blighted building into a vibrant place to both imagine the next buildings of Detroit and then make them; in Detroit, for Detroit, by Detroit.