The View on Grant is an urban, mixed-use residential project in a recently resurgent neighborhood of downtown Columbus with warehouse conversions and 2 college campuses. The project includes the adaptive reuse of an existing 5 story cast-in-place concrete and masonry structure (ca. 1902) with a 3 story, cantilevered rooftop addition and a 5-story north extension. The new use includes 86 market-rate apartments with indoor and outdoor amenity spaces, including a public coffee shop in the resident lobby and a semi-automated mechanical parking system. The rooftop addition is constructed of light gage metal framing above a structural steel transfer floor.

The design premise is a parabuilding that presents a vertical addition as a parasite to the host structure. The bright metal cladding of the addition provides contrast to the dark painted brick warehouse structure and its 12’ cantilever and shaped roof edge create a profile that takes advantage of the long views of the site from various vantage points around the city. Excised portions of the addition that provide common and private terraces are contrasted in bright orange as are the large steel plate shrouds at the building entry and café.

The café occupies what once was the building’s loading dock and reintroduces the building’s industrial heritage with a steel beam canopy and a repurposed iron gantry system at the ceiling and stair railings.

The project was technically challenging in many ways, requiring various types of zoning easements including a public right-of-way encroachment for the entry fins, sidewalk café, awnings, custom lighting, and 10’ cantilever of levels 6-8, and no-build easements over the roof of the adjacent structure that allowed the full restoration of west-facing windows. Exterior fire shutters were also required to protect openings facing west on levels 2-3 of the existing building. The existing freight elevator shafts were utilized to their fullest potential for a new elevator, new electrical service and refuse chute, and the bathrooms of the northwestern units in the north addition. Most challenging was the transfer of the existing south stair in the southwest corner to an internal stair that allowed southwest corner on levels 6-8 to be used as living space and outdoor patios. This required a transfer through and behind the original monolithic concrete freight elevator shaft, ultimately eliminating a column under the cantilevered section of the building.