Flurry of projects in SLO set to finish in ’09
WestPac developments at the airport and downtown include a hotel, retail space and a historic building’s renovation
Melanie Cleveland
Hamish Marshall’s Westpac Investments is moving ahead with several commercial developments in and around San Luis Obispo County.
WestPac is continuing with its downtown Garden Street Terraces hotel/condo project – an Osos and Marsh streets commercial redevelopment – a revitalization of an abandoned building in the historic Railroad Square and a new airport hotel, Marshall said. All three should be completed by 2009.
Two 12,000-square-foot commercial buildings are also slated for construction within the next few months and finished within the year in West-Pac’s Aerovista Business Park, a 10-acre commercial complex adjacent to the San Luis Obispo County Regional Airport. The buildings are part of a five-building master plan for the 10-acre park.
To fit into the airport setting, the park’s buildings were designed by architecture firm Steven Pults & Associates to appear aeronautical, with a lot of glass and distinctive wing-like overhangs. The first two such buildings, 40,000 to 48,000 square feet in size, were built in the park in 2001. The other three were to follow about a year later, but Marshall delayed construction for the next two until he re-engineered the buildings’ designs to bring down construction costs.
“We stood to lose money on the buildings as we first designed them,” Marshall said. “Now, at least, we hope to meet our costs and then some.”
Marshall declined to elaborate on the cost of the buildings, but according to the city’s building permit valuations, the first two buildings cost him about $1 million each.
The final and largest structure to complete the park, which Marshall estimated would be between 60,000 and 75,000 square feet, should be under construction in 2009.
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© The Tribune 2007