Specialized Experience Center, Boulder

Project Brief

• Size: 5200 sf (483 Sq m)

• Location: Boulder CO, USA

• Role: Project owner, space planning, fixture design, project management & budgeting.

Specialized already leased office space for their human performance team in Boulder. In fact, they leased more than they needed. We decided to use the excess to test the waters for mixed category Experience Center (performance mountain + performance road). Because the facility is home to Retül, the brand's fit technology team, we included 2 full fit studios which were quickly recognized as the premier venue for pro's and weekend warriors to get professionally fitted to their bikes. 

Project Highlights

Bike Fleet Storage

I place a lot of emphasis on what the rider-facing spaces look like in an experience center but there's a lot that goes into the back of house as well. In this case the building did not have sufficient space to store the 120+ demo bikes that the center needed to have “on hook” to meet rider demand. I decided to house the bikes adjacent to the center in four secure 40ft shipping containers. However, I did not want the containers strewn haphazardly across the parking lot, I wanted them perfectly aligned in a 160ft (49M) bank. This ended up being harder than I thought. 

I partnered with Complete Container Services in Denver and sent them specs for the modifications I needed to the 4 containers. These included insulation in two units (for e-bikes) and center mount, vandal-proof doors in all four. The containers were used so I also had them painted black. The plan I came up with originally called for a deck above first container. The view of the Flatirons would’ve been stunning but it was killed in subsequent value engineering sessions….sigh.

Aligning and connecting the 4 shipping containers on the uneven tarmac without a forklift was going to be a challenge. I flew in my rigging equipment and set to work. My rigging equipment for this project included strap, wire rope & chain, a snatch block, a Hi-Lift farm jack and most importantly, a Tirfor Griphoist rated at 2 tons. When used with the snatch block it would allow a safe pulling force of 8000 pounds (3,630 kg). 

I had the first container delivered and placed very accurately on the site, then had staff load it with furniture and equipment that was temporarily displaced by the remodel. This anchored container #1 in position and allowed me to pull the others to it. 

I had containers 2, 3 and 4 placed within a few feet of their eventual resting locations. I sourced 12 inexpensive end-to-end twist lock connectors from NOS (new old stock). These would allow me to connect the containers very robustly at their corner castings, but required that the containers be aligned very accurately, ± ~1/8” (3.2mm). 

That’s not a lot of wiggle room for something longer than 2 trucks and about as heavy.  This is how I pulled the containers close to each other. It was a delicate dance of advancing them forward longitudinally while aligning them side-to-side.

In some spots the tarmac was sloped and the containers needed to be leveled. Unable to find off-the-shelf leveling solutions, I designed my own using available parts. This is what I came up with and it worked well. 

It took 3 days to get all the containers in a line but the result was exactly as I wanted it. Perfectly aligned and level.