Originally built as the El Camino Theater, this project preserved the structural shell and portions of the original architecture while gutting and rebuilding the core to create three plus stories of office and retail space.
Jon Brody Structural Engineers performed a complete seismic retrofit and structural design for the reconfigured theater, while preserving the existing steel roof trusses and exterior concrete walls. The new reinforced concrete core, shotcrete shear walls, new concrete floor diaphragms and drilled concrete piers comprise a strong and ductile seismic solution that allowed for the creation of new window openings throughout the solid sidewall of the original theater, bringing in light and greatly increasing the value of the space. To allow maximum opening of the front façade, we devised a procedure for in-place cutting of the truss elements of the existing composite steel and concrete truss, utilizing sophisticated modern jacking and monitoring, and allowing for the most expeditious construction sequence.