The adaptive reuse of existing properties for new U-Haul stores is well known internally as an important and impactful directive. Outside the organization, people are also starting to take notice.
Forbes real estate reporter Tom Pfister profiled U-Haul and its reasons for adaptive reuse in a Forbes.com story posted Aug. 16. It examines the Company’s longstanding sustainability initiative that leads to reviving old buildings, protecting the environment and preserving community history.
The piece entitled U-Haul Hitches Its Ride to the Reuse of Buildings looks at the former Hardie-Tynes Manufacturing Company facility in Birmingham, Ala., along with the former NBC Building in Detroit, as examples of the work U-Haul is doing – and has done – to reestablish once-proud landmarks that have fallen into disrepair.
Michelle Sullivan, manager of the U-Haul Corporate Sustainability department, noted that about 70 percent of the 1,800-plus U-Haul-owned and -operated facilities in North America are the result of repurposing old buildings via the adaptive reuse initiative.
“U-Haul actively pursues existing building stock within urban cores to contribute to the development of communities that prefer shared-use over private ownership,” Sullivan shares. “We seek to preserve as many elements of a building’s original characteristics and historical elements as possible … . U-Haul does this like almost no other company.”
Read more about U-Haul adaptive reuse, U-Haul at Uptown and U-Haul of New Center, visit Forbes.com or click here.
See YouTube videos on our adaptive reuse project of the NBC Building in Detroit here:
