Asked straight-up if there were any surprises in the build-out of the Gaslight STL project at 4916 Shaw, general contractor JB Anderson answered, “yeah, volume.”
Anderson’s latest adventure is not only taking place in a robust 6,400 square feet, it’s all about finding complementary ways to make four businesses co-exist under roof, while under simultaneous construction: one’s his own GC2 (Green Construction Consultants) business, with a large storage facility and woodshop; there’s the Gaslight Lounge, a premium tavern, which is linked to the Gaslight Studio, a sound recording facility with windows facing said Lounge; and, finally, there’s Cha Cha Chow’s first brick-and-mortar space, which will involve a take-out counter and commissary, but not a full, sit-down venue.
Already, five dumpsters of waste have been generated in the effort, with the building’s previous, dozen-plus offices and storage rooms absolutely blown out during the demo phase. Now, all of it’s coming back together, with City inspectors a constant presence and sub-contracting crews becoming regulars, too.
“The surprise comes in the minutiae,” says Anderson. “At the end of the day, you sweep up a job site. Instead of taking 15-20 minutes with a house, here it takes 45-minutes. It’s that size-sprawl that’s so hard. Mechanically, structurally, we typically build with the mindset that it’s easier to tear out and replace, especially when you’re in the mood to tear out and replace. A lot of times, something seems to be okay, or it can be modified to make work. But that’s not always the best option. We kept no electric here, no plumbing, no HVAC Those are things that people typically try to save money on; ‘oh, we’ll just leave this room alone.’ In the long-run, it’s most cost-effective to go with a blank slate.”
Creating simultaneous concepts for bar, studio and eatery meant a full demo, in this case. Thus, the five dumpsters worth of miscellaneous construction debris.
“When we decided which direction we wanted to go on the aesthetics, we knew that we’d already walked in on a hodge-podge,” he recalls. “We lost the cheap carpets, the laminate walls, the dropped ceilings. All this stuff that had no value to us to begin with. When we discovered that the structure was post-and-beam, we knew it could all be exposed. That’s the look we wanted to go with anyway. We couldn’t have how many layers of walls there were. It’s not like you can take a core sample of the Earth and say ‘here’s layers before bedrock.’ That was probably the real surprise.
“Having had a lot of experience with significantly older buildings, you know homes where you keep the brick and tear everything else out,” he adds. The onsite physics lessons you teach yourself let you not lose a wall. When you look at something structurally sound, your worry is about bad roof trusses, bad beams, things that can create bigger problems.”
At this point, much finish work remains at the Gaslight STL complex, but quite a bit’s come together, already. The sound studio, for example, is receiving between seven-and-nine layers of soundproofing, including specialty-cut wood dampeners, air pockets, and multiple layers of drywall and other, sound-softening sheeting.
Throughout, windows have been re-opened, after years of closure, drenching the bar, in particular, in natural light. Cha Cha Chow’s hood is on-site and plumbing’s taking place in that space this week, with the bar’s water situation squared away next.
And next come the walls, dozens of sheets of drywall and countless foam guns pulled into action. And, at that point, even folks with no particular eye for the pace of development will think “ah, yes, it’s getting done.”
A week from now, we’ll be talking about what’s happening inside those walls, as fixtures, bar and restaurants and all the others guts get added to the bones already in place.
Thomas Crone, a frequent contributor to stlmag.com, originally covered the Gaslight’s build-out for a piece on the Dining blog in September. After conversations with Anderson and other principals, he signed on to handle some media projects for the Gaslight Studio. He’ll have weekly reports on the behind-the-scenes construction of Gaslight STL as the venue moves closer to operation.
