Industrial project story / Under construction / 2026
31 Schoolhouse Road: One Building Across Four Years of Drawings
A 74,800-square-foot precast warehouse moved from a 2022 planning set through revised panel coordination, a change in architect of record, construction, and a 2026 as-built record. The footprint stayed consistent. The information around it did not.
- Use
- One-story speculative warehouse shell
- Building
- 74,800 sf / 220 × 340 ft
- Clear height
- 40 ft
- Loading
- 11 dock doors / 1 drive-in door
Construction and documentation continuing / 2026
The record / 2022—2026
The first drawing set I have for 31 Schoolhouse Road is dated July 20, 2022. The latest is dated July 14, 2026. The footprint is the same in both: 220 by 340 feet. Much of the work between those dates is hidden by that simple consistency.
I developed the original planning and base documents with Rick Pratt, AIA at Pratt Design Studio. The project returned to me in 2024 for revisions to the precast system, permit documentation, consultant coordination, and architectural submittal review. In March 2025, I assumed architect-of-record responsibility. The current construction record now continues through BLAST.
That sequence matters because an existing drawing set is not a fixed description of a building. It is a dated record of decisions made for a particular purpose. Carrying this project forward meant identifying which decisions still held, which had changed, and which parts of the work belonged to someone else.
01 / Reading the set
The footprint stayed. The record changed.
The July 2022 planning sheet labels the building at 45 feet clear. The current record labels it at 40 feet clear. The documents reviewed for this story do not state why that change occurred, so I will not invent a cause.
What the discrepancy does show is more useful: the early drawing cannot be treated as a current instruction simply because the footprint matches. Clear height affects the enclosure, structure, services, equipment, and the way the volume will be used. A five-foot difference belongs in the project record, not in someone's memory.
The same discipline applies to less visible information. Door counts, service rooms, accessible routes, consultant sheets, panel dimensions, and issued-for notes all have dates and dependencies. The practical question is not, “Do we have drawings?” It is, “Which drawing, issued when, for what purpose, and what has changed since?”
02 / Precast coordination
A panel revision is a building revision.
The 2024 scope called for the precast panel heights and widths to be revised to the selected fabricator's standards. That sounds like an elevation edit. It is not.
The panels are the building's primary enclosure. Their widths establish the joint pattern. Their heights meet the roof edge, base condition, dock openings, storefront, clerestory windows, pedestrian doors, and projecting end volumes. Change the panel module and the consequences move through the plans, sections, elevations, and details.
The revision therefore had to be carried through the set as a system. The current elevation drawings record the panel joints and three-quarter-inch reveals alongside glazing, canopies, dock equipment, doors, and the continuous color band. That coordination is not visible as a single dramatic move. It becomes visible when the joints, openings, and horizontal lines arrive at the same place in the built work.
03 / The working face
The loading elevation is a working face.
The north elevation holds eleven dock doors, each 9 feet wide by 10 feet high, plus a 12-by-14-foot drive-in door. Dock seals, levelers, bumpers, a galvanized stair, pedestrian doors, clerestory windows, and a roof-access ladder all compete for positions along the same wall.
There is no reason to disguise that wall as something other than a warehouse. The work is in making its repeated parts land deliberately. In the drawings and the June 2026 photographs, a dark blue band gives the long elevation a continuous datum. A gray base absorbs the dock equipment, while darker end volumes stop the 340-foot face. Panel joints remain visible rather than being treated as lines that disappear after design.
The interior photograph makes the other side of the elevation legible. The open floor runs beneath the steel roof structure, and the small clerestory openings register as individual rectangles of daylight along the wall above the loading doors. At this scale, a narrow opening is not a panoramic view. It is a measured interruption in a very large enclosure.
04 / Architect of record
The architect-of-record change was not a title-block change.
The March 18, 2025 architectural set was issued for revision with a change in architect of record. I knew the original documents because I had helped produce them, but familiarity did not make verification optional.
For this project, taking the record forward included revising the permit set, coordinating the current consultant information, reviewing architectural submittals, and recording later conditions in the as-built set. Earlier sheets still provided evidence, but their dates and purposes had to remain visible. The goal was not to make four years of drawings look as though they had all been produced on the same day. It was to keep the current set accountable to the building that was actually being constructed.
05 / Current conditions
What the photographs show now
By May and June 2026, the shell was enclosed, the slab and roof structure were in place, and the dock equipment had been installed. The photographs also show why this is not a completion announcement: paving, planting, temporary materials, and site work were still active. The July 2026 as-built issue continued the record while that work proceeded.
The same issue draws a clear line around the architectural scope. The building is documented as a speculative warehouse shell, and the interior office work is identified as work by others and not in contract. That distinction belongs in the public story. A project record is more credible when it states not only what the architect did, but also what the architect did not do.
Four years of drawings do not tell a story because four years is a long time. They tell a story because the comparisons are specific. The 220-by-340-foot footprint held. The clear height changed. The precast module was revised. The loading face had to remain coordinated. The current photographs show the shell while the site is still being finished.
The useful record is the one that makes all of those conditions visible at once: what carried through, what changed, and what still remains open.
Project credit / Continuous body of work
The history stays with the project.
31 Schoolhouse Road is included in the BLAST portfolio as part of Brendan Leadbeater's continuous body of work. Original planning and base architectural documents were developed by Brendan Leadbeater, AIA with Rick Pratt, AIA at Pratt Design Studio in 2022–23. Brendan led the later revision and architect-of-record phases through successive practices; the current construction and as-built record continues through BLAST. This credit does not imply that BLAST existed or was responsible for the 2022 planning work.
Continue with the record