Hello, I'm Fernando Blanco and I work for a company that restores old buildings and renovates the space into modern office, flex, distribution, showroom, retail and studio space. We have been a company since 1987, IMA

What is your least favorite interior design trend? How do work with clients that want something that makes you gag?

We joke that a lot of new trends looks like "pinterest threw up all over" , i.e mixing up all different fake reclaimed woods and DIY fads can be overkill. We love to honor the old buildings and their character without faking anything.

What's it like getting the buildings up to current commercial codes?

Have you found anything cool in the renovations?

It can be challenging to meet all of the new codes in old buildings, however, most of these codes are for life and safety issues so they are important and worth the challenge to meet. We love old signs and artifacts and always find them in the buildings. There is not one thing in particular that we found that stands out, however, over all we love all the old painted fire doors that we try to reuse.

How much of the budget is spent remediating hazardous material(s)?

We try to find projects without hazardous materials. In NJ environmental testing can be very expensive, even for small projects. Just to analyze a property we are interested in purchasing can cost between $20,000 to $100,000 +

Some questions:

1) Does your company buy these buildings, develop them, and then resell or are you all just a construction company focused on historic restoration?

2) What is your role with the company?

3) How many new projects are you all doing per year and what is your annual revenue?

We buy the buildings, develop, lease , and manage them all in house. We generally hold onto them and do not sell. We try to do 1-3 large projects at a time.

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Revenue is private :)

How long does a typical renovation take?

2-5 years on average. The challenge is filling the renovations with the right mix of tenants / company 's. The dream is to have a building with mixed uses so you dont have to leave during the work day, i.e a building with a printing company, law fir , coffee shop, restaurant, marketing company, etc. If all the companies can thrive in a creative atmosphere working together thats a win win for everyone but it can take time to accomplish this.

Have you found some secret (hidden) rooms, passages while restoring?

I wish! Nothing to exciting. Maybe a crawl space or two that we didnt know was there. At one building we did kind of find ( maybe forgot about) a 2nd floor portion that didnt have any stairs going up to it. We have remodeled it to be a Jean Prouve Demountable house inspired space.

What are some of the biggest challenges planning, engineering, and design wise when making some of these older structures modern?

Theres a lot, one big issues is how do you preserve the coolest elements like old floors and ceilings. These can be beautiful but lack sound proofing...So we are constantly trying to find new ways to sound proof buildings. It can also be hard to keep them 10000% perfectly clean as the old brick and wood always has some dust that can fall no matter how well we clean / treat them.

I love This Old House. Do you ever thing about putting your renovations on YouTube or anything like that?

Its a good idea, We just might on future renovations. Specially for really old buildings with a story to tell.

We can be a bit shy but that would be fun!

Have you done a lot of Pizza Huts? Any plans for old Sears or TRU buildings?

Nope not our style. We have done a pizza restaurant www.LibertyHallPizza.com , it was rated top 20 in NJ and the design turned out perfectly.

I like to think anything can be done to any building with one thing - money. How do you even come up with budgets? These projects always look like open checkbooks to me.

hahaha yes they are tough to budget but once you do them a lot you get good on assumptions. We are very involved in all decisions and spend a lot of time being creative on how to do a top class project will keeping costs down.

At what point do you say it can’t be renovated and it just gets torn down?

Most of these old buildings were built very well and we always look for projects we can save. If a building cant be saved and has to be knocked down, its usually not the right project for us.

Can u Buy AMA now? How much did it cost?

Zero, I spoke with the admins and they thought it was interesting :)