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Shopping Centers Today -> December 2002
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SANTANA ROW FIRE PROMPTS CALL FOR STRICTER CODES
By Ian Ritter
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| The Aug.19 Santana Row fire spread rapidly, destroying retail space and apartments, and even damaging buildings in the surrounding neighborhood. |
Can more be done to contain the damage from construction site fires like the Aug. 19 blaze that ripped through much of the partially built Santana Row mixed-use center in San Jose, Calif.?
One local lawmaker thinks so, even though the developer, Federal Realty Investment Trust, says it did everything practical to prevent fire, and he has pledged to strengthen fire codes to make construction sites safer.
“Oftentimes, when they build these really large projects, they don’t put a lot of fire safety placements in until they’re completely finished,” San Jose City Councilman Ken Yeager told SCT. “What made this fire so spectacular is that there was nothing in place to stop it. The whole thing just went up in seconds.” Using firewalls in construction projects would surely help, he said.
At press time police and fire officials had not determined the cause of the blaze, which also damaged buildings in the surrounding neighborhood.
Federal Realty did everything it could to protect Santana Row from fire, said Jan Sweetnam, the company’s COO of the Western region. The company hired union workers, who are extensively trained in fire safety. “Everyone had to have a safety course before they could go on the site,” Sweetnam said. The property also had gates to keep out vandals.
Fires are rare at conventional shopping centers, which are made largely of noncombustible materials, said Bryce Turner, president of Baltimore-based architectural firm Brown + Craig. Mixed-use centers are more vulnerable, however, he and others say. Not only do these wood-frame structures contain more-flammable materials, but they have more workers, carrying out a multitude of tasks.
Ken Lawless, vice president of Clark Construction Co., Lansing, Mich., agrees. “Shopping centers are fairly wide-open spaces, and every time you start to close that down and build bedrooms and closets, it is more at risk,” he said. Clark worked on the 740,000-square-foot Fountain Walk Center, Novi, Mich., and the expansion of the Village of Rochester Hills (Mich.).
Worse, developers these days are in a greater hurry to get buildings completed, which leads to mistakes, Lawless said. He stressed that this is a general observation and not a reflection on the Santana Row incident.
“The schedules are becoming more aggressive, because it takes [developers] longer from the purchase of the land to start construction,” he said. “You get focused on getting it done and not [on] working safe.”
Another problem companies face during construction is that sprinkler systems aren’t usually put into place until just before a store opens, said Lawless. To compensate for this, it is usually required that fire extinguishers be spaced 150 feet apart on a construction site. To prevent fires caused by sparks from cutting and welding operations, paint and other combustible materials are covered when not in use, he explained.
If a fire does start, strobe light alarm systems go off, directing firefighters to the core of the blaze.
More recently, fire marshals have become increasingly adamant about having access to sites, Lawless said. “I really see the local fire departments getting more involved,” he said.
If there is going to be a problem, it likely will arise during construction, said Kelly P. Reynolds, president of Phoenix-based building code consulting firm Kelly P. Reynolds & Associates. He, too, cited the sparks flying from welding torches and oxyacetylene cutters, and the absence of sprinklers and alarms.
“If you’re going to die, you’ll die on the operating table, because you’re open,” Reynolds said, drawing a medical analogy.
But for all that, fires during shopping center construction are “a rare issue,” Lawless said. “We do not have a big problem.” And arson, which media reports have speculated could have caused the Santana Row fire, is also very rare, said Reynolds.
Santana Row began opening Nov. 7, with 538,000 square feet of retail, a hotel and 250 apartment units. Flames in the building most affected destroyed 16 percent of the development’s retail space, and that structure is not expected to open until next year. Fire-related losses could run as high as $90 million, and the destroyed apartment units will probably not be built until sometime in 2004 or 2005. The company is not saying when construction will start on Santana Row’s additional phases.
On the bright side, no retailers have pulled out of the project, said Kris Warner, a Federal Realty spokeswoman.
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