Emergency centre getting the job done
Last December, when I introduced Lindsay Gurevitch in opening a Calgary office for Edmonton-based Manasc Isaac Architects, she had been working as the firm’s project manager here on the design and construction of the new Emergency Operations Centre.
This past week she was back at the centre to check on its performance during the Calgary floods, although we are all aware of the rave reviews it received and thankful it fulfilled expectations. Not only did the building operate as a wellcoordinated response centre for multiple emergency response partners, but it is pleasing to the eye. There are no razor-wire-topped fences at this high-security facility, which is enclosed by a glass art wall and dense shrubbery.
Gurevitch’s Calgary office, along Memorial Drive N.E. just to the west of Edmonton Trail, operates under the name of Reimagine Interiors by Manasc Isaac.
Gurevitch earned her interior design degree at Mount Royal University and joined Manasc Isaac in Edmonton where she was encouraged to learn construction technology. She was soon a key member of its interiors department and, while running the Calgary operation, is still called upon by head office in a number of projects including the re-build of the Slave Lake Government Centre and others for the University of Alberta, Grant McEwan College and a research/manufacturing facility for a pharmaceutical company.
In Calgary, she has hired Claire Johnson, an architect recently arrived from New Zealand, and Jacquie Jacobi, a former classmate at Mount Royal, is sharing space with Gurevitch for her own company, Field Interior Design. Jacobi was an occupational therapist before switching to her new career in interior design, which has enabled her to specialize in designing for special needs and aging-inplace projects.
Gurevitch is currently busy with an exciting challenge to ‘reimagine’ the three-storey parking and retail podium of the Strategic Group property on the corner of 18th Avenue and 4th Street S.W.
Its 16-storey apartment tower at the rear of the complex contains 86,886 square feet of multi-tenant units and the top two floors were recently converted into 24,000 square feet of prime office space to be marketed upon the completion of exterior work.
A parking structure and retail spaces front onto 4th Street and the open parkade will be dressed up with an open screen mesh. The retail is to be given a new exterior to make it a welcome beacon into the Mission district off busy 17th Avenue.
It will be enhanced by the opening of a new restaurant with a 1,400-square-foot patio on the 18th Avenue corner of the building. Fourth Street is popular with foodies; Smoke’s Poutinerie that opened in the same building a couple of months ago is already a big favourite.
Transforming Strategic’s Mission 1800 property to help to bring a renewed vitality to this stretch of trendy 4th Street is just the kind of project Gurevitch likes to tackle.
Reimagine Interiors is all about reinterpreting space to create meaningful impact, and particularly in the design of office interiors Gurevitch is continually researching ways to positively impact workplace collaboration, people performance and productivity.
I have been inundated with information on how Calgary businesses are reacting to the needs of flood victims, and could not begin to include all of them. But the generosity of Cenovus Energy must be told. The Calgary oil company is partnering with Samaritan’s Purse by providing the relief and development organization with $100,000 as well as employee volunteers to help southern Alberta flood victims.
The Town of Canmore suffered tremendous damage thanks to half its annual rainfall hitting already saturated ground in a period of just 36 hours.
It initiated a need for accurate, detailed topographic data and Calgary-based LiDAR Services International has been contracted by Canmore to survey the area, mobilizing its advanced helicopter-equipped laser mapping system to capture where the water caused the most damage, where water courses were rerouted and how the hydrology of the watershed has been altered.