When ALDI decided to expand to the West Coast with a new regional headquarters and distribution center, the company wanted this large-scale facility to also be sustainable. To accomplish this, the retail grocery chain selected Graycor Construction Co. as their design-build partner and then purchased an entitled property that already had some civil engineering, architectural and other design components underway.

Working on a tight construction schedule, the team slightly altered the building design, while minimizing deviations from the entitlement and conforming to the state’s environmental conditions. The result was an 835,000-sq-ft, LEED Gold facility that meets new seismic regulations, California Green Building Standards Code and Title 24, as well as other site-specific requirements.

The headquarters houses 270,000 sq ft of cold storage space, 480,000 sq ft of ambient dry storage space, 50,000 sq ft of Class-A corporate office space and 30,000 sq ft of miscellaneous space. Building construction consisted of conventional shallow foundations, a 7-in.-thick shrinkage-compensating floor slab with a dewatered topping slab, load-bearing tilt walls, conventional structural steel and conventional metal deck.

Since the facility was the first structure to be erected in a future business park, the team was faced with a considerable infrastructure work on roads and utility upgrades. These challenges included getting water to the site for grading operations and fire prevention in drought-stricken Southern California.

Through careful coordination, the team created an onsite reservoir with a liner to increase the amount of stored water, and outfitted the project trailer compound with a water reservoir for firefighting until the permanent 24-inch waterline was installed.
 

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