Industrial and Automotive Projects

Auto Parts City is a 21st century auto salvage and recycling operation with roots dating to the 1930’s, and one of DSC’s most technically demanding commercial architecture projects.  The APC campus includes their corporate headquarters, a used car lot, full automotive recycling and fluid draining operations, cores and crushing, and a pick-and-pull lot across multiple facilities.  Moreover, the project spanned two adjacent municipalities, with multiple zoning issues. DSC’s scope included relocating the entire operation across the street, remodeling an existing office building into the new headquarters, operational layout and design for the new recycling and draining facilities, and coordination of the environmental systems that define APC’s industry-leading compliance position with the civil engineer and technical vendors. 

DSC worked with the leadership team at APC to include cutting edge technology in the new recycling facility, designing each building to work with the technical requirements of the state of the art fluid reclamation system.  Drained oil and gas is then reused to heat the buildings and fuel tow trucks, while drained fluids like windshield wiper fluid are cleaned and re-sold.  Combined with the site features such as first-flush rainwater filtration, sequential stormwater filtration through dual retention ponds and meadow, and an oil-eating enzyme system, APC has been able to continually monitor and test the system to verify that all the water coming out of the facility into the surrounding area is clean and naturally filtered.  VET Environmental consulting conducts yearly safety and environmental audits to ensure compliance.

Grand opening was Earth Day, 2011.  The facility remains one of the highest-standard auto recycling operations in the region.

For DSC, this project represents the intersection of complex site planning, specialized environmental compliance, MEP coordination for industrial fluid systems, and multi-building campus design – exactly the capability that light manufacturing and industrially-adjacent clients need from an architect of record.

DSC’s scope included bridging documents that translated the owner’s operational requirements into a buildable program, and a design-build RFP that allowed local contractors to price and execute the work without the owner carrying full design risk upfront.

The project required direct coordination with the specialized equipment manufacturer in Italy, coordinating European machinery specifications, dimensional requirements, electrical loads, and installation sequencing with U.S. building codes, structural assumptions, and the constraints of the existing historic structures.

This is the model DSC brings to international manufacturers establishing U.S. production operations:  develop the program, produce the bridging documents, manage the local contractor selection, and coordinate between the equipment supplier and the design-build team so the owner does not need to hold those conversations simultaneously in two languages across two time zones.