Tampa Armature Works

Few Tampa, Florida residents are likely aware of its street trolley history. Starting with the late 1800s emergence of its once bustling cigar industry, Tampa’s trolley system peaked in the 1920s with roughly 50 miles of track to various neighborhoods around the city. By the 1940s, cars drove the trolleys out of service, resulting in its historic trolley car maintenance facility being left dormant for decades northwest of Tampa’s downtown.

Today, the facility has been reborn as Tampa Armature Works – an immensely popular dining, entertainment, and event venue designed to recapture the spirit of its past.

Tasked by the facility’s developers to handle rehabilitating the historic structure, Unique Engineering Solutions was brought in to address a tremendous challenge. How to add a second floor to a more than 100-year-old, unreinforced, red masonry building.

One of our specialties is giving new life to older buildings. As owner Andrew Hall says, “It’s what we live for.”

First, we had to figure out how to shore up the facility’s walls, enabling removal of the roof to make way for the second-floor structure. We installed a new deep foundation system, clipped off the masonry wall to new steel columns (in order to maintain wall integrity), while leaving the foundation flexible enough to move independently of the walls to prevent cracking and waterproofing failure.

Several other challenges included finding a way to optimize the building’s clearspan design (which we achieved using large joist girders), in order to keep the trolley bays open as wide as possible for the throngs of expected visitors.

We worked in tandem with several other companies, who provided the mechanical, electrical, and plumbing work, to resolve conflicts involving infrastructure between the chiller building and the Armature Works building.  Additionally, through the use of steel reinforcements, we were able to preserve the building’s original wood trusses to handle the larger load of new air handlers that were installed above.

These challenges are all expected in a century-old building. And we’re proud to have played a part in the creation of Tampa Armature Works – a must-see, marquee destination for locals and visiting out-of-towners alike.