Time to start the documentation of my studio construction project.

The studio is being constructed in the shell of a church that fell out of use and into disrepair. It's located just east of downtown Austin on 12th Street -- about a mile (5-6 traffic lights) from our magnificent state capitol, which is also on 12th Street.

With a tip of the hat to the authors of some amazing threads on this board (Greg, Neil, Matt, Michael, to name a few), hopefully this thread can document my own journey in a similarly inspiring fashion.

Hope you enjoy it,
Paul

wow looks like a brilliant building to start with. Looking forward to seeing how it goes.

Cool! Looks like a castle!

FINDING THE BUILDING

In the spring of 2010, I called a friend of mine who's a commercial realtor and told him that I wanted to look around to see if there was a building for sale that was suitable for conversion to a recording studio. He couldn't have been too excited -- this was at least the third time in the past decade I had made the same overture to him. The first two times ended with me going home with my tail between my legs. Commercial property was just too expensive.

So I continued to toy with different ideas: a freestanding studio in my backyard, adding a second story to my 2+ car garage and building a mix room there, trying to do something in rented space, etc. For different reasons, none of those ideas was appealing enough to pull the trigger.

Anyway, my friend spent a couple hours gathering together potential candidates that met my search criteria... or, at least, most of my search criteria. As I had already learned, the rare building that is highly suitable to become a recording studio is never zoned to be a recording studio. Specifically:
-- At least 2000 square feet
-- Roughly 8-10 parking spaces. I had learned from previous searches that retail buildings with 15-20 parking spaces were way, way out of my price range.
-- Close to downtown. This was a "must." I wasn't going to build a room 30 minutes outside of town. Would have been a lot cheaper, for sure... but just not what I wanted to do.
-- The standard studio construction needs... high ceilings, few (if any) load-bearing interior walls, solid exterior walls (that is, not a warehouse with thin metal walls... which is what every building had that was a good fit otherwise).
-- Finally, it had to be zoned to be a studio. Much more on this later.

Near the end of a business day, I showed up at my friend's office to see what he had come up with. One by one, he pushed pieces of paper across the desk-- each with a listing for me to review. "This one is an old photography studio... This one is in a strip mall, but it's the space on the end... This one is a warehouse on a street with a lot of light industrial businesses." And mixed in with the other 10-15 properties, "This one is a church." I pretended to keep paying attention as he went through the rest of them. A church!

"Look through these and tell me which of them you want to go look at tomorrow, and I'll make the arrangements."

I took the stack of papers, went to my truck, and drove straight to the church. Walked around the building a couple times and stuck my face against the windows. By now it was 6 o'clock.

I called his cell phone. "I want to put an offer on this building tomorrow."

The building was in bad shape. Outside of an occasional funeral or special event, it hadn't been in regular use for several years.

The alley beside the building had become the residence for some very sketchy homeless people. There were piles of beer cans, fast food wrappers, cigarette butts, etc. (these photos were snapped after I had already hauled away more than 50 huge bags of trash... not an exaggeration). The back of the property reeked of urine.

When the congregation relocated, they took the pulpit and most of the pews with them. The drywall in the ceiling was stained and molded from roof leaks of various ages. The window units were powered by electrical cords running across the ground and along the walls. The drain in the water fountain in the entryway wasn't connected to anything-- it just dumped water into the crawl space. The floors in both bathrooms were badly rotted. Windows were broken, etc.

But there was something really cool about the building. It was constructed in 1950 out of cinderblock, and the builders wanted it to look like a castle, with crenellated towers at the front.

The interior of the building was frozen in time. Calendars on the walls announced meetings that had occurred 5 years prior. The pews still had little offertory envelopes and songbooks in them.


I loved it.















Looking down the alley to the right:









Looking to the left (this is by far my closest neighbor):







And looking down the driveway:







From the rear, showing the 14x20 ft2 building that had been added on at some point:

Here's a very rough drawing of the building's floorplan. This should help you interpret these pictures.

THE INTERIOR


Walking into the front:











The "towers," as I will refer to them, were the two bathrooms. As you walk into the front, looking to the left (the window on the left of the picture faces the street):







And looking to the right:







Some views of the sanctuary from the rear:
















And a view from the stage, looking back toward the street:







Now facing the stage again. The doorway to the left of the stage leads to a tiny "office," and then there's an exterior door:







To the right of the stage is another tiny room. This one had stairs leading up to the choir's pews. If you look into the room, you can see the exterior door that leads to the fellowship hall:







Now looking into that structure:







In a few days, I'll tell more about the purchase of the building and about the rezoning process.

Paul

Congrats, this is going to be great! Judging form these pics there's a definitve Stax/Motown vibe I think.

Nice project! I'm looking forward to this one! I looked for a church for about 3 years before I settled on the building I went with!)

Thanks, Trev.

I have very much enjoyed your construction thread. You have a fantastic room... I hope to end up with something as cool!

It certainly has the vibe. Good luck with the build.

VERY cool. I would LOVE to have a studio in an old church. Talk about buildings with soul.

I'm envious! Good luck with the build... There is a lot of work to be done but it will be an awesome place when you're done.

All you need now is a really catchy studio name that reflects the church-like exterior. Any ideas?

I'm guessing he is probably going to go with "12thStreetSound".

Live a couple streets over from 12th street! Good luck guys, keep us updated.

OMG, what an awesome building for a studio - good luck!!

Did somebody inspect the building prior to purchase? Is the technical integrity ok? How's the roof?

The exterior walls look to be very un even. If you'd stick insulation on the outside and plaster that or if you could go the distance and create new brickwalls it's insulationvalue would increase bigtime. It might be not too expensive...

Fantastic find...!

I would have to think that the 14x 20 Fellowship hall room would be perfect to expand the length of the back and make that the control room.

Then make the office a isolation room.. Also can make the other space across from it an Iso room as well.

Tear out the stage completely...? I would..

I wonder if there are hardwoods under the carpet as well.. Those old floors would be great if they were stripped and redone..

I wish you all the best..

A few other things... I would tear out the ceiling and just go with rafters. Strip the old wood of the walls- looks dated..


Looking for the same type of setup here.

Really cool building to work with! Looking forward to seeing the progress on this...

Awesome!

What a great building to make a studio out of! I'll be following this thread closely.

Yeah... "The Church Studios" was already taken.

Perhaps...

"Funeral Home Studios"?
"Homeless Shelter Sound"?
"What's That Smell Studios"?

Nahh.... "12thStreetSound" Works pretty well in his context.

This is going to one big ass build... I'll be watching.

I'm curious if you're going to build a whole new structure inside this building, or just use the existing floor/walls, sand back the original floor boards etc?

Me too!
A.

http://flic.kr/p/bVHFvS

Thanks to all for the nice words and for the comments. Responding to a few questions before moving on:

Yes, the studio will be "12th Street Sound." We flirted with several names that incorporated the building's religious history... even went so far as to register domain names for a couple of them. But we got mixed reviews on those proposed titles, and ultimately decided to go another direction.

Someone asked about "technical integrity" of the building. Despite the terrible condition of things like electricity and plumbing, the building was structurally in great condition. Every wall is level and square. The only out-of-symmetry oddity is that one side wall was about 2" higher than the other -- not the result of settling or shifting. Just built that way for some reason. If you were facing the stage, the ceiling height against the right wall was about 12'1" (3.68m) and against the left wall it was about 11'11".

The concrete footings that the perimeter walls are built on are massive. Among the many things inspected by my structural engineer was the size and depth of those footings. I think I can dig up a few photos from that task.

We're keeping the perimeter walls and the original structure essentially intact, but the interior will be a complete remodel, including taking out the pier-and-beam flooring and pouring a concrete slab.

REZONING

Not that exciting a topic, but if you're thinking of opening a commercial facility, its importance cannot be overstated. Even if your building is 100% soundproof, even if you're not breaking any parking rules, etc... if your neighbor doesn't like you running an under-the-radar business that's out-of-line with the approved zoning, you could be shut down.

I bought this building while it was still zoned for religious assembly -- if I wanted it, I had no other option. So I knew I had a 6-8 month rezoning process in front of me. And if I failed to get it rezoned, I'd have to turn right around and sell it (or I could go to seminary, I suppose). My neighbor, an architect familiar with the city of Austin's rezoning process, told me before my closing, "If it's not ALREADY zoned to do what you want to do, don't even think about buying it." But the dream won out over all the warnings.

I bought it anyway.

In Austin, the rezoning consisted of 3 meetings with the officially-recognized neighborhood association who makes grassroots recommendations to the city. There were also 3 "open houses" on the property. Then an open forum held in a local building for the neighbors to show up and register their feelings with city officials. Then a hearing before zoning commission (this is held at City Hall). Finally, a hearing with City Council, who looks at everything that has occurred up to that point and then holds an open hearing of their own. Only City Council can change your zoning.

I was lucky. I had unanimous support by the neighborhood association, the support of the city-appointed coordinators of my case, and unanimous votes in my favor at both Zoning Commission and City Council. The process took about 7 months, during which time, no construction of any kind was allowed.

I'm super jealous as this is exactly what I was hoping to do eventually. I always liked the idea of finding an old church and fixing it up myself. I may drive by and take a look at it this afternoon.

Best of luck!

DEMOLITION

Pulling down the drywall from the ceiling... which unleashed 62 years of dirt and dust from above. Pretty awful job, even with a mask and long sleeves.









Can see the drywall is off the wall separating main room from the foyer.






















On far left can see drywall off the wall between stage and the little pastor's office.

Fukin' nasty work. Sure you don't want to change the name to "Fukin'NastyStudios"?

Aww, probably not.