Developer Jeff Evers has completed one phase of construction in the Fournet Building with the old Four Seasons Store on the southeast corner now housing office space. Last week The Ninth District Public Defenders moved into that space which will serve as their temporary home until construction is complete on the second and third floors.
Evers said the public defenders are up and running until on the lower level until the significantly larger office space encompassing the entire third floor is completed. “The Ninth District Public Defenders moved in last week,” said Evers. “They are still finalizing their move, but they are up and running. They are on the main floor where the Four Seasons store was. They will be there until we get the third floor done. Then they’ll be taking the whole third floor around the atrium area. It will be quite a big area compared to what they had and what they have now.”
Demolition work on the third floor should primarily conclude by the end of the week according to Evers with the transition to construction coming after the weekend. “Things are going good,” said Evers. “We are working on the second and third-floor demo. We took all the ceilings down and are cleaning that up now. We should be 99 percent done with the demo this week. Next week we’ll start laying subfloor and doing the outside wall, basically the building envelope. That will be a 2×6 wall so we can insulate that.”
Evers estimated at least 250,000 pounds of material, walls, ceilings, fixtures, etc., was removed from the building during the demolition process. “Demo was a lot,” said Evers. “I don’t have an exact number for the pounds we moved out of here, but it was probably a quarter of a million pounds at least. It’s been a lot of trailer loads out to the Gentilly Sanitation Landfill. It’s nice to be getting done with demo and moving onto a different phase. The main floor came out nice as a modern, new space so when [the public defenders] move up to the third floor that will be available for someone else and hopefully fill up fairly quick.”
Evers said the timeframe remains to hopefully have both main tenants, the public defenders, and Tri-Valley Opportunity Council, moving into their space on the second and third floors this winter. Outside of those two, Evers said he’s had talks with several other possible tenants, but no additional agreements for space have been reached yet.
