Over the years, the farming and agricultural business has gotten more complex, with farmers having to act as a marketer, technician, strategist and laborer. When Total Ag Industries, Hillsboro, N.D., needed a new building to meet the growing demand for farming equipment, it called on Foss Architecture & Interiors, Fargo, N.D., and Vercon Inc.,
(formerly J.P. Structures Inc.), Menahga, Minn., to design and build a new 57,000-square-foot office building and manufacturing facility.
The new facility features a pre-engineered metal building from American Buildings Co., Eufaula, Ala., and a two-story conventional construction office building. The 42,000-square-foot, custom-engineered rigid frame steel building measures 350 feet by 120 feet by 35 feet and boasts a 100-foot, 10-ton clear span crane, which is ideal for the clean, uncluttered space need for the agricultural and manufacturing applications. American Buildings’ also supplied its Standing Seam 360 metal roof panels in Dark Bronze and Architectural III wall panels in Taupe Sand. The approximately 15,000-square-foot, conventional construction office building features a two-story atrium lobby and aluminum curtainwall system from CMI Architectural Products Inc., Blaine, Minn.
According to Robert A. Ames, AIA, principal, architect at Foss Architecture & Interiors, Total Ag’s previous facility was located on the owner’s farmstead in a cramped, small pole-barn structured building not able to accommodate the size and volume of equipment moving through production. The new facility features a corporate front office with a lobby/showroom, multiple offices, marketing display space and a boardroom where vendors from across the region meet for training and to discuss new agricultural strategies. The front office space also provides for the company’s product research and development, as well as a parts retail, storage and receiving room. “The main office and production facility for Total Ag Industries was designed to efficiently function for the complexity of the company’s operation, workflow and production process,” says Ames.
The metal building portion of the facility houses a majority of the company’s production operation and warehouse. “The metal building system provided an efficient solution for creating a large, unobstructed floor area and volume required to meet the production requirements of assembling, customizing and cleaning large pieces of farm equipment,” says Ames.
Meanwhile, the conventional system portion provided the designers with the flexibility to customize the floor plate, volume and fenestration in a two-story structure that met the owner’s specific goals, explains Ames. Vulcraft, Norfolk, Neb., supplied the webbed roof and floor trusses.
ALPOLIC by Mitsubishi Plastics Composites USA Inc., Chesapeake, Va., supplied smooth, aluminum-face composite panels at the conventional part of the building in combination with horizontal corrugated metal panels from Metal Sales Manufacturing Co., Louisville, Ky., and masonry. The building also features a geothermal heating and cooling system.
Nick Ylitalo, vice president of commercial construction and principal at Vercon, says that overall the project went very smoothly, and the design did a nice job of allowing both types of construction to co-mingle and tie together with very little issue.
Total Ag Industries, Hillsboro, N.D.
Award: 2014 ABC Excellence in Design award for Building of the Year and first place in the Manufacturing/
Industrial category
Architect:
Foss Architecture & Interiors, Fargo, N.D.
Builder: Vercon Inc.
(formerly J.P. Structures Inc.), Menahga, Minn.
Aluminum composite panel fabricator:
TFC Canopy, Garrett, Ind.
Curtainwall distributor: Rusco Window Co. Inc., Fargo
Metal frames distributor: Central Door & Hardware Inc., Fargo
Red iron fabricator: Wolf Steel Construction Inc., Fargo
Aluminum composite panels: ALPOLIC by Mitsubishi Plastics Composites America Inc., Chesapeake, Va.,
Bi-fold hangar doors: Midland Door Solutions, West Fargo, N.D., www.midlanddoorsolutions.com
Curtainwall: CMI Architectural Products Inc., Blaine, Minn., www.cmiarch.com
Metal building system: American Buildings Co., Eufaula, Ala., www.americanbuildings.com
Metal frames: CURRIES Co., Mason City, Iowa, www.curries.com
Metal wall panels: Metal Sales Manufacturing Corp., Louisville, Ky., www.metalsales.us.com
Roof flashing and sheet metal: Firestone Metal Products, Anoka, Minn., www.firestonemetal.com
Roof hatches: JL Industries, Bloomington, Minn., www.activarcpg.com/jl-industries
Webbed roof/floor trusses: Vulcraft, Norfolk, Neb., www.vulcraft.com