Developers across the U.S. are recycling a surplus of 750,000 shipping containers by transforming them into livable apartments, and one of these projects is expected to open downtown this summer.
Wesley James, owner of Phoenix architecture and contracting firm STARKJAMES LLC, said construction will begin next week for Containers on Grand, Phoenix’s first market-rate shipping container apartments. Located at Grand and 12th avenues, Containers on Grand will consist of eight 740-square-foot apartments.
Kathleen Santin, who is the marketing director and one of the partners for Containers on Grand, said the apartments will rent for $950-$1000 a month. According to Zillow, that price is below the current Phoenix median rent of $1,095 per month.
Architect Travis Price led the first U.S. installation of shipping container dwellings. Price said he began renovating an apartment complex owned by two Catholic University students in Washington, D.C., for student housing purposes and told them they could offset the cost of the renovation by using shipping containers. He said he came up with the idea “on a napkin” in March 2014 and had the building fully occupied by September.
“It’s sort of a glorified cellophane wrapper, and it’s one of the most sophisticated housing models there is,” Price said.
He said the permits for the D.C. complex were easily obtained within days, but in Phoenix, STARKJAMES encountered challenges with the City of Phoenix Planning and Development Department.
“We had never seen a product like that before (in Phoenix), we hadn’t reviewed it, and they are designed for a certain use, and for converting those to use in an apartment, we had to make sure that they were safe for the public to be in them,” said Jason Blakley, City of Phoenix Planning and Development team leader.
Blakley said his main concern with the shipping container apartments was that the builder planned to cut out portions of the container to make windows, which had the potential to make the container structurally unsafe. The building project was submitted to the Planning and Zoning Department for approval in September and received the department’s final approval by February.
“They were very accommodating to us at the end of the day,” James said. “The challenge with using the shipping containers is that they are distinct under the International Building Code, and they have materials that are preapproved, and containers haven’t gone through that process to be used as building materials. Luckily, they had a path to get around that, to use materials that are novel.”
Engineering firm Ritoch-Powell and Associates partnered with Santin and STARKJAMES for the Phoenix project.
Santin said the eight apartments will be constructed using 16 shipping containers. The apartments will be two stories high, and two containers will be linked together in the middle with the necessary electrical and plumbing to complete the apartment.
Santin said she posted a notice on Craigslist in January that resulted in 105 people being placed on a waiting list for the apartments.
“We just haven’t stopped getting responses from it,” she said.
She said she hopes the apartments will be on the market and ready for move-in by June 1.
Santin said she contacted about 70 percent of the people on the waiting list to find out why there was so much appeal. She thought the target audience would be people involved in the arts but instead found that the list consisted of young professionals who work downtown, she said.
“I was astounded because so many of them understood even the materials used for building,” she said. “They will say, ‘I really don’t want a brown stucco box.’ They were excited about the prospect of living in a cargo container that is basically adaptive reuse.”
Santin said the main reason people want to live in these apartments is the lack of affordable housing in downtown Phoenix.
“They want the urban lifestyle, they want to ride their bikes or walk to work, they don’t want to be so codependent on the car,” she said. “I think it’s a call to developers to start providing things that are not typically what you find in suburbia or the other urban area.”
James said the containers are used for international maritime shipping, mostly between the U.S. and China.
“A lot of the people on the waiting list like the fact that there’s a story behind each of the containers, that it had another life before this,” James said.
James said using a container to build an apartment reduces the overall energy use in the building process because the container is recycled and other materials are conserved. He said disposing of a container is costly because it involves moving it by crane to a recycling facility, where it is melted down to be used for scrap metal, which creates fumes that are hazardous to the environment.
Laura Dragon, who owns {9} the Gallery on Grand Avenue, said she is thrilled the apartments are going up on her street.
“I think from everyone’s perspective that I know … we would love more residential buildings on Grand Avenue. If we want a real livable, bikeable, walkable city, we need a mixed bag. That’s what really urban environments offer — the mixture of different types of spaces,” she said. “We need more innovative types of urban living spaces to help support the businesses in those areas.”
Price said the shipping container apartments have quickly become popular in D.C.
“It’s completely modern and wild, but it just blended in with the community,” he said. “They’re for sale, they’re all market-rated, the residents are loving it, and the city is loving it.”
An adobe house has a life span of about 150 years, while a home built from shipping containers can last 1,000 years, Price said.
“You can build with adobe or vinyl and two-by-fours, but it’s junk. Why would you buy a cardboard house when you can buy a battle-tank house?” Price said.
Price said consumers are adjusting culturally to building with metal and glass, which are more ecological than wood or adobe, because of the human labor element involved.
“For 50 years we have worshipped cars,” Price said. “It’s a matter of time before we wake up to that aesthetic in building technology.”
Contact the reporter at jessica.g.morrison@asu.edu.
