Clients & Projects

Orcutt Mid-rise Elderly Housing (aka Ashe Manor)

• This project is a 50,056sq ft, 50-unit, four-story housing development located on a full city block in the east-end of Newport News.
• A replacement for a portion of Orcutt Homes, a 1940’s low income housing project and is the first step in what is intended to be a neighborhood-wide redevelopment effort by the Authority to provide high-quality public housing comparable to commercially available, private developments.
• As the first building in the overall redevelopment of this neighborhood, it was necessary for this building to bridge the gap between the existing small-scale residential structures that currently surround the site on three sides while planning for the future of the neighborhood.
• Exterior materials used for this project include split-face CMU, three colors and styles of brick, EIFS accents, and two colors of standing seam metal roofing.
• Interior spaces include 42 one-bedroom, one-bath apartments, and eight two-bedroom, one-bath apartments. As this project is intended for residents that are elderly and/or disabled, 20 percent of the units are fully handicap accessible and the remaining units are convertible.
• Community and service spaces include staff offices, laundry facilities, mechanical and electrical space, and a community room with an adjacent serving kitchen.
• Mechanical and electrical systems were designed to give the residents as much control over their own environment as possible. Individual heating and cooling control for each unit is possible due to a four-pipe central boiler and chiller system. The facility is equipped with an emergency generator to insure that critical systems remain operational during power outages.
• Other amenities include a fire alarm system with audio/visual devices in each apartment, a patient call system to notify staff of an emergency, and two elevators, one of which is hospital-size and one that reaches the roof level, making roof access convenient for maintenance staff.

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