Los Angeles isn’t just famous for its palm trees and skyline. It’s also a hotspot for seismic activity, making earthquake preparedness a necessity, not an option. If you own a building with a ground-level parking structure or large open commercial space, you might have a Soft Story building—and that means your property could be at serious risk when the next big quake hits. The solution? [...]
It has been nearly three decades since the January 17, 1994 Northridge earthquake, and the question on the minds of millions of Los Angelinos is: are we safer today than we were back then? Are the lives of our loved ones secure? Are our homes and commercial businesses safe? The answer to these questions is, unfortunately, more complex than one would hope…* Let’s start with [...]
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: IMPORTANT NEWS BULLETIN! Weinstein Construction, the leader in Los Angeles Soft Story Retrofits since 1977, is announcing a new free, no-obligation Soft Story Retrofit program for all eligible owners and managers of apartment buildings and commercial buildings in the Greater Los Angeles area! Each eligible Program participant will also qualify for additional, substantial discounts on various Soft Story Retrofitting project services – [...]
For the past few months, we have been hearing more and more from owners of multi-unit residential apartment buildings and condominium home owner associations, asking us for guidance regarding the State of California’s new mandatory Balcony Inspection Laws, and so we thought to put together a short, “plain speak” informational blog post on the subject! Much in the same way that the City of Los [...]
In this post, you’ll find the top questions we frequently get from our new clients about the Soft Story Retrofit Program. What is a Soft Story building? It’s a structure with a weaker first level. This type of building is useless to carry the weight of the floors above during particularly strong seismic shifts, or as we commonly call them, earthquakes. The first story generally [...]
Contrary to what many people believe, a Soft Story retrofit job is more specific than a general seismic risk assessment. The retrofit evaluation addresses a floor of a building that’s considerably weaker than the other floors. What is “Soft Story”? The term refers to one story of a building which is particularly more flexible or fragile in lateral load resistance than the foundation below it [...]
Property owners in Los Angeles and several other tiers 1 and 2 municipalities are often confused about the process involved in Soft Story retrofit, also commonly referred to as seismic retrofit. Let us break it down for you. In areas where seismic activity is a concern, a few types of construction are more high-risk than others. Buildings that are “Soft Story” must fortify in order [...]
Soft Story buildings are prone to earthquakes and could result in substantial loss of lives, profits, and investments. Therefore, Soft Story retrofitting is crucial. In case of strong sideways motion during an earthquake, the weak supports in the “soft” levels could easily collapse. This can lead the upper stories to fall onto the lower ones. In 1994, the same kind of collapse was induced by [...]
If you are wondering how long a Soft Story retrofitting process take, this on-point, no-fluff guide is for you. First of all, the duration of the process depends on the existing way in which the LA building and safety regulations apply to the building structure. It also depends on how talented and experienced your licensed retrofitting architect is. If you are a building owner in [...]
One of the most common questions we get during a site assessment is how much will a Soft Story retrofit process cost? Let’s dive into that today. When the mandatory Soft Story retrofit program in Los Angeles became an ordinance (Ordinance 183893) in October 2015, it was difficult to calculate the construction costs. But ever since then, more than 1,000 multistory properties have been retrofitted [...]
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