Victoria Mews

Project Name: Victoria Mews

Client: Victoria Mews Homeowners Association

Location: San Francisco, CA

Description: The Victoria Mews property offers tenants a luxury city residence with stunning views of San Francisco from bridge to bridge. Bigham Taylor was brought in by Advanced Resources, Ltd. to re-roof the 18 buildings on the property.

While the technical roofing responsibilities of tearing off and replacing the 465 squares was the obvious challenge, Bigham Taylor staffers also had to manage tenant and neighborhood relations, as well as adding skylights and sun globes by request.

Story: Victoria Mews is an 18-building property spread across two city blocks in San Francisco. Each building offers a stately Victorian exterior, comfortable appointments within and stunning views of the City from a roof top deck.

Keeping up the infrastructure at Victoria Mews has always been a priority for the tenants' HOA, so when it came time to begin discussions about re-roofing the 18 buildings on the property the association turned to Pat Collins, Senior Project Manager at Advanced Resources, LTD, for guidance. Collins, in turn, called on Bigham Taylor Roofing.

"We've had a good working relationship with Bigham Taylor and have worked with them on similar projects," Collins says. "Multi-building, multi-family residential is a unique type of project and they have a proven track record with us."

One of the things that made the Victoria Mews project unique, reports BT superintendent Jose Reyes, Jr., was the number of roof top decks. "Each building has one," he says, "and they were all unique. Some of them are quite detailed and involved, so we had to be careful when we removed them."

The plan was to work methodically through the 18 buildings and so the BT team started with the two buildings on the corner of 19th Street and Wisconsin Street.

"The tear off of the old tar and gravel roof was pretty easy," Jose says. "Then we removed the roof decks, stored them away and then began to apply a Siplast 20/30 Torch Applied system." The Torch Applied system was speced in to help occupant comfort during the project.

Another unique aspect of the Victoria Mews project, Collins points out, was the fact that some of the tenants requested the installation of skylights and sun globes. "That took a certain amount of coordination between the HOA and the individual owners," Collins reports. "But they made it easy for all from the billing to the installation."

Bigham Taylor began working at the site in 2009, tearing off and installing a pair of buildings at the corner of 19th Street and Wisconsin Street. Buildings down Carolina and 20th Street were completed this year.

Collins, who was on site multiple times throughout the project, gives Bigham Taylor's responsive field team and superintendents credit for keeping Victoria Mews residents and neighbors happy. "Typically you'll hear a complaint or two," Collins allows, "but we didn't hear anything from any of the owners. I believe that was because they were there, available and responsive to anything that was requested. The company really shined this time around."