There is one unwritten rule out here and nobody had to write it down.
Door up means come say hi. Door down means he is busy, or he is not here, or he wants an afternoon to himself. Nobody knocks on a closed door. Everybody wanders through an open one.
What that does to a building
It turns a row of suites into a street.
Walk it on a good afternoon and every open door is a different world. Somebody’s is all brick and Harley memorabilia with a bike on a lift. Somebody’s is wood and a bar and a wall of TVs. Somebody’s has nothing in it but a truck, a toolbox and a radio, and he likes it exactly that way. Same shell, sixteen completely different answers to what to do with it.
You end up seeing ideas you would never have had. Half the finishes in this building exist because somebody walked past an open door and thought, I want that.
Why we built for it
Fourteen feet of overhead door is a spec you can read on a page. What it means in practice is that when it is up, your suite is open to the weather, the evening and whoever is walking by, and the whole front of the room disappears.
It is why the drive aisles are wide and the lot is concrete and the doors face the way they face. Not so the pictures look good. So the doors can be open.
Come walk the row
Pick an afternoon when people are around. That version of the building is the real one. 5000 Odessa Ave NE, St. Michael. Tours by appointment.