The "New" Building

As I mentioned in an earlier post, in early 1997, Mack bought an old, dilapidated long-abandoned corrugated steel building that had at one time been a manufacturing plant for concrete things such as bridge parts - huge things. The ceiling was about thirty feet up at the peak, and twenty along the walls. The overhead I beams sported an old dilapidated traveling crane system that we who carried big set pieces the length of the six hundred foot long building believed should be brought back to life. I'm guessing this still has not been done.

When we moved into the building, both ends were wide open and much of the roof and walls was missing. I often phant'sied that if Bill Villegas had not been on the crew and/or a licensed commercial contractor, Mack might not have had the temerity to buy it. We had to hire a security guard overnight for the first month or so to guard our tools and materiel while half of us built scenery and the other half worked on closing up the building during the day.

At least as threatening as the possibility of marauders getting in, was the certainty of critters that still lived there. Opossums and raccoons had nests around our stuff on the floor, dozens of pigeons nested in the I beams overhead - making a mess of whatever was stored beneath them - and thousands of lizards, snakes, insects and spiders were at home everywhere in there. Any time we moved something, three or four critters would run for cover. We had an alarm system installed, but they had to take the motion detectors off line because the nocturnal critters were so active overnight. The Ocoee police were fining us to death for "false alarms."

By the time the weather started getting unbearably hot, the whole building was closed in - a steel box baking in the Florida sun with almost no air circulation. My work table was five feet from the south wall, and I swear I could almost see it glowing red in the afternoon. Mack bought us four or five four foot diameter poultry fans. I called them "category three" fans. If I set my pencil down on the table, the fan blew it across the room. I had to staple my drawings to the table. But even so, when I picked up a staple gun or router, it almost burned my hand. It was hot in that box.

As the years progressed, Bill and his boys cut six or eight holes along the walls and installed roll-up doors. One was very near my table, which was nice. Still hot as hell, but at least I could breathe.

Rain was a factor nearly every day, especially during the summer (April - October.) There were some massive leaks in the roof that could soak whatever was beneath them in a few minutes during a Florida thunderstorm. And the shop end of the building was lower than the surrounding property, giving us a two-inch deep lake around the table saws whenever it rained. Pushing water out of the shop probably accounted for ten or fifteen man-hours a week. Another ongoing project over the years involved digging drainage ditches around the shop and plugging holes in the roof.

As my nine and a quarter years with F/X were winding to a close, the building was having its roof insulated, which was supposed to have a side-effect of stopping the last of the leaks. They hadn't made it to the shop end by the time I left, so I don't know how that went. There was a pretty good leak right in front of my tool box that still dripped on me as I cleared my stuff, the company's tools and nine years' worth of drawings out of the box.

As much as I cursed that leak and the unbearable heat, I sure miss that work table. It was the best ever.