In this documentary, Gary Tintle recounts in 2003 the rebuilding of the Elks Building in Nevada City after it was destroyed in a fire. He describes the challenges faced during the demolition and reconstruction, including a complex foundation system due to unsuitable soil conditions. Tintle emphasizes the community's support and the collaboration between various teams, including architects, engineers, and subcontractors. He highlights the use of local resources, such as reclaimed bricks, and the commitment to preserving the building's historical character while incorporating modern safety features. The project faced numerous obstacles, including logistical issues and the need to adhere to strict building codes and regulations. Despite these challenges, Tintle expresses his satisfaction with the final result, describing the building as a beautiful and well-constructed testament to the resilience and collaborative spirit of the Nevada City community.

Full Transcript of the Video:

[MUSIC] March 20th, 2002, what a tough morning that was.

When you get a phone call at 4.

30 in the morning, [PHONE RINGING] you don't know what to do, whether you should answer it or not, but you know you have to.

You know it's not good news, but I answered the phone.

It was in Nevada City Police Department.

They said we had a fire in our building downtown, the old Elks Building.

I asked how bad it was, and he said, it's coming out through the roof, which I knew was not a good sign.

So I jumped in the car and drove downtown, came down Broad Street and rounded the corner, and saw the flames about 40 feet in the air.

And then I knew that we were in big trouble.

And at that point in time, there was really nothing that could be done.

The firemen, I don't think, were-- there was not much hope of saving the building.

They were trying to prevent it from spreading, which is what they did successfully.

The roof started caving in.

The different floors started burning and falling down to the first floor.

So it took a long time.

And the firemen did a great job.

I mean, the millions of gallons of water-- I calculated at one point in time, it was 3,000 gallons of water a minute for five or six hours.

So it was millions of gallons of water went on that fire.

And finally, I was able to put it out, but the building was a total loss.

You don't really realize how much an integral part of everybody's life in the city those businesses had become.

Not only that, the number of employees involved was probably close to 65 or 70.

A lot of those people were breadwinners for families, so their whole families were affected.

So it became hundreds of people that this fire directly affected.

And when Bob Crabbe had the drawing of that corner with a burned, broken heart, it really struck home as being very true.

[MUSIC PLAYING] After the fire, the first big step was to secure the site, make it safe for people.

We immediately hired Robinson Enterprises, very skilled group of people with lots of equipment.

They secured the site.

The first thing that happens in a devastating fire like this is there's a huge fire investigation trying to determine the cause of the fire.

The first month, we were slowly removing material so that they could peel back the layers and try to establish, skip to the core of the origin of the fire.

Once the fire investigation teams determined that arson wasn't the cause, then they kind of-- they back away because then the real cause is not as important as long as it wasn't arson.

But after they finished their investigation, they released a building for demolition.

And within an hour, the building was on the ground.

Because it was a safety issue.

We're all worried about the big, tall brick walls falling into the street.

So we got the building on the ground.

Tremendous volume of debris that had to be removed.

All the debris was hauled directly to Nevada, and the site was cleaned up.

That process took about two weeks.

We had some difficult phases to complete.

We excavated back under the old theater and had a lot of retaining wall issues against neighboring properties that were-- these buildings were all built right to the property line.

Very, very tough.

The theme was the heart and hands of Nevada City, a proposal that Leanne Brooke had come up with as far as decorating the protective barricades we had to build around the site.

Hundreds and hundreds of people placed their handprints on the barricades and wrote their names there.

And it was something that added some beauty to a site that was just so devastated.

And it was very special.

I've never, ever seen a site that had that sort of personality.

Leanne Brooke really needs to be commended for her thought process.

And like I say, she wasn't a business owner.

She wasn't really directly affected, but it was a contribution she wanted to make.

And it was great.

The first step in rebuilding the building was, number one, trying to develop a plan of how we're going to do that.

And the first part of that plan is to get an architect.

The processes have been great.

I love the people I've been working with.

And it's just been a collaboration.

So people come up with ideas.

And because it's sort of been a fluid process, things can get incorporated.

So Bruce went to work within the first week on redesigning the building.

And within maybe three weeks, we had the beginning.

We had the exterior elevations done.

And we had that proposal before the Nevada City Planning Commission within a month.

To be able to go to the Planning Commission with a drawing like this and a stack of brick.

And they say, OK, go for it.

That shows that they had a lot of confidence in the team to put it together.

You know, that this is a joy to work on.

Maybe other people didn't have as much joy as I did.

I don't know.

But it went pretty smooth.

And had very little problems in creating the building once the drawings were completed.

The only large changes in the foundations which were major.

But that's the first thing.

If you don't have good foundations, you don't have a good building.

Our soils investigation uncovered a riverbed and unsuitable conditions to support a standard foundation with footings.

So the design was a pier and grade beam system where you drill piers, fill them with concrete, and on top of that pour a grade beam that spans the distance in between the piers.

So the drilling people I had to bring from down by San Luis Obispo costing about close to $10,000 a day to have these people on site.

And immediately started hitting groundwater.

Now you can't pour concrete in a normal manner.

You have to start pouring the concrete from the bottom of the hole and force the water out with the concrete.

We had a swamp on the site.

I mean, it was an unbelievable, depressing mess.

And it didn't seem like anything was going right.

It was a process that lasted over two times longer than it should have.

[MUSIC PLAYING] The only good thing about it was that it ended.

And we were done.

And it was a great feeling to have the drillers finally leave the site.

And then we could get into some more normal foundation work, which was pouring the beams across the top of the piers, et cetera.

But we have a foundation.

Normal house foundation may have 60 or 70 yards of concrete.

And the foundation of that building has over 2,000 yards in it.

So it's unbelievable.

And then while we were putting in the footing and foundations, they finished the working drawings.

And they kind of dovetailed them in.

And that took a little bit of work.

And it wasn't so easy to do because there's things on the working drawings that kind of overlap into the footies and foundation.

I mean, it's just a-- it's not a simple one.

But-- Here it was.

The biggest building project that's been done in Nevada City for, I don't know, how many years.

And it was going to be fast-tracked.

Yeah.

First time in a building that had been fast-tracked in this town.

Yeah.

And-- So with Bill Falcone and Conley Weaver working directly with Bruce Boyd, scheduled weekly meetings every Tuesday at 1.

30.

All the issues were brought out in the open.

All the design as it progressed was reviewed.

As important as this project was, we still had to respect the city ordinances and the historic ordinance.

And everything went through the exact same process anybody else had to do.

It's important that everybody know that this was a joint effort of the people of Nevada City.

That includes a planning commission.

That includes the city council, the chamber, all these people putting up with this and saying, OK, we're going to be in the mix.

I remember that meeting we had sitting around this table with Bob Porter and his couple of assistants and myself.

Ray Powers.

Ray Powers and all here.

Here we've got the side over there.

We've got all the steel sitting over there.

And the man that's supposed to be issuing an agreement and saying, yeah, I'd like the list you start putting that up.

But I really can't.

Well, what can you do? So there was a back and forth.

Yeah.

And really, a back and forth bargaining.

And to keep it flowing.

The main thing we didn't want to do was-- As we started putting up the steel, the first piece or pieces of steel that went in, it's the integral part of the structure of this building.

And it's called a rigid frame.

So that rigid steel frame is what is providing all the structure, both horizontal and vertical, for earthquake and wind.

[MUSIC PLAYING] And because I look at a building differently than everyone else, I look at the structure.

And when the architecture gets in there, it closes up everything I like.

I like to see the bones of the building all up and painted and looked well.

I just didn't leave it that way.

But that's the way it goes.

My business is that way all the time.

The building, as we designed it, became basically a steel structure with a masonry exterior for strength with a brick veneer on it.

The masonry of the building is an integral part of the structure.

It supports the floors in between the steel beams on the exterior.

So the steel has to go up on a level.

The block masonry needs to go up and be filled with concrete.

And steel ledgers installed that carry the floor.

Then the floor needs to go in.

Then more steel can go up, more block can go up, et cetera, till we get to the roof.

All of the floors of the building and including the roof are all concrete.

All the interior framing of the building is metal.

We use steel studs exclusively.

The building has a completely up-to-date fire sprinkler system now.

Everything is up to code.

So we have one heck of a building.

Then we must have looked at 100 different bricks and the qualities and where they're made and what they consist of and how they got their color.

And I think Gary has a number of bricks in this building.

But it must be close to 55,000 bricks or something like that.

[MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] During the course of the demolition, we had generated a huge amount of brick.

We hauled all the brick to the old North Star property.

We had six people cleaning brick for six weeks.

They're just a really nice looking brick.

And we wanted to use them.

The city jumped on the idea.

And we got approval within a week to reuse those bricks on the old theater.

It's a really nice feature of the building to retain those.

We had no room to store material on the site.

So we were stacking material inside our building and then trying to use it up.

And it was a logistical staging problem every day.

We were causing tremendous impact on all of the businesses on North Pine and Commercial Street, and I'm sure on Broad Street.

Everybody was really understanding, and I appreciate it very much.

One of the biggest focuses of this reconstruction is to use as many local people as we can.

We have a tremendous talent of local people here, tremendous group of people who are capable really of just about anything and are competitive.

And we've used all those people on this job.

I can't thank enough all of the local subcontractors who have contributed to the project and who have followed the lead, I believe, of my crew who has, as with all of our projects, set an example of hard work and quality workmanship that if one person sees that happening ahead of them on a project, they feel the responsibility to continue the project with that same attitude and the same quality.

And I believe that that has been carried throughout.

The Nevada County Building Department, who has inspected the entire project, has been great to work with.

The city of Nevada City, we see them every day on site.

And the question on their lips is always, what can we do to help? And Lou Travato, what he's done for us is traffic control.

And I can't say enough about what they have done for us.

Through all this process, this is a huge financial impact on everybody involved.

And there's a lot of emotions, and there's a lot of responsibility to put this thing back together and just make it work.

I'm not certain how many people could do that.

I think that Ken Baker and myself are in a position to make that happen.

I really believe that under certain ownerships, there still be a big gaping hole on that corner.

It'd be years before somebody really was not afraid to take the step.

But since we have utmost confidence in what we can do, we did not hesitate and moved immediately forward.

And now, finally, as we reach the end of this long project, I can look back with a great sense of satisfaction.

I feel really good about the project today.

I can see everything's coming together.

You see the details off in a distance, but it's a fine symphony that is finally now being played in thousands of notes.

And maybe there's a few sour notes, but you've covered them up and played louder with some good notes.

But it's a symphony, and I think it's sounding pretty clear in downtown Nevada City right now.

I feel really good about it.

[MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] I think that almost everybody who drives by is amazed on how much work we've done a year and how beautiful it is.

I mean, the brick is just really one of the highlights.

Generally, I really felt there's been a good positive spirit about the crews, everyone coming in here.

Now, just a hard, tough job to do.

A lot of drilling in the ground, a lot of work to get to here.

Been here quite a while.

The foundation was a little tough.

The big mass of holes, those days were tough.

I think it turned out to be a real beautiful building.

Everybody that's involved with it should be real proud of what it looks like.

All in all, it came out great.

It's an awesome project to work on.

It's been fun.

We had good people and good attention paid the job.

Gary paid his good attention to his work.

Oh, I think it's great, man.

It's like inside is awesome.

The outside is awesome.

It didn't cut coinage when it came to trying to make it accurate.

It didn't cut coinage.

It's 100%.

It's a lot better than I ever imagined it would be.

And this was fantastic.

We creating part of the Nevada city like this means a lot to me.

I'm just really happy that we can get that corner, the heart of Nevada city back beating again.

[MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC]