Businesses’ new buildings, houses taking shape around Modesto

Places to live, work and buy are among the high-profile construction projects going on in and near Modesto. The Bee visited three building sites for updates. Here’s what we found:

Don’s Mobile Glass showroom and warehouse

“We’re excited, it’s a big deal for us and it’s going to be fun,” Don’s Mobile Glass President Stephen Mort said of the 28,000-square-foot Scenic Drive facility set to open this spring. “We’ve not had a real nice showroom before, and we love the location. We think it’s excellent for our type of destination business.”

That location is the former home of Scenic Nursery on Scenic Drive just east of Coffee Road. The building, which will include a warehouse and 6,000-square-foot showroom, is on schedule to be completed by April 1. The unusually rainy winter hasn’t impeded work, Mort said. “We were really lucky – we paved the site first, right after pouring the slab foundation,” he said, “so we’re able to work there without working in mud.”

Don’s also is fortunate to already have leased its longtime downtown shop building on H Street to another well-known local company, which Mort said he could not identify at this time. Don’s warehouse and showroom on Bunker Avenue will be consolidated into the multimillion-dollar Scenic building, Mort said, but Don’s hasn’t arranged a lease for that roughly 25,000-square-foot building.

“We’re continuing to hire currently and building our staff to move in,” Mort said. The company sells and installs glass products for vehicles, homes and commercial buildings.

The new location covers about 2.6 acres and has access to Scenic Drive and Sunnyside Avenue. The vintage delivery truck that’s been a landmark on H Street “absolutely will be on display outside of our new building,” Mort said, “but the architecture is much more contemporary. It was hard to make that change, but we decided we needed a little more modern look.”

E.&J. Gallo Winery’s Dry Creek Building

About 600 employees of E.&J. Gallo Winery will find themselves in a new, state-of-the-art workplace this summer. The 146,407-square-foot office building is on the industry giant’s Yosemite Boulevard campus.

It will have 83 meeting spaces and a capacity of 670 employees. Those initially moving in will relocate from other Gallo buildings in Modesto, said John Segale, who handles public relations for the winery. “We have no current plans to sell any of our properties.”

The structure, being called the Dry Creek Building, is designed to provide an open, modern work environment for Gallo employees. The facility will have amenities similar to some business campuses in Silicon Valley, Segale said. Features include ergonomic workspaces with sit-or-stand desks, high-performance chairs, LED desk lighting, outdoor work areas, retreat rooms, a coffee bar and social areas, bicycle storage, showers and lockers.

Gallo is seeking Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design, or LEED, certification from the U.S. Green Building Council. Such buildings “save money and resources and have a positive impact on the health of occupants, while promoting renewable, clean energy,” according to information provided by Segale.

Additional “green” features of the office building and its parking lots include electric vehicle-charging stations, spaces for low-emission vehicles, drought-tolerant landscaping, an abundance of natural light and solar panels on the roof.

Florsheim Homes’ Rose Park subdivision

Six brand-new home designs with floor-plan configurations of up to seven bedrooms are being offered in the 114-home Rose Park subdivision Florsheim Homes is building on Mable Avenue at Oakdale Road.

The homes are priced from the low $300,000s to the low $400,000s, and the project includes one- and two-story homes with Tuscan or traditional exteriors.

Seventeen homes have been sold, sales associate Tiffany Leon said Friday. “We’re probably looking at late April estimated delivery on our first production,” she said.

Asked whether buyers were going for smaller or bigger homes, she said, “It’s a good mix. We have waiting lists for every floor plan we have there. Older folks are looking for single-story homes, and younger folks with children are looking for the larger, two-story homes.”

Rose Park is at 2101 Mable Ave. Learn more at http://florsheimhomes.com/community/rose-park.

This story was originally published January 16, 2016 at 2:53 PM with the headline "Businesses’ new buildings, houses taking shape around Modesto."