Sparks fly as a worker fires up a welding machine inside Twisted Metal Works in Reno just before noon.

Inside the cavernous shop’s massive space is an impressive assortment of tools and machinery for fabricating metal. What owner Chad Giguiere really wants to show, however, is outside in the yard.

Mixed in with a forklift, a crane and steel beams are several shipping containers lined up at various angles. Unlike the ones you see on trains and shipping yards, however, these containers look different. One has a frame made of wood planks and waferboard attached on one of its exterior walls. Another has an air conditioner unit bolted to a steel frame.

Giguiere makes his way to another container and motions toward a pair of metal trellises on its side. Reflecting his blue-collar sensibilities, Giguiere uses colorful language to describe how the attachment can be used to add some greenery to the structure.

“These can hold vines and sh**,” Giguiere said.

Asked if he wants to be quoted on that, Giguiere lets out a sheepish smile.

Come mid-July, one of Giguiere’s shipping container creations will occupy a spot in Reno’s revitalized Midtown district as a duplex apartment. The Midtown project, which Giguiere is working on with Reno developer Marmot Properties, will be the first of what the Twisted Metal Works owner hopes to be several homes based on his shipping container apartment concept.

“Reno has been very welcoming of new technology and has benefited from the arrival of companies like Tesla,” Giguiere said. “This just puts a neat addition to those things that have come before.”

Biggest little duplex

Eight miles away from Twisted Metal Works, a mix of dirt and concrete can be seen at a construction site on Holcomb Avenue and Moran Street in downtown Reno. Two workers from Twisted Metal, Rick Potts and Chad Heishman, check out the new footings and concrete that will serve as the base for the shipping container apartment.

Bryan Raydon, Marmot Properties development manager, arrives on a motorcycle to check the work’s progress. When Raydon first heard of Giguiere’s shipping container concept, he says his company immediately wanted to get on board. Marmot Properties got in early on Midtown redevelopment, for example, earning it a head start as well as valuable experience in redeveloping older homes and apartments in the district. This time, the company wanted to be the first to jump in on Twisted Metal Works’ shipping container housing project and build it on one of their Midtown properties.

“We wanted to see if we could do something a little bit more revolutionary,” Raydon said. “It’s a unique product so it took a long time to get everyone’s arms around it.”

Being first also meant experiencing some trial and error. When Marmot first signed up for the project, the plan was to do an affordable quadplex rental with four tiny home-style units stacked side by side and on top of each other. The higher connection fees and parking requirements for four units, however, caused Marmot to change its plans. Instead, it will now build a duplex with two 1,000-square-foot units made from four shipping containers.

The development also ran into unforeseen challenges with Midtown’s aging infrastructure, as well as large tree roots getting into the Cochran Ditch underground. Raydon says he understands the demand for more affordable housing. But the increased cost of development made Marmot decide to rent out the planned two-bedroom, two-bath duplex at a higher rate.

“This has the potential to be an affordable housing solution,” Raydon said. “But these units will have to be market rate because (the project) cost so damn much.”

Raydon estimates monthly rents for each unit to be somewhere around $1,400 to $1,500. The average rent for a two-bedroom, two-bath apartment in Reno was $1,471 during the first quarter of this year, according to real estate consulting firm Johnson Perkins Griffin. The average rent in downtown Reno during the same period was $1,457 for all apartment types.

Raydon assured that renters will be getting what they paid for. Marmot plans to put on deluxe finishes in the duplex, including real tile and higher quality faucets and showers.

“This first duplex will also act as a showpiece so people can see what you can do with it,” Raydon said. “We have a bunch of other lots where we’re considering doing the same project, maybe with a lower price point.”

From Legos to shipping containers

Back at Twisted Metal Works, Chad Giguiere grabs a frame and several metal boxes, which he proceeds to stack in different configurations on top of a table.

The items represent a scaled-down version of Giguiere’s shipping container housing concept, which he originally designed on his computer using an AutoCAD program.

“My mom bought me every Lego kit that was available when they were released when I was a child,” Giguiere said.

“I’d put the kit together then I’d take them apart. I still have this box of Legos that’s probably the size of this table.”

Since then, Giguiere has moved on to literally working on bigger things. These include towering art pieces such as the “Night at The Climb In” that was displayed at Burning Man last year. The impressive structure featured seven cars and an RV stacked on top of each other like a giant vehicular shish kebab. It was one of the event’s most popular displays until a climber fell and safety rangers at Burning Man closed off access.

“I have specialized in fabricating impossible items for people,” Giguiere said. “We’re kind of a high-level prototype shop.”

Giguiere also does a lot of structural steelwork for high-end housing and commercial projects. In addition to homes in Reno, Lake Tahoe and California, Giguiere also helped build the Apple Store at The Summit.

While using shipping containers for housing is not exactly a new idea, Giguiere says he was inspired to do them after looking into getting housing for himself in Mexico. While getting land was cheap, the cost of building a house for expats was prohibitive, according to Giguiere.

“I scratched my head and sketched up some ideas,” Giguiere said. “I decided on making a kit home based on shipping containers and structural steel.”

Putting the pedal to the metal

Besides Giguiere’s familiarity with steelwork, using shipping containers came with several advantages, he said.

Shipping containers, which can be bought new for $5,000 to $6,000, provide a common, standard base to work with and can be built to be tough and watertight. Shipping containers are also convenient. Giguiere can fit every component needed to construct a house in the container itself and then have it easily delivered to the site because it is a common shipping platform.

Although shipping container houses provide portability and plenty of design flexibility, the way they are built means they can last 100 years and hold value more like a traditional house unlike mobile or modular homes, Giguiere said. Unlike traditional stick-built houses, however, shipping container kit homes can come together faster. Once the concrete base dries between 10 days to 14 days, you can just plop in the storage container house in just a few days. The container is already painted, pre-plumbed and has most of the rough electrical work done. This means reduced costs for developers because a project can quickly move from a higher-rate construction loan to a traditional one, according to Giguiere.

“The cost is pretty comparable to tract home frame pricing as far as square footage but the biggest deal is the time saved,” Giguiere said. “It’s like a big, giant dry-in kit.”

At the same time, trying to use the concept as a platform for affordable housing is easier said than done. Giguiere says he was asked by the city of Reno if it would be possible to use storage containers for Section 8 housing where rents are subsidized via vouchers. Giguiere replied that he wasn’t sure how that would pencil out for potential investors. At the very least, it would likely require a huge order to make it more cost-efficient, and Twisted Metal Works is not able to ramp up to such a scale right now.

“Our plant is not that big yet and I don’t want to sacrifice the quality of our work,” Giguiere said. “It took me 20 years as a California kid coming here to develop a reputation.”

As Giguiere goes through the blueprints for his storage container housing concept, he talks about how far he has come in his journey since his childhood days playing with Legos. Giguiere says he has a waiting list of other developers who want to use his storage container housing design just from word of mouth. While he is confident in his concept, Giguiere also admits that nothing in life is guaranteed.

“I’ll see what comes of it,” Giguiere said. “If not, I’ll buy a fishing boat and move to Mexico.”

“Take me with you,” one of his workers responded while handing Giguiere a form to sign.

Giguiere grabs the clipboard and simply laughs.

Jason Hidalgo covers business and technology for the Reno Gazette Journal, and also reviews video games as part of his Technobubble features. Follow him on Twitter @jasonhidalgo. Like this content? Support local journalism with an RGJ digital subscription.

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