Mountain Hardwear’s moving into the old Ford Assembly Point at Ford Point in Richmond in a couple weeks. Because the company is just down the road from Berkeley, it’s all about the sustainability these days — and plans to use solar power to keep the lights on. The old factory is also a historical landmark. A few juicy tidbits from the Mountain Hardwear Blog:
The Ford Assembly Plant was designed by the renowned architect Albert Kahn in 1930. It is a quarter of a mile long and contains 560,000 square feet. Kahn included features that would be considered sustainable today such as the saw tooth roof design with large northern skylights which provide incredible natural light and hinged windows along the western and northern walls which draw in the cool bay breeze. The Ford Motor Company built automobiles in the plant from 1931 to 1955 except for the three years from 1942 to 1945 when the plant was converted to war-time production. The building is an icon of design and fortitude. To learn more about the building and its history, please visit Rosietheriveter.org’s Ford Assembly Plant History page.
Because I’m totally dialed in on all outdoors-related issues in the Bay Area, I had no earthly idea that MH had a local headquarters. They’ll be moving from one way-cool bayfront location to another:
Another tidbit from that blog posting:
The Ford Plant will also allow Mountain Hardwear employees to have more fun. Because the building is located right on the San Francisco Bay and the Bay Trail, we will be providing our employees bicycles and kayaks that they can be checked out in order to take a ride along or in the bay. Many of our employees will continue to ride their bikes to work and one or two may even use the on-site kayak launch in order to kayak to work!!!
Kayaks, wow, that would require getting in the water and stuff. Hmmm…
Here’s a bunch of pictures of the new site/old buildings.
It’s great that MHW continues to maintain independence from it’s corporate overlord, Columbia. The move to their new headquarters would seem to indicate that this will continue for some time to come.
Hope MHW continues to have their twice(?) a year “garage sales” where some really good deals can be found. A while back, I picked up a $285 shell, in a then recently discontinued color (big whoop), for $100.