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Ground floor work and meeting space.

In addition to typical office amenities—desks, offices, conference Comprising 2,500 square feet on three floors, the transformed
rooms, shared printers and videoconferencing technology— 5 Points center opened last fall after nine months of construction.
educational seminars and subsidized consulting are offered on Its heart is the hybrid work and meeting space at street level.
topics including accounting, marketing, and legal issues. Folding vertical screens provide visual separation between zones,
Evenings and weekends, the center is available to community and task tables are hinge-mounted to the perimeter walls so they
groups for meetings. can be quickly folded down. The space readily transforms from an
In keeping with the home-grown theme, the project designer office space for ten people to a meeting space for 50. The color
for the renovation of this small historic commercial building, palette—warm gray and white with yellow and red accents—was
Reuben J. Hameed, AIA, LEED AP BD+C, of HGA Architects inspired by the mid-20th-century art of the Washington Color School.
and Engineers, is a Woodridge resident and community advocate. With a renovation budget of $100 per square foot, Hameed
After helping select the site and develop the program for the client, made maximum use of the building’s existing architectural and
Hameed led a team of designers and engineers at HGA to provide structural elements. Existing screened openings on the front façade
“low-bono” design services at reduced rates. The firm estimates it were retrofitted with clear glazing and two abandoned skylights
donated $12,000 in design services and 200 hours of in-kind services. were reopened. Exposed brick walls show traces of former partitions
Built in 1910, the brick-clad building, sandwiched between an and paint colors. As a further cost-saving strategy, HGA negotiated
ice cream shop and a convenience store, stands in the commercial nonprofit and trade discounts on building materials on behalf of
heart of Woodridge. Once known as the Five Points shopping the client, who then purchased the items directly.
center, this row of storefronts fell into disrepair in the 1960s and Hameed embraced the industrial character of the basement by
beyond. In its past lives, the building housed a dry cleaner and a uncovering structural elements. An exposed steel beam, painted
childcare center, but had sat vacant for the past ten years. black, neatly divides private offices and open workspace. The wood

STARTING UP IN WOODRIDGE 37