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The facility is conveniently located just off of I-95 in Richmond Hill, Ga.
When the folks at ASCENDUM Machinery realized a few years ago that their Pooler, Ga., location no longer met the company's needs, they began looking around for a more suitable location — one that was not only larger and more modern but also was easier for customers to get to.
First opened in 2007, the small, 8,000-to-9,000-sq.-ft. facility off Dean Forest Road in Pooler, a suburb of Savannah on the city's northwest edge, proved limiting to the dealership's capabilities and what it could offer its customers, said Patrick Overstreet, ASCENDUM's director of service operations. For instance, the branch had room enough for only four single-machine service bays on its 3.5 acres.
He added that the company began looking at various other properties to relocate to around the dynamic Savannah area as far back as 2015.
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"That is when we started trying to determine the best place for us so as to land business from the Savannah port expansion, the amount of business that was coming off the Jimmy DeLoach Parkway and the distribution centers that have grown in the area," he said. "We also knew that we needed to get out of the city's center and find more acreage and more space for our laydown yard."
While ASCENDUM was planning its proposed new facility in Savannah, the company also was developing plans for its current Concord, N.C., site north of Charlotte, according to Overstreet.
Once the heavy equipment dealer had reached the construction midpoint on the Concord facility, ASCENDUM was able to focus on securing the most suitable property for the new Georgia branch.
"We talked with Bryan County, south of Savannah, and it made modifications to Interstate 95 by putting in an interchange to allow access to Belfast Keller Road in Richmond Hill, where our new branch is located," Overstreet said. "They courted us and made it a very appealing prospect to have a facility here."
Just to the east side of I-95 from ASCENDUM's branch, he said, the town of Richmond Hill is experiencing phenomenal growth that includes many new residential projects and the recent construction of four new schools. In addition, there is plenty of retail and commercial space readily available near the interstate on Belfast Kellar Road, where curbs and gutters are already installed, and the county is planning for future hotels, retail and gas stations as well.
"For us, we wanted a place that was easy to reach for customers and employees alike," he said. "We also wanted a branch that our employees would be happy with and appreciated."
ASCENDUM found the property in 2019 after talking to the county and the developers of the industrial park where it is located. Two years later, the company closed on the land before breaking ground on the site in spring 2022.
J.D. Goodrum General Contractors in Cornelius, N.C., partnered with ASCENDUM to manage the building project, Overstreet said.
Finally, in May 2023, ASCENDUM moved into the spacious dealership branch on 11.5 acres, more than a dozen miles south of the old Pooler location.
"The net result was we ended up with a 25,000-sq.-ft. facility here in Richmond Hill with five pass-through service bays, which encompass 10 working bays," Overstreet said. "They are over 80 ft. wide, and the building is about 302 ft. long. The bulk of it, obviously, is made up of our shop space."
He added that some features used in the Concord branch figured prominently in the look of the Richmond Hill dealership.
For example, Overstreet said that just as was done in Concord, the new Georgia branch's service area was "designed with a hook height for our cranes so that we could clear them over a truck bed if we had an articulated truck in the shop with the bed hoisted all the way up."
Additionally, he said that the facility's architect designed skylights in the shop's walls to bring in more natural light to make a better work environment for its technicians.
"Our wash bay at the end of the facility is a pass-through, so we can bring one or two dirty machines in one end for a wash and clean before hauling them out the other end, so we are not having to go back out the dirty side of the bay," he added.
The service technicians in ASCENDUM's Richmond Hill facility can fit 10 large machines in the shop at one time and still be able to close all the bay doors. In all, a mixture of 10-15 pieces of equipment, large and small, can be worked on at once. The service area also utilizes a 10-ton bridge crane.
"One of the things that we did here that we did not do in Concord was build 20-ft. concrete aprons outside our shop doors to give us additional workspace," said Overstreet. "For instance, if we need to pull a machine outside or if we need to run a piece of equipment and keep exhaust fumes from circulating through the shop, we can back it outdoors and still allow the techs to be able to work on a concrete surface."
The Richmond Hill facility's parts department also is much more expansive than what was found at the Pooler branch, he said, and is "a lot more user friendly for us in terms of housing and storing spare parts."
New Location Meets With Everyone's Approval
The durability of the new Richmond Hill branch of ASCENDUM has yet to be tested, but Overstreet said that its construction should allow it to withstand any rough weather the nearby Atlantic Ocean can throw at it.
"Typically, we would use prefabricated steel as the bones of the building because it is a more cost-effective solution," he said. "But, at the time we wanted to build this facility, the lead time to get Nucor steel was about two years out so that was not going to meet our construction timeline. As a result, we went with all-precast, poured-concrete tilt-up construction that offers a much longer life, is of a higher quality, and is more durable.
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"We also wanted to build for ASCENDUM's future, and where we predict the market would go, so we built bigger," Overstreet added. "We took some lessons from the Concord build with the thought that ‘We know where we are as a company today and we see the forecast for five years from now,' but we took that further by forecasting the next 10-15 years as well when we designed the building and created the option of expanding the branch, similar to what we did in Concord."
The newest dealership also employs many of the same design elements as ASCENDUM Group, the company's Portuguese-based parent company, including its colors, façade, and more contemporary and modern look.
It also was important to ASCENDUM to design pleasing spaces for its employees.
"In the old Pooler branch, the breakroom for our technicians was actually one of the shops bays, where we had a picnic table," he said. "Obviously, the space was not at all ideal. Because of that, the breakroom in Richmond Hill was a big focus for us and is very clean and has nice appliances on hand. It also has an exit door to the outside where there is an awning so that our techs can take their lunches out to a table in the shade but away from the shop.
"Also, the locker room was not what we thought our employees deserved, but here we have more than quadrupled the size of the locker room that was in Pooler. There are full-size lockers in this new space as well as a shower facility for them."
As ASCENDUM Richmond Hill approaches its one-year anniversary in May, Overstreet said the facility has been warmly received by customers and employees alike.
Much of the great reception it has received is due to how much easier the branch is to reach, he noted.
"Savannah in general as well as Dean Forest Road, and the I-16/I-95 interchange have all been in a state of construction for more than 10 years, along with the work to expand the Port of Savannah. Trying to navigate through the additional traffic from all that work has been a challenge," said Overstreet.
"So, pulling ASCENDUM out of Pooler and away from where all the heavy construction is happening has been a breath of fresh air for everyone. Again, we are less than a mile off I-95, making it easy to get in and out of our location." CEG
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