$1K a month to live in a shipping container: SLC's cautionary tale of making homes out of cargo boxes

Bethany Baker // The Salt Lake Tribune If the developer building a six-story apartment complex in Salt Lake City out of shipping containers had it to do over again, he says he probably wouldn’t. Box 500 Apartments, the blocky blue-and-silver structure at 543 S. 500 West, might be one of the most creative multistory housing experiments to get underway in Utah’s capital. The idea: Stack a series of rectangular steel containers to create affordable units, at a time when the Beehive State really needs them. While the ubiquitous containers have been widely used for offices and smaller housing units around the state and country — among them, a range of accessory dwellings in backyards — Box 500 has been a first crack in the city at using so-called cargotecture to build six stories high, The Salt Lake Tribune reports. It has been anything but easy, according to developer Rod Newman, who is also owner of Eco Box Fabricators, a Salt Lake City firm specializing in converting the recycled freight containers to new uses. During a recent walk-through of Box 500, Newman recalled a lot of mornings bursting awake at 3 a.m, palms sweating, worried about getting through the project’s latest hurdles. “As we designed it and I had the vision to do it, I never in my wildest dreams thought I would encounter what I have,” he said. “It’s been fun, but it’s also been extremely maddening and scary.” Nearly five years into construction of the 83-unit building, it’s still not done, although Newman confirmed he is already advertising for tenants and expects to get an official certificate of occupancy from the city soon. The project has a website displaying fully furnished and appointed studio, one-bedroom and two-bedroom units — staged for photos, the developer said, and then stripped down again to allow for final construction touches. A studio apartment at Box 500 spanning 282 square feet would rent for $999, according to the site. One-bedroom units, with 569 square feet, are priced at $1,099, while a two-bedroom — sized the same as a one-bedroom — would rent for $1,299. “We’re two weeks or less to start renting it,” Newman said a week ago, striding confidently through the building’s partly completed sixth-floor hallway. Newman has made that same announcement before, including in late 2022, when he heralded Box 500’s imminent opening and said it had “a bright future” — only to run into more snarls. The project has faced many obstacles Chris Samuels // The Salt Lake Tribune But Orion Goff, deputy director of development services with the city’s Division of Community and Neighborhoods, confirmed Friday that the building was currently being inspected for approval for final occupancy, with a target for “all required approvals by the end of the month.” “The city,” Goff said, “is excited to see this innovative and unique project completed and occupied as soon as possible.” The goal all along, Newman said, has been to prove a concept: He wants to show how best to use cargotecture to make new homes that are affordable — in this case, to those making roughly 60% of the area’s median wages. That’s part of why state backers of subsidized affordable housing and others have chipped in on Box 500, as has the city, by waiving the typical impact fees charged to housing developers. Yet the project has faced one obstacle after another since construction launched in the early months of 2020, starting with a COVID-19 pandemic-induced global supply-chain crisis that made crucial building materials difficult and costly to obtain. That even affected the Lego-like metal shipping boxes themselves, which also exploded in price during the pandemic. Getting functional elevators for the building, Newman said, was a saga all its own. He seemed delighted on a recent tour to step into one of its newly installed lifts — its trim still covered in plastic — and push a button and have it work. “This is so cool to have an elevator,” he told visitors. With engineering delays, major cost overruns and no shortage of administrative obstacles, Newman said he had to switch to lenders midway through the build. Box 500 is also on its second general contractor, he added, after business relations with the first went south. In addition, records at City Hall indicate Box 500 has had to surmount red flags from building inspectors on a range of fire-safety concerns and issues with construction materials used in its roofing, flooring and electrical sheathing. Many of those features, Newman said, “the city made us redo.” And by way of proving out the concept of residential cargotecture at six stories, he said, all those lessons learned could now be folded into a similar project in future. “I could build another one — or build units for someone else,” Newman said. “Would I do it? Maybe not.” This story was produced by The Salt Lake Tribune and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.