A commercial steel building in the Washington landscape

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Commercial steel framing and PEMB erection in Washington

Stalcup Construction is licensed in Washington and builds across the state, from the Puget Sound industrial core to the I-5 corridor north through Skagit and Whatcom counties. Our largest project to date is in Ferndale: a seven-figure U-Haul warehouse and storage facility we ran as general contractor.

In short

Ferndale, run as general contractor.

Stalcup Construction is licensed in Washington and frames and erects commercial steel across the state. The company built a seven-figure U-Haul warehouse and storage facility in Ferndale as general contractor, including water mitigation and full site work.

Puget Sound industrial demand and the I-5 corridor north drive most of the steel built here, and crews mobilize from Central Oregon and stay through the job.

Licensing

Licensed and insured in Washington.

Stalcup Construction holds a Washington contractor license and carries insurance for commercial work in the state. Washington is one of eight states we are licensed in. License status is verifiable through the Washington State Department of Labor and Industries under the company name, which is the check worth running on any subcontractor.

Both services

Both services, across Washington.

Framing

Cold-formed steel framing

Load-bearing and non-load-bearing steel stud framing, by our own in-house crews. In Washington that usually means the upper floors of a multi-story storage facility, where land cost pushes the building up rather than out.

Erection

PEMB steel buildings

Clear-span pre-engineered metal buildings, bolted and torqued on site. The Ferndale project was a PEMB warehouse and a storage facility on one site, and we carried the whole of it rather than a single slice.

What Washington is building

Four things shape steel here, and none look like the state next door.

Land cost pushes storage upward

A self-storage facility in Seattle, Bellevue or the close-in suburbs cannot spread horizontally at those land prices. The format becomes multi-story urban infill, which is a structural problem before it is a storage problem. That is exactly where load-bearing cold-formed steel earns its place, carrying the upper floors above a heavier base frame.

Industrial outdoor storage is unusually dense here

South Seattle, the Kent Valley, Auburn and Tacoma carry a large concentration of it, and the south-end counties have carried much of the region's recent industrial delivery. Yard space, fleet buildings and small clear-span shells follow that demand rather than leading it.

Aerospace and maritime manufacturing anchor the industrial base

The supplier, fleet and logistics buildings that sit around those employers are steel buildings, and they keep the Puget Sound industrial pipeline moving even when the broader market softens.

Seismic design governs

Cascadia is why a structural decision in Washington is not the same decision as in Wyoming. Steel's ductility and the predictable behavior of its connections matter here in a way they do not everywhere, and that shapes the engineering before it reaches a framing crew.

What it needs built

What Washington needs built.

Multi-story storage

Land cost forces storage upward in the metro core. Load-bearing cold-formed steel above a red iron base is the format that answers it on an infill site.

Fleet and yard buildings

Industrial outdoor storage density around Kent, Auburn and Tacoma drives steady demand for small clear-span shells, equipment cover and fleet parking.

Supplier and logistics

Aerospace and maritime manufacturing generate the supplier and distribution buildings that serve them, and almost every one of those buildings is steel.

Why Stalcup in Washington

Crews mobilize and stay.

We are licensed in the state, so there is no qualification delay while a contractor gets registered before they can bid your job.

One contractor erects the PEMB shell and frames the units inside it. On a multi-story Puget Sound storage build that removes a subcontract and a handoff from a schedule that is already tight because the site is an infill site with no room to stage.

And the multi-story hybrid is not theoretical here. It has been built, five floors of it, in Eugene, with red iron carrying the bottom two and load-bearing cold-formed steel carrying the rest.

Washington is also a straight run up I-5 from Central Oregon. Crews mobilize and stay on site through the work rather than fighting metro traffic twice a day.

Ferndale, and what it took

The difficulty is the point. Anyone can describe a clean site.

In Ferndale, Whatcom County, we built a seven-figure U-Haul warehouse and storage facility as general contractor rather than as a framing sub.

The steel was the straightforward part. The site was not. The scope included water mitigation, a full pond and complete site work on ground that did not want to cooperate, which is a long way outside what a framing contractor normally touches. Being general contractor on it meant subcontracting the concrete and the groundwork, self-performing the framing and the erection, and carrying the schedule for all of it.

Stalcup also builds direct for owners and developers in Washington, from around $50,000 once crews are traveling, and we erect buildings rather than selling kits. More on PEMB steel buildings.

Where we work

Where we work in Washington.

Along the I-5 corridor north through the Skagit Valley into Whatcom County, and east over the pass. Crews travel to the site and stay.

SeattleTacomaEverettBellevueSpokaneVancouverBellinghamSkagit ValleyWhatcom County

Frequently asked questions

Four about this state.

How does seismic design change a steel building in Washington?
Cascadia is the reason a structural decision in Washington is not the decision you would make in Wyoming. In a seismic zone the useful properties of steel are its ductility and the predictable behavior of its connections under load reversal, which is why steel framing and pre-engineered frames are common here. The specifics are engineered for your site before anything is fabricated, and the engineer of record sets them rather than the contractor.
What is the largest project you have built in Washington?
A seven-figure U-Haul warehouse and storage facility in Ferndale, run as general contractor. The scope covered the PEMB warehouse, the storage facility, water mitigation, a full pond and complete site work. Stalcup did the framing and the erection with its own crews and subcontracted concrete, groundwork and the other trades while carrying the schedule. It is the largest job the company has carried as general contractor.
Do you build multi-story self-storage in the Seattle area?
Yes, and it is the format the metro core pushes developers toward, because land cost makes a horizontal facility hard to justify. The method is usually hybrid: heavy red iron carrying the lower floors where the load is greatest, load-bearing cold-formed steel above it. We framed exactly that on a five-story facility in Eugene, Oregon, red iron on one and two, cold-formed steel on three, four and five.
Do you work as a subcontractor for general contractors in Washington?
Yes, and it is most of what we do in the state. General contractors bring us in on the framing scope, the erection scope, or both, and we work inside whatever system the job runs in. We also carry projects as general contractor ourselves, up to around $20 million. Above that we partner with a larger general contractor we already know rather than stretch past what we can properly carry.

Send a drawing set and we will price it

A seven-figure facility in Ferndale, built as general contractor.

Crews mobilize out of Central Oregon and stay on site until the work is finished.

22370 Erickson Road, Bend, OR 97701

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