Source BooK: Tension Fabric Storage Building by Legacy Building Solutions

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Being able to customize a structure for the needs of a building owner is one thing. The ability to customize it to the future needs of a customer is another matter altogether. Brent Benike is the general manager for Northern Farmers Co-op in Williams, Minnesota. Their organization had needed more fertilizer storage space for quite some time, but they wanted a building that could be expanded and modified based on future needs.

The changing nature of the farming business was one of the drivers for expanding the co-op’s fertilizer situation. With equipment becoming more sophisticated, farmers can get their crops in the ground faster than ever (weather permitting). Consequently, fertilizer businesses have to be ready all the time. “You have to be at capacity to be able to handle that in today’s ag world,” said Benike. “Product has to be on hand so you can get it out the door quickly.”

Northern Farmers Co-op had an old elevator that it tore down to expand its fertilizer capacity, and they came to Legacy Building Solutions to design a new tension fabric building that fit on the company’s land, which is hemmed in by a railroad on one side and a state highway on the other. Fitting structures into existing spaces is business as usual for Legacy. The company customizes every building it creates by utilizing steel I-beam construction for the frame. High-strength PVC fabric cladding is used for the roof, sidewalls, and end walls.

Northern Farmers plans to eventually add a volumetric floor blender in the new building, so extra space was provided for that. The co-op also chose to use precast concrete walls to create bins inside the structure, something Legacy often recommends. While the railroad and the highway prevent the new building from being wider, its length could be expanded. An old Quonset hut is almost ready to be torn down, and Benike plans to expand the building into that space. By communicating those expansion goals up front, it gave Legacy’s engineering team the opportunity to design end walls that will accommodate that growth.

Fertilizer storage can be hard on steel. As Benike puts it, “Everything that fertilizer dust touches wants to corrode.” Legacy offers a range of epoxy coatings for the steel frames. Northern Farmers Co-op opted for hot-dipped galvanized steel frames, plus an interior fabric liner that seals the frames off to prevent contact with fertilizer dust.

Benike said the cost of their new fertilizer structure was about half of what a traditional stick building would be. “We needed reasonably priced storage,” he said. “We didn’t feel like a traditional building was going to fit our budget.”

The building is in a busy tourist area near northern Minnesota’s Lake of the Woods, and Benike says he’s gotten comments about how attractive the storage facility is. While conducting research, Benike visited Legacy’s central Minnesota headquarters to see their range of fabric structures — from the steel manufacturing plant to the paint shop to the main offices. “It made us a believer pretty quickly,” he said.