Carroll Shelby International, Gardena: the mural we painted first

What it is

Carroll Shelby International is the licensing arm of the Shelby name; the cars were built by Shelby American in Las Vegas. After Carroll Shelby's death in May 2012, the building on South Figueroa Street with a Gardena address, where he had kept an apartment for thirty years, became the brand's California hub, with a retail store planned and a museum under discussion. The co-CEO who signed for the company, M. Neil Cummings, Esq., was a lawyer, and nobody around him had built anything with Tellus before.

Tellus Design and Build came in at the end of 2012 through a personal referral, hired to paint one mural. Nothing beyond the wall was on the table.

What Common Ground did

• Fowler priced the mural alone rather than pitching a program, and never proposed a master agreement, then or later, so every later phase would be a fresh decision made on finished work and the client could walk after any of them. The 15-by-40-foot mural carried Carroll Shelby's signature, the Shelby insignia and wraparound blue racing stripes.
• The wall was painted first. When the city saw it, its answer was that it would not have approved it and that it should stay up.
• Tellus built the retail store on the ground floor of the working office, which began its standing relationship with the City of Carson's planning staff.
• Between those phases, from October 2014 to March 2015, Tellus served the sister company, Shelby American, as owner's representative on its move to a new Las Vegas property, a different entity and a different seat with its own page.
• For the first phase of the Snake Pit, the VIP lounge planned as the first stage of a museum, Tellus built models of the building, the museum and the lounge for display and temporary walls showing how visitors would move through the space, and managed contracts and construction on the foundation's behalf. By the foundation's own account in the release, that contract and construction management saved it a significant amount of money.
• When the City of Carson froze all new construction in 2016 with no exception clause, Fowler brought the city a packet about what Shelby added to Carson, a known name, press and an annual car show on a route the city wanted people to drive, backed by the city's own record of Tellus's work, and carried it in person.
• In early 2017 Tellus built the second phase of the Snake Pit, a 3,000-square-foot VIP lounge and event space inside Carroll Shelby's former apartment: structural modifications, roll-up door systems, finishes, a bar stocked with Shelby-branded beer and wine, a commercial kitchen, pool tables and indoor and outdoor event space, ready for the annual Carroll Shelby Tribute and Car Show.
• Each phase was bid on its own and awarded on the strength of the one before it.

Results

• Four phases over four years for one client, each won on the last.
• One of the few exemptions the City of Carson granted during its 2016 construction freeze.
• A mural the city said it would never have approved and told Tellus to keep, a retail store open for business and the 3,000-square-foot Snake Pit lounge finished in two phases.
• The client's co-CEO, M. Neil Cummings, Esq., in the January 2017 release: "The Tellus Design Build team earned our trust, and reflects Carroll Shelby's, and America's, true spirit of competition and hard work."
• The value-to-the-city packet became a method Fowler used again in Costa Mesa for AXT.

External links

• Public data room: Shelby: Gardena hub and Las Vegas plant data room

Public record

• PRWeb, January 2017: Tellus Design + Build partners with American automobile icon for event space construction in Gardena

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At a glance