new spot... same building

VIRGINIA BEACH — It was still dark Sunday when Dieter Steinhoff left work, taking a big chunk of it with him.
Literally.

Flashing red and blue police lights cut through the darkness and slowly led a tractor-trailer from the dusty Acoustical Sheetmetal Inc. parking lot.

Behind it was Steinhoff's office, the one he designed about seven years ago.

More than a decade ago, Steinhoff opened a generator enclosure business. On average, he said, a generator creates about 110 decibels of sound. When placed beneath one of his steel enclosures with a sound-absorbing silencer, the generator falls almost quiet.

His Virginia Beach-based company supplies generator distributors around the world with the enclosures and the fire- and bullet-proof diesel fuel bases that go under them .

Steinhoff designed this office with the same materials - 80,000 pounds of steel - so he could take it with him if the company ever moved. He knew it would grow, and it has, going from two to 90 employees over the years.
On Sunday, Acoustical Sheetmetal began its move to a new building, 15 minutes away, on Production Road near Stihl and the Lynnhaven Mall.

It took the office about three and a half hours to get there. Several smaller steel offices within the warehouse, similar in shape to the enclosures the company builds, will be moved later.
Because of the office's girth, ACE House Movers Inc. had to pull the structure across surface roads through Virginia Beach, into Norfolk and back into Virginia Beach to avoid most overpasses and tight turns. The circuitous route required multiple permits and escorts. But because of the early hour and day, it caused few traffic problems.

Wire scoopers attached to the front of the windowed office swayed, waiting to scoop up power lines, as the building rounded the turn onto Kempsville. The tractor-trailer and its load bumped up onto the curb as Steinhoff watched from a distance.

Gabor Tarjan , owner of ACE, jumped from the lead pickup and motioned to the driver of the trailer to turn.
Down the road, churchgoers hustling across Kempsville toward church paused and did a double take. A white building, roughly the size of a ranch house, was moving in the wrong direction down the road.

Some stopped to watch Tarjan and his employees lead the driver and his 17-foot -high passenger under the only overpass they would encounter .

The building eased its way underneath and lumbered on to the site of its new home and what Steinhoff expects to be a bright future.

Amy Couteé, (757) 222-5216
amy.coutee@pilotonline.com