Retail Roofing

Property Type for Columbus commercial properties

Retail Roofing

Retail roofs are deceptively complex. From the outside a shopping center looks like one building, but the roof above it is almost never one roof — it's a patchwork of sections built and modified at different times, carrying the rooftop equipment of a dozen or more separate tenants, all draining toward shared points and all expected to stay dry over merchandise, customers, and staff who never see what's happening overhead. Whether it's a regional center like Easton Town Center or Polaris Fashion Place, an enclosed mall such as Tuttle Crossing, a lifestyle center like Lennox Town Center, or a suburban strip center or big-box store, the defining challenge is the same: many tenants, many penetrations, and one continuous water-management problem.

Columbus retail also carries a real climate burden. Central Ohio sits in ASHRAE/IECC climate zone 5A — cold and humid — with roughly 65 to 70 freeze-thaw cycles a year, meaningful snow and ice-dam loads in winter, and humid summers that bake low-slope membranes under full sun. Add the eastern fringe of the Midwest hail belt, where spring and summer storms occasionally drop 1-inch-plus hail, and a retail roof has to handle thermal cycling, ponding, impact, and heavy rooftop equipment loads all at once. The stores beneath it, meanwhile, can't close for the roof's convenience. Protecting retail operating hours is as much a part of the job as the membrane itself.