As American as... Keeping the Good Times Flowing
The massive Coors Brewery in Golden, Colorado, has 18 distinct roof areas.
The ritual of a backyard cookout — the sizzle of a burger hitting the grill, the cold beer in hand — seems effortless, but it isn’t.
Behind that tradition is a chain of facilities most people never think about. A processing plant running all day long. Breweries producing millions of barrels a year. Cold storage systems that never switch off.
These are the facilities where American memories get made. Yet they all face a practical problem: The buildings themselves have to keep working, no matter what.
Where’s the beef? Still being produced in Fremont, NE, even as the roof gets replaced.
The Fremont, Nebraska, beef processing facility has been operating for nearly 40 years.
In Fremont, Nebraska, the local beef processing facility runs continuously under USDA oversight. That means it remains open through maintenance. It doesn’t pause for weather. And it certainly doesn’t stop for a roofing project.
So, what happens when the building needs reroofing?
The production lines kept moving. Freezer zones stayed live. And ammonia lines kept refrigeration cooling — no delays, no incidents.
The roof of the Fremont Beef facility was finished without interrupting important operations.
“This project had a lot of moving parts, and every penetration was critical,” says John Koster, General Manager at JR & Co. “We had to stay on schedule, protect ongoing operations, and make sure the system was installed exactly right.”
What made that possible, he says, was knowing the material would behave predictably — and having support when questions came up. The team selected Elevate™ MAX™ PVC for its performance in the temperature extremes of food production environments and for the confidence it gave them on a job where there was no margin for error.
The facility is still running. The roof is still performing. Production continued uninterrupted. On a project like this, that’s what well-done looks like.
Made to chill: Elevate brings ease to Coors’ epic roof replacement
The roof of the Coors Brewery spans nearly 150,000 square feet.
The Coors Brewery in Golden, Colorado, doesn’t need much introduction. For generations, it has been part of the American experience — the beer at the ballgame, the six-pack at the cookout, the round bought at the bar with friends. The brewery itself has become something of an icon, seen in those ads for a mountain-cold brew.
But icons still need roofs.
The project — nicknamed “G150” to mark the brewery’s 150th anniversary — was a keg-sized undertaking. Eighteen distinct roof areas spanned nearly 150,000 square feet. Each was at a different elevation and served a different function, from production floors to offices to cold storage.
The over 100 fermentation tanks on-site at the Coors Brewing facility.
Work ran through the winter. One hundred fermentation tanks dotted throughout the facility required constant improvisation from the installation crew.
“This project had everything — scale, complexity, winter conditions and curved tanks everywhere you looked,” says Aaron Harvey, Construction Executive at Douglass Colony Group. “It took some improvising and definitely the right people.”
The Elevate roofing system was specified to handle the environmental exposure that comes with a facility of this location and scale — and to perform reliably, no matter whether it was protecting open production space, refrigerated storage or someone’s office. As conditions on the ground required adaptability, the material had to keep up.
“I’m just proud to see it finished and performing the way we knew it could,” Harvey says.
One hundred and fifty years in, the brewery is still running.