Bluff Drive Residence

Perched right along the coastal bluffs of Shell Beach, this custom estate was designed to make the absolute most of its front-row ocean views. Spanning an expansive 6,355-square-foot layout featuring a three-story main home, a 4-car garage, and a private detached guest suite, the project was as ambitious as its location.

Ashley & Vance Engineering delivered the complete civil and structural scope to bring the high-end vision to life on a notoriously steep seaside lot. On the civil side, our team mapped out the grading, drainage, utilities, and erosion control, crafting a stormwater mitigation strategy built to satisfy strict municipal and state coastal requirements. Structurally, we engineered a robust multi-level superstructure designed to handle high coastal wind loads while sitting cleanly atop soil conditions identified in the project site report.

Highlights:

• 15-Foot Structural Retaining Walls: To tame the extreme hillside topography, our civil and structural teams closely coordinated top-of-wall and finish grades to design heavy-duty retaining walls up to 15 feet high, securing the building envelope and creating usable outdoor space.

• Hybrid Type V Lateral System: Utilized high-capacity plywood shear walls in tandem with prefabricated roof trusses to maintain open, view-oriented floor plans on the upper levels without sacrificing lateral rigidity against seismic and wind forces.

• Soils-Specific Foundation Integration: Designed custom slab-on-grade foundation systems tailored directly to the geotechnical recommendations, ensuring long-term structural stability against site-specific settlement and coastal slope conditions.

• Comprehensive Stormwater Management: Developed an end-to-end civil strategy featuring preliminary through final drainage plans, erosion control, and on-site mitigation to smoothly navigate local environmental permitting.

By seamlessly bridging complex civil sitework with clever structural engineering, our team made it possible to construct a spacious, multi-structure estate on a challenging footprint without compromising an inch of the home’s dramatic coastal backdrop.