American Builders Quarterly #73

AMERICAN BUILDERS QUARTERLY

Indulgent

Design & Construction

From members-only clubs to cruise liners to high-end hotels, American Builders Quarterly details some of the latest projects and ideas in luxury hospitality P. 8 Hilton P. 10

Holland America Group P. 16

Fitler Club P. 24 Marriott International P. 30

Sizing Up in SoCal

A look at a trio of design-build projects expanding San Diego International Airport P. 118

“A More Sparkling World” Swarovski’s Jochen Schmidt is helping the gem retailer’s stores shine P. 70

to Fit Scott Gassen makes sure Under Armour’s offices match its strategic goals P. 142

Tailored

Andreas Graber (Swar ovski), Pablo Mason (San Diego International Airport), Jeremy Bitterman (Under Armou r)

Full Steam Ahead Holland America Group’s My Nguyen details the cruise company’s swift dry-dock process for ships P. 16

A New Life for LifeWay The century-old publisher’s offices are getting a 21st-century update P. 80

ABC BigCommerce 85

Bolton, Bob 118

Bonora, Steven 64

Buntin, Glenn 44

Carmagnola, Michael 153

CBS Corporation 134

CHG Healthcare 128

Coffee & Bagel Brands 76

DEF

DeGross, Pierce 10

Fitler Club 24

Flaum, Elliot 149

Francesca’s 57

Fresenius Medical Care 114

GHI

Gassen, Scott 142

Gorman, Chris 109

Helzer, Michael 102

Heuring, Emily 76

Higdon, Shawn 149

Hilton 10

Hocking, Tim 98

Holland America Group 16

ICB Construction 158

JKL

JMA Architecture 164

Junaid, Malika 38

LaFleur, Susan 90

Lands’ End 124

Lasich, Andrew 50

LifeWay Christian Resources 80 Long, Daryl 158

MNO

M Designs Architects 38 Marriott International 30

Mehserle, Jim 164

Mehserle, Meg 164

Memorial Sloan

Kettering Cancer Center 67 Nguyen, My 16

Point 1 156 Potter, Amanda 24 QTS Realty Trust 54 Raley’s Markets 102

Rosi, Gabrielle 60

STU

San Diego International Airport 118

Schmidt, Jochen 70

Schultz, Jason 85

Sears, Paul 134

Shoe Palace 149

SLCE Architects 64 Square Inc. 109

Stanley, Michael J. 57

Stantec Architecture 90 Stevens, Bobby 128

Stoltenberg, Shane 156

Sussman, Lionel 30 Swarovski 70 Symcor 98 ThedaCare 44 Titcher, Melissa 124 Turano, Laurie 114 U-Haul 50 Under Armour 142 University of Texas at Austin 153 VWXYZ Vance, Russell 80 Whole Foods Market 60

AMERICAN BUILDERS QUARTERLY

The Best Projects Don’t Just Satisfy. They Gratify.

I grew up with Stephen Colbert, or at least with his presence on a screen. I remember first watching him on The Daily Show, in college, then laughing along with his antics on The Colbert Report, and I was a full-fledged fan by the time he was tapped to host The Late Show, after Letterman retired.

So, imagine how excited I was to learn that our cover star, Paul Sears (p.134), played a key part in helping build Colbert’s latest studio. Before recently becoming director of facilities operations for CBS, he was doing big-time projects for the broadcaster as a project manager for one of its contractor partners, JRM Construction Management. He was part of the team that helped open the ceiling of the Ed Sullivan Theater back up for Colbert’s show and restore it to its former glory. And, he’s also tackled other major work at the company’s 811,000-square-foot New York City Broadcast Center, including an overhaul of its electrical infrastructure. It’s thanks in part to him that I and everyone else can continue to enjoy Colbert and the rest of the programming CBS has to offer.

Over in our feature section, there are others working behind the scenes for our enjoyment in the high-end hospitality industry. Among others, Holland America Group’s My Nguyen (p.16) is in our magazine for the second time to detail the incredibly efficient process the cruise line’s ships go through when in dry dock, keeping them off the open seas for only a matter of days while still leaving them completely refreshed for the next group of guests. Marriott International’s Lionel Sussman (p.30) took some time to highlight the work that he and his diverse team are doing to revitalize their company’s Marriott and Sheraton brands by looking at them from different perspectives. And, Amanda Potter (p.24) offered a preview of the Fitler Club, an exclusive location in downtown Philadelphia that she’s designing with all the amenities that members could possibly want, including a spa, a fitness center, coworking spaces, event spaces, fine dining, a bowling alley, an arcade, a private lounge, and more.

Their and Sears’s work, along with that of others in the issue, props up the structures and institutions we know and rely on (and sometimes take joy from). I hope their stories inspire your own work in the built world.

Geoff George Senior Editor

Design &

Rule number one in the world of high-end hospitality is to meet the needs of clientele, and the directive extends to the planning and building of luxury spaces. In this issue of

Construction

we explore the idea through a variety of projects, including brand redesigns at Marriott, the dry-dock retrofitting of Holland America Group’s cruise ships, and the completion of an exclusive club in Philadelphia.

Bringing Hospi t ality Home

Hilton has put its stamp on its new headquarters with a brand-worthy dining hall by

Kelli Lawrence

In August 2009, Hilton relocated its headquarters from Beverly Hills to McLean, Virginia, in a building with a small employee gathering area and delicatessen. Over the ensuing years, though, as the head count there significantly increased, it became clear that something new was needed.

The challenge, according to Pierce DeGross, vice president of global workplace services, was finding a way to increase employee interaction, given how much the company had grown, while making the revamped space a clear representation of Hilton, from its aesthetic touches to the arrival experience, food and beverage offerings, and the quality of its service. DeGross; various internal stakeholders, including members of Hilton’s executive team; and a diverse core team of 10 specialists, including two key architects and a landscape architect, set out to meet these challenges in 2015. And, given Hilton’s reputation for excellent design and hospitality (the company’s portfolio includes more than 5,000 properties in more than 100 countries), it only made sense for them to tackle the project with the company’s typical flair.

Pierce DeGross VP Global Workplace Services Hilton

Courtesy of Hilton

In November 2017, the 12,000-square-foot new dining and meeting space, known as the Social, opened for business, complete with a substantial reception area, six separate food stations (each with its own style and theme), a beverage station, and a full-service Starbucks. Factor in the textured walls, wood-slat ceilings, projected TV screens, a game area, a terrace, and soft, energy-efficient lighting throughout, and the result of DeGross and his team’s efforts is a state-of-the-art facility that can serve hundreds of Hilton team members and guests at any one time.

“The best part about this new space is that it’s creating the kind of interaction that we’d hoped for,” DeGross says. “This is not only the desire of some of our executives; it’s a way to get to get out of our offices and get to know each other better rather than just getting our lunches and heading back.”

Design and construction of the new space entailed several one-of-a-kind experiences for DeGross and his team, including the use of virtual reality goggles to visualize utility placement on the pattern-heavy ceiling. “The ceiling layout is remarkable—knowing the details, the PHPs to get it all done,” he says. “Seeing how it all worked in advance and having the ability to understand what they were doing saved us time.”

An area that proved considerably less time efficient was the Social’s terrace, which required a special zoning variance that took more than a year to obtain. Part of the reason for the wait came down to the fact that Hilton doesn’t own the building, which presented other challenges for DeGross and the team, too. From working around several landlord-declared “sacred spaces” when running plumbing and electrical lines to scheduling construction around the laser-surgery appointments of another tenant in

The Social, the new meeting and dining space at Hilton’s headquarters, is fronted by a cleanly designed reception area.

“It’s a way to get out of our offices and get to know each other better rather than just getting our lunches and heading back.”

The Social also includes a game area, where employees can take a break.

Michael Moran/OTTO

A private dining room in the Social is available for internal and external meetings.

the building, the members of the Hilton project team had their work cut out for them.

“We’d have to stop and pick up again and stop and pick up again,” DeGross says. “Our contractor had to get there at three or four in the morning just to get a whole day in. That was an everyday thing, because everything we did was noisy.”

Nevertheless, the engaging aspects of solving the renovation puzzle overshadowed some of the more frustrating aspects of the build. In deciding the space’s dining options, for instance, DeGross worked with Hilton’s food and beverage team and an outside food operator to obtain Hilton employees’ input. The Social now boasts not only multiple cuisines but a self-serve soup and salad bar, a “grab’n’go” case, and any number of food-related gatherings throughout the year (e.g., DoubleTree Cookie Day), designed to bring team members together.

“We haven’t done a formal follow-up survey yet, but if we did, I think our team members would say we have a great variety of interesting food that tastes good,” DeGross says. “People are down there eating, meeting, working, getting coffee, and just enjoying the space.”

Cruising for

Holland America’s

My Nguyen explains how the renovation of a cruise ship in dry dock is one of the toughest tasks for designers and contractors—and why they should embrace it by Peter

Fabris

a Challenge

Anyone who’s ever renovated a building in a tightly packed urban environment is well aware of the tough challenges that go along with it.

Deliveries, material and equipment staging, planning, and scheduling, among other tasks, are all complicated by a confined work site. So, just imagine the additional difficulties involved in renovating a midsize (meaning capacity for about 2,600 guests) cruise ship in a dry dock with a few cranes to load all supplies—with just eight to fourteen days to complete all items on a long project list, and only two opportunities to do this every five years.

It’s these factors, says My Nguyen, deputy director of interior design and operations for Holland America Group, that make renovating a cruise ship—essentially a self-contained town that spends days at a time at sea—a unique undertaking. It takes an enormous amount of detailed planning and can be subject to innumerable glitches and delays, making this singular niche in the design and construction world one that’s not for the faint of heart. If you can succeed in it, Nguyen says, you can excel in many other construction markets.

Nguyen is one of the niche’s top practitioners and helps Holland America and Seabourn maintain a fleet of 19 ships that together make more than 500 trips a year, visiting all seven continents. Both brands are unique—with vessels ranging from 600-guest ultra-luxury ships to 2,600-guest midsize cruise liners—but all their ships face the same challenges when it comes to renovation. To maximize profitability, the company works to keep the vessels in service for as many days as possible, so limiting their time in dry dock by performing renovations quickly is critical. Here, Nguyen breaks down the process in detail.

My Nguyen Deputy Director of Interior Design & Operations Holland America Group

Courtesy of Holland America Line

Holland America Group’s ships contain rooms for 600–2,600 guests, and they get renovated in phases over the course of different dry-dock visits.

Early Planning

“It takes about a year to successfully plan and complete a dry dock,” Nguyen says. The planning process begins with assessing what areas of the ship most need refreshing. Nguyen is responsible for all guest-facing areas such as state rooms, restaurants, bars, spas, fitness centers, casinos, and children’s play areas.

The length of a planned dry-dock stay is a limiting factor. For example, with hundreds of suites and staterooms on each ship, it isn’t possible to renovate them all in a single stay of two weeks or less, so the renovations have to be performed in phases—typically no more than four of the eight passenger decks at a time. And, given the limited opportunities for renovations, Nguyen and her team spend a lot of time considering the durability of design materials. After they finalize their plans, though, they still face many more challenges.

Among My Nguyen’s many duties, she’s responsible for assessing and coordinating the refresh of all guest-facing areas on ships, including bars, restaurants, fitness centers, casinos, and more.

Procurement and Supply Logistics

With as many as 50 subcontractors (about 15 for customer-facing spaces) working on the ship during each dry-dock stay, ensuring that they have the materials and tools they need on board at the right time requires military precision. Contract labor must also be carefully scheduled for the limited project window.

A quirk of the cruise ship business is that much of the labor needed to renovate vessels is located where ships are usually built. So, Nguyen has to line up laborers from one or more of a few shipbuilding hot spots—such as Italy—months in advance.

Additionally, cruise ships have different code requirements from buildings, including highly restrictive material-combustibility standards. (For instance, after a passenger ship fire in 2006, cruise lines had to replace plastic balcony dividers with aluminum dividers.) Thus, cruise ships have a limited number of vendors serving their market. When sourcing materials, Nguyen has to allow for longer lead times than on conventional construction projects to ensure that orders can be fulfilled on schedule. And vendors in turn must understand that marine construction demands hustle and the ability to fabricate material on time.

Dry-Dock Logistics

As a ship enters the dry dock, all materials and workers—as many as 3,000 for a single dry-dock stay—should be ready for action. The big challenge is to transport all the materials and tools on board and have them in place when specific crews are scheduled to work. Shipyards typically have one to three cranes to service a ship in dry dock. The cranes are both indispensable tools and potential logistical bottlenecks, so sequencing onboard delivery efficiently is hugely critical. “You have to keep the tradespeople busy,” Nguyen says. “You don’t want them idle,” especially considering the overhead expense.

This requires careful planning regarding what goes in each container the crane hoists aboard. “You put materials and tools that each tradesperson needs for each part of the project in a container,” Nguyen says.

Each contractor need not have all the materials for the entirety of their work, but each should have enough to get started, and then additional materials are delivered as the job progresses. “You don’t want to put all casework, carpet, and tools, for example, in a single container, in case the loading schedule gets delayed,” Nguyen says.

Holland America’s contractors remove old tile from a ship. Contractors examine newly added tile just a short while later.

Shipyards typically only have one to three cranes to service a ship while it’s in dry dock, so Nguyen must plan carefully so that materials are delivered aboard the ship in the appropriate order.

Contingency Plans Are Essential

“One thing you can predict in dry dock is that it is unpredictable,” Nguyen says. “Always plan for the worst.” Cranes can break down, for instance, which can be catastrophic to a project if a backup is not available. The company sometimes has to lease a floating crane on a barge when a shipyard crane fails.

Also, material deliveries can be delayed for numerous reasons. A project schedule must therefore be flexible so that activity can be resequenced on the fly, and project managers, tradespeople, and logistics crews must be ready to adjust quickly.

“Make sure you also inspect material on the shipyard before you do demo,” Nguyen says. For example, if you are replacing carpet, ensure that you have received the correct carpet and right amount of it before demo. It would be a major crisis if workers were to rip out carpeting, then find out later that the replacement material hasn’t arrived.

“Cruise ships are like hospitality projects on steroids.”

Linh Nguyen, one of My Nguyen’s interior managers, gets some fresh air on the dock.

Prefabrication Is Essential for Efficiency

To maximize efficiency at the job site, Nguyen leans heavily on prefabrication. Casework, bars, restaurant elements, and certain bathroom assemblies are often put together off-site to save time on onboard work. Whenever prefab is an option for a new element—such as recent new glass-feature walls for luxury suites—it’s usually the preferred choice. The size and shape of prefabricated elements are constrained by door and entryway openings, so prefab assemblies have to be designed accordingly.

Embracing Marine Market Opportunities

Nguyen notes that US design schools and contractors pay little attention to the marine market, and she’d like to see that change. “Design schools could invite in tradespeople experienced in the market to give guest lectures about marine design and construction,” she says. “US contractors could contact cruise lines to find out how to get some of their business.”

Nguyen adds that contractors should view it as a challenge. “Cruise ships are like hospitality projects on steroids,” she says. “There’s definitely a learning curve to consider.” But, once established in the marine market, design and construction firms can compete for a steady stream of work—and prove they have the ability to tackle any project in a restricted space.

The One-Stop Club

Fitler Club designer Amanda Potter on Philadelphia’s newest and all-encompassing clubhouse

by

Will Grant

The term “clubhouse” doesn’t typically trigger thoughts of a posh 75,000-squarefoot location with four floors, but if Fitler Club founder David Gutstadt’s grand vision plays out according to plan, Philadelphia will soon boast such a space for what Gutstadt calls the “modern urbanite.”

Fitler Club will be an all-in-one home away from home, with fine dining, hotel rooms, coworking offices, event spaces, and 25,000 square feet of fitness space, including a 75-foot lap pool, as but a handful of the highend amenities for its members.

“David was looking around and realizing that there are great hotels, good members clubs, and plenty of places to work and exercise, but very few of these places have it all,” says lead designer Amanda Potter. “When David realized that none of these clubs were everything, he decided that’s what he wanted Fitler Club to be.”

Potter’s work on the project has been about as “hands-on” as the expression literally implies. “Yesterday, I was walking through the dirt and looking through foundations with our structural engineers to find out exactly where the grade beams will sit to support our pool,” she says, describing just her previous week’s work.

Blueprints of the 1920s industrial building have often amounted to little more than a rough guess of the structure, but Potter says her diverse past experience in architecture and development has prepared her for the technical challenges.

Amanda Potter Lead Designer Fitler Club

Construction of the 75,000-squarefoot Fitler Club is taking place inside a former Hudson Motor Company manufacturing plant.

Courtesy

The Fitler Foundation

Fitler Club’s investors include former NBA All-Star David Robinson’s Admiral Capital Group, which mandates that 10 percent of the group’s earnings go back into the communities in which they thrive.

That’s just the beginning, though. Potter says the number of investors in Fitler Club that engage in philanthropic work is so robust that it just made sense for the club to form its own group, the Fitler Foundation, set on giving back to Philadelphia’s youth and underprivileged. For every member that Fitler Club accrues, $250 is set aside for charity. Additionally, an annual gala will donate all of its proceeds to a charity of the host’s choice, and Potter says contests will be held for members vying for their favorite charities.

“The people who we’re targeting as members are leaders in their community,” Potter says. “We’re looking for leaders and people who are interested in and passionate about giving back.”

In terms of design, Potter praises Gutstadt’s vision for infusing different spaces within the project with unique character befitting their function—while still maintaining an overall commitment to modern yet playful design. The spaces include a Founders Room, an intimate space where the club’s initial founders will be able to relax and store their favorite bottles of scotch.

Elsewhere, Potter and her team are building a bowling alley and arcade, called the Trophy Room, with camaraderie and fellowship in mind; a fine dining restaurant, which will be focused on healthy and elevated cuisine; a gastropub, called the Back Bar, where members can grab a burger and watch their favorite local sports team; and work spaces designed for getting the job done— but with style. The strength of the Fitler Club’s design will be in its variation, Potter says, and its reverence for its hometown.

“There’s an embrace of both Philadelphia’s history and its future,” Potter says. “The building we’re in is an old Hudson Motor Company manufacturing plant. Our design celebrates those bones and that past but weaves it together with sleek, modern elements. I’m really proud of how that mix of old and new will be reflected in the space.”

“There’s an embrace of both Philadelphia’s history and its future.”

At press time, Fitler Club planned to open its doors in January 2019, and Potter says its event space already has engagements scheduled. The hotel opening will follow, and Potter says that even now the club is eyeing further expansion. She adds that the advance success is a direct result of the team Gutstadt assembled for the project.

“David’s leadership has been incredible,” Potter says. “We’re on a tight timeline. It’s very complex. But every day we’re working with great people to get it done.”

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Redone from

Rick Lew

Lionel Sussman is leading the team behind the redesign of the Marriott and Sheraton hotel brands, gathering a diverse array of perspectives for each by David

Levine

Every Angle

Over the past six years, Marriott International, the global lodging company with more than 6,500 properties across 127 countries and territories, has been retooling its flagship Marriott brand.

And now, it is taking a similar path with another of its iconic brands: Sheraton. As the executive team has developed new strategic visions for the two brands, it has been up to Lionel Sussman and his team to turn those visions into reality. Sussman, vice president of global design strategies for Marriott International, believes that incorporating a rich variety of social and cultural perspectives into both of the company’s new design projects is helping lead to better results. As he puts it, “We’re taking the brand values and creating physical manifestations of those values to address our target guest needs.”

Sussman, trained as an architect in his native Argentina, has been with Marriott International since 2013. Before that, he’d spent 15 years in interior design, including overseeing another brand makeover, at Starbucks. He believes the best ideas come from diverse teams with members of different racial, ethnic, and gender backgrounds. His current group comprises about 50 designers, engineers, cost estimators, communications specialists, and project managers. “We need, more than ever, to have diverse teams, because our guests are more diverse than ever,” Sussman says. “The millennial consumer is significantly more diverse than previous generations.”

Lionel Sussman VP of Global Design Strategies

Marriott International Courtesy

A guest room at the Bangkok Marriott Hotel the Surawongse showcases the contemporary aesthetic that Marriott International has aimed for in the redesign of the signature Marriott brand.

The new reception pods in the arrival area of the Charlotte Marriott City Center allow for better interaction between staff and hotel guests.

Courtesy of Marriott (Top), Rick Lew (Bottom)

Because Marriott International is such a big company, Sussman says, its creative process is a bit unique. “We have many more stakeholders than a traditional design team might have,” he explains. “We follow a traditional design thinking process, but we consider three types of customers: the guest, which is the most critical one; the internal stakeholders, including the brand teams, operations teams, and development teams that need to leverage the work we do; and, third, our franchisees. We partner with them to build our hotels, so it is important that they feel that the solutions we are designing make sense for them from a brand perspective, an experience perspective, and a financial perspective.”

The Marriott hotel brand, now six years into its transformation, with about 50 percent of the hotels completed, needed significant change to become relevant to modern millennial consumers. “It was perceived as a place where your grandparents stayed,” Sussman says. “We

Sheraton guest rooms, which are more focused on work, include an adjustable-height, motorized table.

wanted to take the brand to a very different place.” The design team came up with a strategy called Marriott Modern, focusing on contemporary, timeless design, a premium aesthetic, and an emphasis on local flavor.

“The space feels premium and offers a place for guests to unwind and take break from their routine,” Sussman says, adding that guest room bathtubs were converted to beautiful, sleek showers because “we know guests expect a great shower experience, not old bathtubs that no one uses.” Sussman and his team made the most of the shower experience by incorporating high-end products solutions that guests will remember, including Delta H2Okinetic Technology, which creates the feeling of more water without using more water. And, to emphasize location, his team is bringing in local artwork and design components at each location to create a sense of place and connect guests with each hotel’s local community.

Courtesy of Marriott

For the Sheraton brand, which is in the beginning stages of its redesign, Sussman and his team have taken a different strategic approach: Sheraton is Marriott International’s most global brand, so its redesign must be global in scope as well. “We went to all the continents and engaged with local teams to understand where they thought the brand should go,” Sussman says.

The idea that resonated most was that each Sheraton should be the heart of its community. “In the old days, Sheraton was where people congregated and had weddings and meetings, before other brands existed,” Sussman says. “We wanted to bring that back in a modern and fresh way.” The new tag line for the brand is “The World’s Gathering Place,” and Sussman calls his team’s design approach “The Art of Gathering.”

It follows three design principals: The first is fluidity. “The spaces blend intuitively to guest objectives and are active spaces,” Sussman says.

The second is “making the foreign familiar.” “This brand has heritage and history,” Sussman says. “It is warm and comfortable, yet refined.”

The third is about making the design holistic, a system of parts that work together. “One big inspiration for Sheraton is the public square, as a foundation for communities across the globe,” Sussman says. “It’s about how people interact in public spaces, how they work, gather, and play.”

The new Sheraton’s public space, therefore, has large community tables, with all the modern elements one needs to work more efficiently, including RFID-locked drawers to safely store laptops and privacy booths to take phone calls. Guest rooms, likewise, are focused more on work. “They still will be well designed, but instead of lots of bells and whistles, they will have one signature element: an adjustable-height, motorized table to work in the room in a personalized way,” Sussman says. “The way we developed this feature will be very unique in the industry.”

Sussman and his team have learned valuable lessons from the Marriott transformation that they are now applying to Sheraton as that new strategic vision moves forward. “We feel very confident we will successfully transform this brand as well,” he says.

The new public space at the center of Lionel Sussman and his team’s redesign of the Sheraton brand includes community tables and other elements that encourage interaction and engagement.

Courtesy of Marriott

Section 02: Framework

Setting the stage and implementing the building blocks for what will soon be state-of-the-art facilities and designs from difference makers in the building industry

Sustainably Savvy

in Silicon Valley

Malika Junaid and her firm, M Designs Architects, take an innovative approach to green design in Northern California

by Russ Klettke

Northern California’s Silicon Valley is one of the most affluent regions of the country, with expensive homes to match. The area is populated by younger tech professionals and their families, who can afford seven-figure properties in a high-demand market—and often those prices are for decades-old homes, before renovations.

Working on both the renovations and plenty of new builds is Malika Junaid, who cofounded the Los Altos firm M Designs Architects, in 2002, with Alpheus Jessup. The two principals have a rich background in commercial and even ecclesiastical projects, but the majority of their recent work has been in residential design. The homes and renovations of Midcentury Modern (MCM) relics they’ve designed in towns such as Los Altos Hills, Sunnyvale, Menlo Park, and Palo Alto are luxe—but they also include unexpected sustainable features that often don’t add prohibitively to their already-substantial costs.

For instance, many of the homes that Junaid has worked on have been built and sited with natural light exposure in mind, with automated shades and louvers. Several also have rainwater harvesting and gray-water

Malika Junaid applies simple green solutions to her designs, including ample windowing to admit daylighting.

circulation, along with location-based smart irrigation systems that self-regulate based on the weather forecast. And most of the homes that Junaid has worked on in the past 10 years are free of mechanical air-conditioning; whole-house fans and room fans do the job instead. “In the Northern California climate, you can avoid air-conditioning,” says Junaid, who grew up in Karachi, Pakistan, before coming to the US to study.

“You can make a second floor AC-ready, if that’s what they want eventually, but people shouldn’t be slaves to extra costs. Sustainability is also a financial issue.”

The conversations Junaid has with clients around all aspects of a design—particularly with transplants from other parts of the world, where the climate may not be so kind—requires her to pull out some extra tools from her tool kit. “You have to be a therapist,” she says. “Particularly on the residential side, I can relate to a lot as a female architect. I can think a lot about what’s going on in their lives.”

Her well-compensated tech sector clients tend to be under 40, many with children or who plan to have children soon. “I ask, ‘how will you grow in this house,’” she says. “We also have to discuss resale value and point out future issues with a home.”

Scott DuBose

Malika Junaid Cofounder and Principal M Designs Architects

Jop Baylon

Each of M Designs’ renovations and new builds— including commercial and multifamily structures it has designed—must conform to California’s stringent building codes. Junaid says it was actually harder to be green ten years ago, though, before the codes standardized energy, water, resiliency, and other environmental features.

Additional challenges today stem from the area’s construction labor shortage, which has been made even worse by the wildfires ravaging Northern California because potential workers are drawn to firefighting instead. The resultant rising construction fees can cause buildings to cost as much as $500 per square foot in the end.

Still, that doesn’t deter sales of homes in the region. And, it further encourages cost-saving sustainable solutions in both residential and commercial structures, including the recycling of gray water, the capture of rainwater, green roofs, the use of solar energy, and battery packs to store excess energy from solar paneling.

“Another area that adds a great financial and sustainability value is smart-home automation,” Junaid says. “Having the ability to turn on lights, set optimal scenes, and lower shades based on time of day can contribute a great deal toward saving costs. Additionally, the ability to control all devices with a smart phone or smart watch adds a tremendous amount of convenience to a client’s lifestyle.”

The firm even has experience renovating and modernizing Eichler Homes, of which there are approximately 11,000 on the West Coast, including a generous number in the Bay Area. The Eichler MCM developments were a way to bring higher-end design to the masses, with open floor plans, exposed posts and beams, flat or low-sloped roofs, and floor-toceiling windows facing away from the street. Their current owners expect Junaid to balance the homes’ historic design with the needs and expectations of 21st-century living.

“Eichlers can be remodeled elegantly, but a great deal of attention must be paid to the details to maintain the midcentury design philosophy the Eichlers are appreciated for,” Junaid says. “The radiant-floor systems still work in many, and they are well built, with huge windows, high ceilings, and open floor plans that are great for families.” She has added second stories to some, but she says the homes do their best when staying true to their original concept.

She works with a number of outside vendor partners to incorporate such innovations. “Malika understands how important it is to blend connected home technologies into the overall design of a home,” says Joe Lautner, vice president of strategic solutions at Nortek Security and Control. “The key is to include the technology integrator early on in the process, to ensure all the project’s objectives and client interests are met.”

But, that’s not to say every eco-friendly bell and whistle belongs in every structure. During a recent conversation with a client couple—a rare pair of empty nesters—Junaid dissuaded them from installing gray-water recycling for landscape use. “They are travelers,” she says. “Their use of water would be insufficient for the landscaping.” Instead, she suggested an efficient, smart weather-forecasting irrigation system and lights and appliances that can be monitored and controlled remotely.

Even in a region that has few barriers to technological and environmental innovation, it’s still humanto-human conversations that sometimes surface the smartest ideas.

Junaid and her firm are comfortable with a number of styles. Pictured are the Spanish columns they worked into a Mediterranean-style home in Los Altos, CA.

Scott

DuBose

Graham Washatka

A Master Plan for Patient Care

ThedaCare’s Glenn Buntin is applying two decades of experience in architecture and construction to the Wisconsin healthcare industry and revitalizing the state’s communities in the process

by Olivia N. Castañeda

When a patient turns to a ThedaCare health facility for medical treatment, having peace of mind is crucial. A favorable lasting impression must occur from the moment the patient enters the facility to when their care is complete “All of those stages are opportunities to have a positive impact and provide peace of mind to patients and their families,” says Glenn Buntin, director of design and construction. “Oftentimes, a patient’s first impression of ThedaCare comes when entering and navigating our facilities. I take that very seriously.” Buntin joins new president and CEO Imran Andrabi, who arrived last June, to oversee the century-old community healthcare system that serves 235,000 patients in northeast Wisconsin.

The patient experience unites more than 7,000 healthcare professionals in the ThedaCare network, which comprises seven hospitals and 35 clinics across 14 counties. The largest employer in the state houses two large hospitals in the cities of Appleton and Neenah, with five other rural hospitals located in Berlin, New London,

ThedaCare’s Regional Cancer Center, in Appleton, WI, opened in 2016, won the company a number of awards.

Shawano, and Wild Rose. As a nonprofit healthcare organization and a Mayo Clinic Care Network Member, ThedaCare has a level II trauma center, a comprehensive cancer treatment program, and stroke and cardiac programs to support patients in need.

ThedaCare has a long, rich history of providing healthcare to the communities it serves. The company’s roots trace back to 1909, when Theda Clark Memorial Hospital, now ThedaCare Regional Medical Center–Neenah, was constructed. The hospital opened with 20 beds. Today, with some of the original structure still in place, it has grown to 160 beds. “We have been a strong presence in northeast Wisconsin for a long time, and the people who live and work in the communities truly appreciate our presence,” Buntin says.

Yet ThedaCare is currently undergoing a systemwide facility master-planning initiative to strategize facility requirements to best serve its communities. This comprehensive, system-wide approach under its new executive leadership is examining existing facilities and potential future facilities to determine how best to meet the needs of patients and the ever-chang-

Graham Washatka

ing healthcare environment. “Our mission is to improve the health of the communities we serve,” Buntin says. “Our facilities, both existing and future, are a critical part of achieving that mission.”

Each community and each facility is considered from a broader perspective of time. The initial objective identifies the needs of the community, and additional objectives establish whether the existing facilities can meet the demands or whether renovations to existing facilities or new facilities are needed. “As we work through our facility master-planning process, one of our goals is to preserve our ties to the communities,” Buntin says. “We have placed an emphasis on maintaining our existing hospitals.”

The healthcare environment is evolving, driven by changing consumer demands, payer reforms, and scientific and technological advances. To meet the demands of the changing environment, the facilities in which healthcare is provided must also evolve. “We are studying the demands of the changing healthcare environment on our system-wide facility footprint,” Buntin says. “This includes evaluating existing facil-

“Existing or new, we need to make sure our facilities allow us to continue providing excellent, accessible healthcare.”

Buntin Director of Design & Construction

Glenn

ThedaCare

ThedaCare’s Lauded Projects

The following construction projects by ThedaCare won awards under the leadership of Glenn Buntin, director of design and construction:

Shawano Hospital

Location: Shawano, WI

Description: 22-bed critical access hospital, attached to existing clinic; 40 percent of clinic was renovated as part of the project; LEED-certified facility

Size: 127,555 sq. ft.

Open: August 2015

Awards: Recognized as one of the Top Projects of 2015 by The Daily Reporter

Regional Cancer Center

Location: Appleton, WI

Description: Radiation oncology treatment center with inpatient space for hospital transfers and anesthesia procedures; it includes areas for infusion, with pharmacy mixing, therapy, council, and research support

Size: 84,000 sq. ft.

Open: February 2016

Awards: Recognized as one of the Top Projects of 2016 by The Daily Reporter; Merit Award for Excellence in Architectural Design from the Wisconsin Chapter of the American Institute of Architects; and first place in healthcare over 15,000 sq. ft. in the International Interior Design Association–Wisconsin Chapter’s 2017 Design Competition.

Juliette Manor Skilled Nursing Facility

Location: Berlin, WI

Description: 37-bed skilled nursing facility providing care for short-term rehab residents, stable long-term care residents, and memory care.

Size: 43,432 sq. ft.

Open: June 2016

Awards: Honor Award for overall design excellence from the Wisconsin Chapter of the American Institute of Architects.

Neenah Clinic

Location: Neenah, WI

Description: A more-than-60 room clinic offering family practice, internal medicine, occupational health, outpatient behavioral health, and oncology services; it also includes X-ray, mammogram, bone density scans, oncology services, and same-day lab services

Size: 74,000 sq. ft.

Open: February 2017

Awards: 2016 Concrete Design Award from Wisconsin Ready Mixed Concrete Association.

ities and the potential need for new facilities. Existing or new, we need to make sure our facilities allow us to continue providing excellent, accessible healthcare that meets the demands of our patients and the changing healthcare environment. I love the challenges and the opportunities for creativity that come with my job.”

Buntin has been in the design and construction profession for more than 20 years now, and he joined the healthcare industry three years ago, when he arrived at ThedaCare. At that point in his career, he wanted to contribute his skills for the greater good. He is deeply passionate about his work and enjoys the process of facility development, from strategic planning and design through construction and operational turnover.

“When you cut the ribbon on a new or remodeled facility, you get to see the fruits of your labor,” Buntin says. “Designing and building highly functional facilities that help enable our staff, doctors, and nurses to provide excellent care and deliver peace of mind for all we serve is really rewarding.”

Congratulations to Glenn Buntin on this well-deserved recognition. McMAHON ’s strong partnership with ThedaCare over 18 years has aimed to improve the experience of patients and healthcare professionals. We appreciate the opportunity to work closely with Glenn, who values innovative thinking and integrated teamwork, creating opportunities for continued improvement.

Graham Washatka

U-Haul’s Adaptive

Self-Storage Overhauls

U-Haul’s creative reuse projects have turned old spaces into new self-storage sites and, in the process, revitalized the underserved communities surrounding them

by Roland Archer

U-Haul might be best known as one of the go-to options when you need a truck or trailer to help you move, but the company also has an array of locations that can hold your belongings if the wait on your new location is a little longer than expected.

The company’s self-storage business has become so popular throughout the country, in fact, that it has pushed the company’s projects team, including Andrew Lasich, project director and structural engineer, to come up with some creative solutions for new storage sites.

In accordance with the company’s corporate sustainability initiatives, U-Haul’s projects team has been taking over and retrofitting existing spaces for self-storage in various cities this year. The effort is not only increasing the company’s storage footprint but also supporting its pursuit of infill developments to help local communities lower their carbon footprints. The adaptive reuse of existing structures reduces the amount of energy and material required to complete each project and helps cities reduce their unwanted inventory of unused buildings.

Three of U-Haul’s most recent reuse projects are highlighted here.

1) Superior, Wisconsin

U-Haul Moving & Storage of Superior, built into a former Kmart, celebrated its grand opening on September 21, 2018, after opening in a limited capacity six months earlier. Following the limited opening, crews began work on cleanup and renovations to the building, resulting in a 88,914-square-foot facility with more than 700 self-storage units. The site now offers remote 24-7 access, high-tech security, two covered load-unload areas, and a U-Haul Re-Use center, for sharing boxes and gently used household items.

“This building was becoming an eyesore,” said James Hall, U-Haul’s general manager, in a statement. “It sat vacant for several years in the middle of this

community. We are excited to breathe life back into it.”

Kellin Sybrant, U-Haul Company of Northern Minnesota’s president, said in a statement that the infill development is not only helpful to the community from an environmental standpoint but also a practical one. “The Twin Ports have been vastly underserved,” he said. “Customers were having to drive miles up the hill to get our services and self-storage. Now we’re bringing convenience to this community.”

2) Athens, Georgia

In May of 2018, U-Haul acquired a particularly valuable piece of existing real estate: a 134,661-square-foot building just two miles from the University of Georgia. As of press time, the company had already set up a temporary showroom in it and was providing trucks and trailers, towing equipment, moving supplies, and portable moving and storage containers for students and local residents.

Adaptive reuse of the existing property will also yield indoor self-storage units, including climate-controlled rooms with high-tech security features. By repurposing the building, U-Haul will prevent the use and transportation of 1,230 tons of metal and 8,467 tons of new concrete. The project will also keep 9,865 tons of building and demolition debris out of landfills and stop 8,350,206 pounds of greenhouse gas emissions from entering the atmosphere.

“We’re still in the planning phases with this project and are working closely with city officials and our neighbors,” said Rod Tape, U-Haul Company of Georgia Northeast’s president, in a statement. “We’re working with the University of Georgia to deploy smart technologies. Advancements in mobility are important to us. Athens is a booming college town, and we are excited to bring our program here.”

3) Waukee, Iowa

When it came to finding a site for self-storage facility in central Iowa, Coke was it.

After recently acquiring a 69,600-square-foot warehouse that last housed a Coca-Cola Bottling Company distribution plant, U-Haul began one of its latest repurposing projects, which will ultimately yield nearly 900 indoor self-storage units with hightech security features.

“Rather than build from the ground up, we are pleased to be repurposing an existing facility to benefit the city,” said Randy Dickson, U-Haul Company of Iowa’s president, in a statement. “This project meets our sustainability initiatives and will help diminish our carbon footprint. We are looking forward to being part of this community for years to come.”

Dickson will maintain a staff of 10 team members when the facility is fully operational. The company says it will also look to hire locally to promote job growth within the Waukee community.

AESUS Design Group is an innovative, client-oriented company that focuses on delivering the highest quality of service. We form partnerships with companies who are as equally passionate in delivering only the highest quality of service. It is important that we develop long term partnerships in our rapidly expanding technological world.

More Growth, More Green

Travis Wright champions healthy energy conservation while expanding QTS Realty Trust’s footprint and

extending its longevity in an increasingly socially conscious market

by Randall Colburn

Paper used to pour from every crack of the world’s offices and storage centers. Now, with information coursing through invisible signals in the air, the world has decidedly less clutter. Yet all of that data still needs to reside somewhere, and a great deal of it has found a home with QTS Realty Trust. The company emerged 15 years ago with a single facility in Overland Park, Kansas, and today QTS data centers span more than 6 million square feet in North America and serve more than 1,100 of the top technology and hyperscale companies.

As the company grew, so too did its need for sustainable practices. That’s why Travis Wright, a self-described “operations guy,” created his position as vice president of energy and sustainability to lead the company’s efforts in energy conservation. In fact, D CEO magazine has repeatedly named Wright as one of the most influential leaders in North Texas, where he previously served as the site director for one of the largest and fastest-growing QTS sites. His promotion in early 2018 builds on the social changes he has championed throughout his tenure.

Travis Wright VP of Energy & Sustainability QTS Realty Trust

“We’re really wrapping our arms around energy and sustainability,” says Wright, adding that his enthusiasm for such practices first blossomed in college while studying thermodynamics. “It was a completely new concept for me at the time, and it clicked. My brain just started thinking that way, and it’s really become a passion for me in my career.”

This emphasis on conservation and sustainability has proven to be an important aspect of QTS’s growth, drawing nearly as much attention as the company’s reputation for power and stability. As QTS continues to decrease its carbon footprint, the company has cultivated a network of like-minded organizations that are also aiming to reinvent the industry. “It’s really important to stay in front of the things that are important to society,” Wright says. “We know that as the industry grows, there’s a younger generation coming into the world that’s very passionate about sustainability and social governance.”

In his current role, Wright’s initial goal was to experiment in QTS’s deregulated markets, seeking out the best methods for purchasing renewable power and

finding partners with mutual interests. By building and executing clear strategies in these markets, he hopes that QTS can then use the positive results to influence regulated markets. Plus, through these partnerships, QTS might influence local policy.

“Sometimes there’s a reluctance for corporations to go to the public utilities and request change,” Wright says. “We’ve found that’s usually not the case. They’re actually looking for input from big corporations. In fact, when there is a change to be made, we’ve heard over and over again from the regulated utilities that if they have a corporation standing by their side, saying this is a good idea, they will almost always get approved.”

Location is, after all, a key component in the QTS strategy, but it can also present some of the biggest challenges Wright faces in his role. “You have to choose your markets carefully,” he says. Pros and cons of setting up data centers in big cities versus rural areas exist. For example, while the former might provide easier access and a central location, the latter often boasts more affordable renewable energy options or ideal weather conditions.

“It’s really important for our business that we stay in front of the things that are important to society.”

QTS Realty Trust’s Atlanta Metro data center is among the largest in the world, with 970,000 square feet of space.

In total, QTS today manages more than six million square feet of datacenter space in North America.

“It’s not strange to see a lot of hyperscale data centers pop up in eastern Oregon or Washington state,” he says. “There’s not a lot going on from a corporate standpoint, but there is access to cheap power or hydropower.” The geography also determines whether Wright will pursue centers powered by water or not, though he’s currently experimenting with hybrid systems that incorporate both.

In addition to finding the right locations for data centers, Wright is securing QTS’s status as an innovation hub by helping the company develop a customizable customer interface that allows individuals to choose their level of sustainability. “There’s a base level of sustainability that QTS will have, but we’re also going to offer customers the choice to buy renewable power or other methods that help reduce their carbon footprint,” he says. “If it’s important to them, they can take it. If not, they won’t.” In sum, what works for one business might not work for another, and that flexibility is key to QTS’s success now and in the future.

The company’s commitment to sustainability is not just based in energy but also in its actual structures.

“None of our competitors are doing this,” Wright says. “We will go in and buy huge, abandoned, infrastructure-rich sites, and we’ll turn them into beautiful, shining data centers.” He says this approach has been successful with projects in Chicago; Irving, Texas; and Richmond, Virginia.

QTS has scooped up more than 26 million pounds of plastics, stainless steel, copper, and concrete in these spots and recycled them into functional additions to the facilities. “Not only are we promoting efficient energy, but we’re also taking an eyesore and recycling it into a beautiful facility that helps the local community in so many ways,” he says. “It’s an amazing story of how you can reuse an asset that’s just been sitting there.”

Data centers, like QTS Realty Trust, are energy-intensive operations consuming up to 2 percent of the world’s electricity. To minimize a data center’s carbon footprint, ENGIE Resources can supply renewable-energy credits tied to a specific generation asset such as a wind farm, directly supporting development of nearby green energy resources.

Right-Sizing Physical Retail

Michael J. Stanley of clothing retailer Francesca’s discusses how e-commerce and brick-and-mortar stores can comfortably coexist in today’s business climate

by Randall Colburn

Michael J. Stanley Senior Director of Real Estate Francesca’s

It’s only natural, in a world becoming more and more reliant on technology, for doomsayers to forecast the death of brick-and-mortar retail.

But while e-commerce is no doubt rising in popularity, it’s reductive to discount the tactile experience of seeing a garment in person, of trying it on, and of trading thoughts with a seasoned sales executive. Michael J. Stanley, the senior director of real estate at Houston-based female fashion retailer Francesca’s, knows this, but he also asserts that an “omni-channel” approach is integral to surviving in the current technological climate.

“E-commerce is here to stay and will continue to grow, due to the simple fact that it satisfies the need for instant gratification when customers push the ‘Buy Now’ button on the screen,” he says. “But, it will never replace the ability to touch and feel something. The retailer of the future is going to have to have a presence both online and in brick and mortar—with both working together seamlessly.”

Still, how those in retail construct and design their brick-and-mortar outlets needs to be reconsidered, and

Francesca’s redesigned locations include a light, bright paint scheme and fixtures that Michael J. Stanley and his team have chosen.

Stanley says the industry is “witnessing a much-needed right-sizing,” given the “oversaturation” of retail real estate. Basically, as malls transform into convention centers and call centers and retail space recedes, stores are becoming smaller and more efficient. There may be fewer of them, but they are now more experiential.

In accordance with this, in addition to building upwards of 60 new locations per year, Stanley and Francesca’s are making efforts to revamp their existing locations—with the help of their preferred national general contractor: Tony Torano, with Torcom, based out of Phoenix. He says he and his team fully remodel upward of 90 boutiques a year, introducing new colors, fixtures, and storefronts. The storefronts are an especially vital part of the work, designed with different materials so that no two are exactly alike. This helps each store cultivate the aesthetic and feel of a locally owned boutique, which the chain as a whole emulates via its unique sense of character and attention to customer service.

Color is another important aspect of Francesca’s redesigns. Older boutiques had darker tones and fixtures, which, Stanley says, “in retrospect, created a

“The retailer of the future is going to have to have a presence both online and in brick and mortar—with both working together seamlessly.”

cave-like environment that wasn’t very inviting.” Redesigned stores have lighter, brighter paint schemes and fixtures that “put the focus on the merchandise while illuminating the entire boutique,” Stanley says.

He and his team routinely study the latest trends, allowing Francesca’s flooring, visual displays, accents, and fixtures to evolve with time and shifts in culture. The team is also considering shifts in technology, and to that end, a major component of the latest Francesca’s remodels is an upgrade to each store’s POS system, to promote speed at checkout and gather valuable data from customers.

Additionally, in the same manner that physical media has been kept afloat by special- and limited-edition releases, Francesca’s offers a slate of broad and limited-time offerings to entice shoppers into its boutiques. The buyers will order only a very limited quantity of particular garments, for example, which sharpens shoppers’ sense of urgency. “Unlike our peers that might have 10, 15, or 20 of the same item, we’ll only do around five,” Stanley explains. “And once they’re gone, they’re gone.”

Fresh product is coming into the boutiques every day, he adds, and a customer’s desire to own a rare or limited-run garment keeps them coming back to the physical boutiques. However, this mode of fast fashion, which is also gaining traction among Francesca’s contemporaries, comes with its own risks. “It’s a double-edged sword,” Stanley says. “You can beat the market by being right on in terms of trends and appeal. But, if you miss the mark, you’re left with product no one wants..”

As Francesca’s continues to right-size, it also continues to evolve. For instance, Stanley cites a potential new line of locations, dubbed “LAB boutiques,” that will have a much larger footprint than Francesca’s 1,350-square-foot average. Stanley forecasts that these new boutiques could span 3,000–

5,000 square feet, allowing them to highlight different facets of the business, including home goods, cosmetics, and others.

Stanley hopes to open the inaugural LAB boutique in 2019, but he’s quick to note that its design could always change. That’s the nature of business these days, after all; as cultures change, so do industries. The right-sizing continues.

means we are uniquely positioned to partner with national retailers to meet their new builds as well as remodel/refresh goals while providing a solutions-based approach for on time delivery, always employing the latest practices and technology.

North Central Minority Supplier Development Council

Francesca’s

Value-Aligned Design

Whole Foods Market’s senior design director, Gabrielle Rosi, has been with the company for more than two decades, largely because its green, community-conscious ethos mirrors her own

by Will Grant

It’s tough to be a leader. As senior design director for Whole Foods Market, Gabrielle Rosi is acutely aware that the company is being watched. “I was at a conference last year, and one of the speakers was from another grocery chain and specifically said they were studying Whole Foods Market, learning what they could do to copy us,” Rosi says, laughing. “What do they say? ‘Imitation is the highest form of flattery?’”

The imitation also makes good business sense, though, considering that Whole Foods Market has blossomed over the decades from a burgeoning organic supermarket chain into one of the most influential brands in the world in terms of customer experience and store design. Rosi has watched this transformation over the course of 25 years with the company, and she’s also had an impact on it herself, pushing an environmentally conscious approach to design while working with the operations team and architects to bring many of Whole Foods Market’s innovative and eco-friendly stores to life.

Rosi Senior Design Director

Gabrielle

Whole Foods Market

“One thing that’s kept me going at Whole Foods Market is definitely the culture, lead by our core values,” Rosi says. “When I started in customer service, I felt really aligned and at home with my fellow team members. Everyone believes in doing good for people’s health and the planet and all these really altruistic values that Whole Foods Market has that align with my personal values.”

Rosi says a great deal of Whole Foods Market’s success—including her own—comes from the cues it takes from the communities in which it plans on operating. She and her team therefore make sure to get boots on the ground to understand each community. “It’s not just geographic metrics,” Rosi says. “We look at demographics, local businesses, and even our team member base. But, we also want to be able to bring trends we see along the culinary lines into a new community.” In short, it’s an important balance between representing the local culture and introducing new and value-adding components to the community.

“One thing that’s kept me going at Whole Foods Market is definitely the culture. . . . Everyone believes in doing good for people’s health and the planet.”

Gabrielle Rosi’s current Northern California portfolio for Whole Foods Market consists of 45 stores, including this one in Santa Clara.

Rosi and her team renovate and customize portions of stores—such as the dairy cases—but they also do wholestore remodels.

Whole Foods Market’s Sebastopol, CA, location features a fitness area, referred to as Whole Body.

In Denver, for example, the company’s Rocky Mountain team introduced a local macaroni and cheese bar, and it has been so successful that the team is considering deploying it in other new stores in college towns or in areas with more families. More recently, in Northern California wine country, Rosi has explored designing stores that draw on local architecture as well as the area’s oenophilia. This sort of customization can be an extraordinary amount of extra work. “When I say it’s a one-off or that we’re customizing this one particular area, people often look at us like we’re a bit crazy, especially when you’re talking about 40,000-50,000 square feet,” Rosi says, adding that a great deal of preplanning has to take place so as not to get lost in the weeds. Her streamlining of her team’s workflow has helped it perfect designs that—while customizable—are still able to fit in multiple stores.

“Ideas from Everywhere”

“Being a value-based company, we use our leadership principles every day, whether we’re discussing ideas for new projects or deciding on the best approach to solving a problem,” says Gabrielle Rosi, Whole Foods Market’s senior design director. “We take ideas from everywhere. Sometimes a team member that is working in the deli or in the seafood department will come up with an innovative idea, which can be the incubator for a much greater idea that could have traction and really distinguish us in terms of concept.”

Along with this, Whole Foods Market believes in making as many ecologically friendly business decisions as possible, and Rosi believes the company’s mission goes much further than that of big-box retailers, whose net-zero stores, only done a few times, largely function as PR stunts. “One of our core values is sustainability,” she says, “and we’re on the forefront of making changes in the grocery industry as a whole.”

Among the industry-leading green practices the company has embraced are gray-water reclamation, solar paneling, recycling, composting, use of 100 percent LED lighting, and LEED certification. The company is also working ahead of any national legislation to introduce natural refrigerants in its stores, and it’s working on the first WELL-certified grocery store in the country.

Rosi has opened more than 60 stores across the country for Whole Foods Market and overseen countless remodels, and her current Northern California portfolio is 45 stores, with three more in development. The San Jose store she worked on includes California’s first in-store microbrewery, and Rosi knew from the start that it would be an amazing contribution, especially given the store’s proximity to the SAP Center, where the San Jose Sharks play and top concerts are held. “The store has also won a few AIA design awards, and getting that sort of recognition from our peers and in the architectural community is obviously really great,” Rosi says. After 25 years, one might think Rosi would be worried about running out of ideas, but it seems quite the opposite is true. “I really don’t know what it’s like not to work this way,” Rosi says, laughing. “I don’t know what it’s like to churn out the same every day, and I hope I never do at Whole Foods Market.”

Photo Credit: Whole Foods Market®

A Landmark Building Gets a New Life

Steven Bonora and SLCE Architects are converting One Wall Street from commercial to residential use, and he says teamwork has been critical to the effort

by Rebecca Roberts

Steven Bonora’s decision to become an architect 30 years ago was similar to his approach to design today: it was a practical choice born from the consideration of multiple factors. Bonora describes his entrance into the architectural field not as a childhood dream realized but as a combination of his love of drawing and his experience in construction, and it has led to more than two decades of rewarding, demanding, and exciting work.

Currently, Bonora is serving as the project lead for SLCE Architects’ conversion of One Wall Street, and his outlook on teamwork and leadership is evident in the project’s success.

One Wall Street consists of two towers. The North Tower was designed by Ralph Walker and constructed in 1931. The South Tower was added to the property in 1963. All together, the structure has more than 1.1 million square feet of space. Originally built as an office tower, Macklowe Properties purchased it in 2014 and is redeveloping the structure as a luxury residential property with retail spaces on the lower levels.

What makes One Wall Street especially unique is its role within the fabric of the city. “The name says it all,” Bonora says. “One Wall Street is the heart of downtown New York, directly across from the New York Stock Exchange and Trinity Church. It withstood the test of time as an iconic commercial building, and now its legacy will continue as a residential benchmark for generations to come.”

Since the North Tower’s exterior has landmark status, SLCE is keeping work on its facade to a minimum. The firm is incorporating minor changes that will maintain its historical essence. Improvements will include repairing broken windows and updating waterproofing. The South Tower is not landmarked, so SLCE plans to add an undulating glass base, a subtle change that will make the building’s storefronts more inviting to potential patrons walking by.

Along with maintaining historical relevance, maximizing the building’s efficiency and sellable square footage is a top consideration for Bonora. SLCE increased the ceiling height of the second-floor retail

Because of the building’s landmark status, SLCE will preserve much of One Wall Street’s exterior.

spaces by removing portions of the existing thirdfloor slab. Along with other similar adjustments made to the lower levels, this reconfiguration allowed for better space for retail use and also allowed for floorarea reallocation. SLCE is also adding five more stories of condominiums and amenity space atop the South Tower. To maintain a seamless look on its façade, the new addition will be clad with precast panels that will replicate the original structure’s limestone exterior.

Bonora is also making sure each story is laid out as efficiently as possible. Most modern residential high-rises are built with a reinforced concrete frame designed to accommodate room layouts. However, One Wall Street’s main structure consists of a squaregrid steel frame that was typical of office construction in its era. Each new condo must therefore work with the preexisting column grid, and the construction team must navigate mechanical, electrical, and plumbing systems around the existing beams. Designing layouts to work with the existing framing is a common chal

“The name says it all. One Wall Street is the heart of downtown New York.”

Although surveys of all 51 above-grade levels, the basement, and four subcellar levels were provided, conditions that the surveys did not catch have not been infrequent. To work through these issues as they’ve arisen, Bonora says, he has stressed the importance of teamwork between SLCE, the client (Macklowe Properties), engineers, and contractors.

Bonora believes that a mutual understanding and commitment to the project is key. “A good leader in any field is someone who doesn’t just lead by example but mentors and communicates properly,” he says. “It’s all about respect. I try to put myself in my team member’s position and let them know why it is necessary to follow certain procedures.” Daily communication is the norm for his interdisciplinary team, and its 15-20 people sit down together, once a week, for daylong meetings and discuss everything from kitchen and bathroom details to the façade. They also make time to walk the site together in order to have a visceral understanding of One Wall Street’s progress.

While intra-team communication is paramount to a successful project, Bonora understands that the success of the final product depends not solely on one or two individuals but rather on how the team as a whole communicates. Through attention to detail, a building such as One Wall Street can transition through multiple uses over the decades and be the embodiment of quality and pride that each individual who works on it brings to the table.

Steven Bonora Senior Associate SLCE Architects

Tucking In a New Tower

Construction of the David H. Koch Center for Cancer

Care is pushing Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center to think outside the box to fit the building to a dense area of Manhattan by

Roland Archer

The new David H. Koch Center for Cancer Care in New York isn’t just being built to adorn the Manhattan skyline—it will also pave the way for new innovations in cancer research that could change the lives of countless patients in the future.

The center is part of a complex development that Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK)—a New York-based cancer-treatment organization with locations throughout New York and New Jersey— is completing in partnership with the City University of New York’s (CUNY) Hunter College. The 66,111-square-foot lot will accommodate nearly 1.2 million gross square feet—750,000 for MSK and 403,000 for CUNY—and it’s slated for completion in 2019. The project was made possible by a $150 million commitment from David H. Koch, a longtime MSK member, and the donation represents the largest single gift in the hospital’s history.

“The creation of this outstanding facility will be a real game changer for MSK,” said MSK president and chief executive officer Craig B. Thompson, in a 2015 statement. “We will be able to offer cutting-edge therapies and an expanded roster of innovative clinical trials to more patients than ever. The knowledge gained from the work conducted inside the David H. Koch Center for Cancer Care will benefit cancer patients around the world.”

Before that life-changing work can be done inside the walls, however, construction teams need to figure out the complex puzzle of fitting the 23-story ambulatory care center in a densely packed array of hospital and medical facilities on Manhattan’s Upper East Side—one of the most crowded pieces of real estate in the United States. Instead of expanding outward, the design by Perkins Eastman and Ennead Architects will rise, a tower made up of cantilevered boxes separated by terraces that will allow light to flood through the entire structure. Even better, the building’s location, on the banks of the East River, will ensure that daylight will never be blocked by new structures that might surround the center in the future.

A project this large, with multiple interests, demands special attention to make sure that all neighbors and stakeholders are up to speed on the construction process, so MSK and CUNY organized a Construction Working Group to keep lines of communication open among all stakeholders in the vicinity of the East 74th Street site. Members of the working group include the project team; representatives of neighboring buildings in the area between East 72nd and East 76th Streets; and relevant city agencies, community board officials, and elected officials. The group’s goal is to provide solutions in a timely manner to construction concerns affecting the community, largely through monthly meetings that allow participants an opportunity to review questions or complaints that have arisen since the previous meeting and discuss actions that might need to taken in response.

MSK, which cares for more cancer patients than any other hospital in the Northeast, currently delivers outpatient treatment to an average of 4,700 patients each day, across multiple locations, including seven outpatient facilities outside Manhattan. In the next 10 years, that figure is estimated to increase by 60 percent. Looking ahead, the David H. Koch Center for Cancer Care will enable MSK to respond to the growing need through greater efficiencies, lower costs, and enhanced patient convenience.

Work inside the center will include novel clinical trials, providing patients with access to the latest treatment options. An outpatient bone marrow transplant unit will conduct lifesaving procedures that once required strict isolation and lengthy hospital stays. The building will also include a full array of cutting-edge diagnostic and therapeutic services.

“It is my ardent hope now that the new Center for Cancer Care will transform cancer treatment worldwide, with the utmost emphasis on the needs of patients and their families,” the center’s namesake, David Koch, said in a statement. “I am honored to support this important work.”

Thornton Tomasetti is a proud partner with Memorial Sloan Kettering on its new, state-of-the-art facility in New York. We provide engineering design, investigation, and analysis services worldwide on projects of every size and level of complexity. We strive to be the global driver of change and innovation in our industry.

The Art of the Cutting Edge

Jochen Schmidt is responsible for the global Swarovski store network, and he makes sure each location reflects the artistry and innovation of the company’s sparkling stones

by Leo Herrera

crystallized

A

swan with the UK’s Union Jack is displayed in Swarovski’s new London space. The company designs its stores to fit their locations.

Courtesy of Swarovski

Light is life—we need it to make us feel alive. Few businesses understand this better than Swarovski. While the leading manufacturer of loose crystal and fashion jewelry has evolved since its founding in 1895, by embracing new technologies and collaborating with creative talent, its mastery of light and unique sparkle has always remained center stage—whether through crystals and gems featured on Michael Jackson’s white gloves, on the star atop the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree, or on a bride’s wedding ring.

“[Swarovski founder] Daniel Swarovski wanted to create a diamond for every woman,” says Jochen Schmidt, vice president of retail real estate and store development. “This is something which is still inherent in our ways, how we work, and how we look at the customer. This is why we’re here: to create a more sparkling world.” Today the multibillion-dollar company reaches more people than ever, with more than 3,000 locations and an enduring brand that extends to 170 countries.

When Schmidt arrived at Swarovski in 2008, he set up supply chains and trained teams for the retail architecture function. A decade later, he now leads the combined department of distribution and real estate and store development from the international company’s offices in Zürich, Switzerland. In this role, Schmidt says, he aims to create store experiences that reflect the brand heritage, the craftsmanship, and the values Swarovski represents.

Considering Swarovski’s legacy spans more than a century, Schmidt’s goal is relatively new. The company opened its first jewelry store in Hong Kong in 1998, but today it does around a thousand refurbishments and openings each year, from small multibrand corners to large stores. “It’s fascinating to work on this global level,” Schmidt says. “You learn every day—about culture, changing consumer behavior, and the changing retail environment.”

and physical experience.

Courtesy of Swarovski

Swarovski’s London store is outfitted with screens and lighting that present customers with a combined digital

The worldwide scope requires a system as polished and intricate as Swarovski’s crystals. That’s why Schmidt splits his time between designing new store concepts or single elements and maintaining existing locations. Also, as part of his distribution and real estate concerns, Schmidt and his team analyze geomarketing data to determine “white spots” (hubs for potential store openings) and they prepare guidelines, processes, and tools for a global use.

That fast pace sets the tone for his international team of 80 leaders, who enact those timelines simultaneously. Together, Schmidt and his team are bringing concepts to the value-engineering stage and building small multibrand accounts and big flagship stores. “I’m very competitive; I love sports,” Schmidt says. “I really want to win, including winning the heart of the consumer.”

Yet Schmidt keeps his eye on the long-term strategy, a link, perhaps, to his years competing in triathlons. Now, sports drive the energy and inspiration he applies at Swarovski. “Even though triathlons are an individ-

The Brilliance of Sustainability

Jochen Schmidt VP of Retail Real Estate & Store Development Swarovski

The sustainability movement shaking up the business world may seem contemporary, yet it played a central role in the creation of the Swarovski brand that emerged at the turn of the nineteenth century. That’s when founder Daniel Swarovski migrated from Bohemia to Austria and patented the idea of grinding and cutting crystals using hydroelectric power. His company, now more than a century later, proves sustainable methods create sustainable business.

Today, Swarovski ensures that legacy through various initiatives. One of them, the community investment program Swarovski Waterschool, maintains the company’s deep connection with water. Since 2000, the global program has taught more than half a million children how to use water, conserve it, and cherish it, empowering them to become ambassadors for water conservation.

Swarovski launched another environmental program in 2012 based on the LEED certification, a green design standard for buildings and stores. The goal is to reduce energy, water consumption, pollution, and waste. “Today we’re building 100% of all our own stores based on this certification,” Schmidt says.

The Swarovski leader has a personal stake in the success of these programs. “Everyone can influence this every day,” Schmidt says. “I have two kids and I want to see them grow up in a healthy environment. This is why I contribute on a daily basis.”

ual sport, it’s about teamwork, being a great coach and teammate,” he says. “You learn a lot about how to motivate yourself, the discipline to get up early in the morning, always with the aim to improve.”

Schmidt continues to run almost daily, which he says increases his focus. “During the day, you can lose sight of the main things you want to achieve,” he says. “Sometimes it’s good to disconnect, even if it’s through a run.”

Prior to Swarovski, Schmidt worked as head of sales and marketing for Baukreativ, an agency specializing in retail design and development for high-profile clients such as Giorgio Armani, Coach, Under Armour, and Swarovski. Schmidt was invited to join the latter company during a conference one night, and after a few months of consideration, he says, the promise of international retail development was simply too fascinating to pass up.

Schmidt’s role proved crucial in the creation of Swarovski’s contemporary stores. “It’s about the sparkle, the superior craftsmanship, and the mastery of light refraction that is unique to the Swarovski brand,” he says. “You need to translate this into store content, into an environment where you really stage and bring those products to life.” That’s why each store features signature Swarovski elements such as a crystal swan and chandelier.

Andreas Graber

“It’s about the sparkle, the superior craftsmanship, and the mastery of light refraction that is unique to the Swarovski brand.”

Schmidt employs state-of-the-art technology to complement—not compete with—such design elements. His team is incorporating augmented reality into stores to experiment with how customers interact with products as well as devices and to eventually make checkout faster. “We need to create an experience for the consumer that he or she can’t get online,” he says. Schmidt aims to make customers feel welcome as soon as they step through the door, to ensure the right information is easily available, and to create a seamless shopping experience.

Swarovski storefronts are at the forefront of a new era of brick-and-mortar retail—one that Schmidt is repositioning at the junction of art and technology. Yet at the brand’s core is a beautiful material that can be applied to so many products, and that versatility will continue Swarovski’s success far into the future. “We have shown this over the last 100 years, and we will show it in the next 100 years,” Schmidt says. “Crystal is here to stay and fascinate people for years to come.”

Schmidt believes that an effective store is much more than the store sign or the architecture. “It’s a multisensorial experience,” he says. “It’s the music we want to play, the smell inside the store—do we work with one, or is there no smell?—how the staff members are dressed, and how they approach the customer.” These are just a few of the considerations Schmidt and his team discuss each time a new store concept is in development.

Concept to completion can take around four months for standard designs. Yet Swarovski also produces special stores, which are highly stylized concepts with innovative ideas. For example, when a forerunner store recently opened in Times Square, in New York City, Schmidt’s team, in cooperation with the designer, Cao/Perrot, had to create an environment that stood out among the lights and noise of the urban jungle.

To do so, the team hung crystallized wire clouds from the ceiling, both inside and outside, creating a sense of peace and tranquility. For the first time, Schmidt also added crystals to the storefront, which shimmer whenever a breeze passes. At another location, a “forerunner store” on Oxford Street in London, Schmidt has designed a Union Jack crystallized swan, a collaboration with London-based designer Simon Costin, based on the best-selling Remix collection. Local designers will also be essential for an upcoming store in Chengdu, China, Schmidt says.

With state-of-the-art manufacturing in China and conveniently located distribution facilities and Personal in the U.S., Wise Winner USA gives you the best of both worlds: the finest craftsmanship plus budget-pleasing production costs. Our acclaimed fixture manufacturing capabilities can give you the competitive edge in virtually any market.

New Projects Brewing

Emily Heuring and the rest of her team are focused on flexibility as they bring Coffee & Bagel Brands’ evolving store concepts to life while helping to grow the Caribou Coffee brand’s footprint

by Rebecca Roberts

Emily Heuring is tapping her expertise as an architect to create a new blueprint of strategic growth at Coffee & Bagel Brands. As the director of construction for the international group of coffeehouses and bagelries, Heuring is applying both the design and business skills she’s cultivated throughout her two-decade career to expand its iconic brands: Caribou Coffee, Bruegger’s Bagels, Einstein Bros. Bagels, Manhattan Bagel, and Noah’s New York Bagels.

“The experience of transitioning to a corporate role from a design firm was very exciting,” Heuring says. “Being a part of bringing concepts to life, working with various players internally, watching contractors put up the finishing touches, and handing over the keys to the operators—I get to see the whole process in play.”

Prior to Coffee & Bagel Brands, Heuring launched her career at the Minnesota-based design firm Wilkus Architects, after earning her bachelor’s degree in architecture and environmental design at North Dakota State University.

After she joined the internal design team for Caribou Coffee, in 2005, she rose through the ranks and reached

her current position in 2016. She has administered multimillion-dollar capital improvements for up to 40 new stores and 70 remodel projects annually, achieving a 5 percent cost reduction year-over-year on the new builds and 15 percent savings for the remodel work.

Such results illustrate how store concepts are constantly evolving, and Heuring emphasizes flexibility and team member empowerment as essential skills for both working in construction and managing how multiple, expanding brand identities are reflected in real estate.

Coffee & Bagel Brands consists of one coffeehouse concept and four “bagelries,” each with its own distinct personality, according to Heuring. She describes how Noah’s ambiance is that of a classic New York deli, whereas the atmosphere in Bruegger’s is like a warm, cozy bakery. Einstein Bagels has a quirky neighborly setting, and Caribou Coffee invites guests with a homey environment that feels like a gathering place. (Manhattan Bagel, the fifth brand under the umbrella, is a franchise model, so each store experience can vary, depending on the individual franchisees.)

Among other efforts, Coffee & Bagel Brands is currently working to expand its Caribou Coffee brand significantly.

The wood-paneled interiors of Caribou Coffee locations are meant to evoke the cozy, inviting feeling of a Northwoods cabin.

Tad Conroy

These five brands came together fairly recently. Noah’s, Manhattan Bagel, and Einstein joined forces with Caribou, where Heuring was already working, in 2014. Bruegger’s was added to the mix in 2017. During this evolution, Heuring stressed the importance of bringing the company cultures together when team building. “Caribou had a historical organizational structure,” she says. “The bagel brands had their own separate organizational structures, and people have their own tool kits, different backgrounds, and ways of doing things.”

Heuring’s approach to assembling the construction team during these changes was to encourage each individual to become an expert in their role. “There has been a lot of integration and leadership changes and evolution, not only to the number of brands but the number of concepts,” she explains. “I try to provide team members with the opportunity to be a resident expert on each brand, dividing and conquering this way and providing individuals with opportunities for growth and recognition.”

Aside from inherent organizational and cultural transformations, Heuring says that the store concepts

Emily Heuring Director of Construction

embodied by Coffee & Bagel Brands continually evolve to align with guest preferences within the market. She recalls that about 10 years ago, Caribou was in the midst of transforming its coffeehouse layout for guest navigation in order to focus on the story of Caribou’s handcrafted food and beverages.

Caribou Coffee remains dedicated to its quality menu offerings, including a commitment to all-real ingredients and carefully sourced coffees. However, the brand is also looking at what guests seek out in the atmosphere of a coffeehouse. “Today we are looking at the Caribou Coffee brand that is 25 years old now,” she says. “We are going back to the roots. The concept started from having a familiar face when you walk in the door, people greeting you, and knowing your drink.”

Proud Partner In Caribou Coffee’s Sign Program

In fact, Caribou Coffee originated from a trip the founders took to Alaska, and the store concept today is centered on the warm, cozy, familiar, and inviting setting of a Northwoods cabin. In 1992, the brand opened up its first storefront in Edina, Minnesota, and now it spans 18 states and 11 countries. Caribou Coffee is also incorporating localized touches into store design, Heuring says. For example, she cites innovative community tables. “They have imprints in the tabletop that tell you subtly where you are,” she says.

Since Caribou Coffee’s build-out type is typically tenant improvements, there are limited opportunities to customize the exterior of a Caribou Coffee. However, due to its strong brand recognition in its major markets, the store concept can still influence the retail center where it is sited. “Often the landlords will come to us first, and we’ll get to help design their building with some natural stones or natural-looking elements,” Heuring says. “It’s fairly generic and not necessarily ‘Oh this is a Caribou,’ but a natural Northwoods lodge.”

Currently, Caribou Coffee is planning for continued growth, with expansion in the Upper Midwest over the next few years. Throughout this process, Heuring remains focused on change as a major constant in her role. She values adaptability, and, knowing that with constant evolution she will often be fielding questions, she advises others in construction to encourage creativity. “The better you can tell a story, the more effective you will be,” she says.

Coffee & Bagel Brands

Marc Shapiro

Section 03: Spaces

Exploring new and renovated facilities across the industry, from buildings to work spaces, along with the people and companies behind these projects

Chad Baumer

LifeWay’s New Normal

Russell Vance addresses the highs and lows of bringing the century-old Christian publisher into the modern era

by Kelli Lawrence

In his time with LifeWay Christian Resources, director of corporate services Russell Vance has come to understand what the company’s employees need in their office: space, opportunities for collaboration, private areas, and the ability to work remotely when needed. Perhaps a game of ping-pong or foosball once in a while, too.

When the Nashville-based publisher and provider of Christian resources moved into its new headquarters in late 2017, it got all that and more. The new space was a necessary upgrade from LifeWay’s aging previous location.

“The old campus really didn’t suit how we work today,” Vance says. “It was time to change the way we work, the way we collaborate, the way we innovate.”

The change was a long time coming. Founded in 1891, the company had grown to occupy eight different buildings, the most recent of which was built in 2001. However, few of the buildings were built for modern office purposes. Many had existed long before PCs even came into the mainstream, and though a data center LifeWay developed in the 1960s had helped usher in the computer age, “we didn’t have the redundancies we needed for backup,” Vance says. “If we had a major

Activity areas in LifeWay’s new HQ provide employees with opportunities to occasionally clear their heads with games of foosball and ping-pong.

power outage—or any kind of destruction to the facility—we’d be out for months just trying to rebuild the data center alone and get reconnected.”

By 2015, even more tech-related retrofitting was needed, and more difficulties were arising. Wi-Fi, for instance, was hit-or-miss, and only a few rooms could accommodate video conferencing. So, in November of that year, the company sold its 15 acres of downtown property and fast-tracked plans for a new facility. Only 19 months passed between its groundbreaking and completion.

Now situated just a handful of blocks west of the Tennessee State Capitol, the nine-story headquarters measures 277,000 square feet—about a quarter the size of the old campus, and a fraction of its operating cost as well. And that’s just the beginning of the improvements. “This had to be a joint venture between our facility group and our IT group to deliver the right type of building—and technology—to support the way we needed to work,” Vance says.

Basically, LifeWay employees need to be able to work from anywhere, whether at home, in a café, or at the airport, waiting to embark on a business trip. Vance says the new facility therefore had to provide what’s needed for any of the 1,100 people on staff to work without being office and desk bound.

Chad Baumer

The new office consists of about 277,000 square feet of space. It’s roughly a quarter of the space of the company’s old campus, but it’s used more efficiently.

LifeWay’s HQ employees used to occupy a collection of eight buildings, but they’re now consolidated in just the one nine-story building, in downtown Nashville, TN.

“There’s so much to be learned from an open working environment. . . . We’ve come together better as a team.”

“We chose ClearLine as our cabling contractor because we needed a partner that could complete our fast-track project on time and at or below budget, which they did. They were quick to help us address design changes and were always focused on helping us deliver the technology we needed for a successful project. We will continue to work with ClearLine and would highly recommend them for other projects ”

- Russell Vance, LifeWay Christian Resources

615-440-1933 • www.clearline.net

The eschewing of the traditional desk—and fixedwall office, for that matter—is a crucial part of the new layout and culture. Each floor is dominated by large, natural-light workspaces designed to encourage collaboration and camaraderie among coworkers. Moreremote areas are also available throughout the building, for when concentration and privacy are necessary, but the signature style at LifeWay’s headquarters is decidedly wall free.

“There’s so much to be learned from an open-working environment,” Vance says. “It makes interaction so much easier; you see people rolling their chairs over to the desk next to them for a quick ad-hoc meeting all the time. We’ve come together better as a team.”

Strengthening the team dynamic at LifeWay, there are plazas on each floor with cafés and vending options; “fun zones” with ping-pong, foosball, video games; a fitness center; and a terrace outside the thirdfloor café, among other relaxing features.

On the business front, there’s ample meeting room space, and Wi-Fi and video-conferencing capabilities exist throughout the building. Staff surveys have returned strong positive feedback on everything from the space’s work-from-anywhere possibilities to the stronger sense of company unity it creates to the pride and excitement generated by the building itself.

Vance says he appreciates the feedback; after all, he encountered firsthand a number of employees—particularly older ones, who’d spent their careers in walled offices—who were very resistant to the idea of working differently. “They’d spend two weeks in the training lab we set up prior to moving in, and they’d always come out saying, ‘I don’t want to leave,’” he says with a laugh. “I found that interesting.”

Vance is determined to keep the wheel of progress moving. “What do we need to do to continue updating our building to where it continues to evolve with the way people work?” he asks. “How do we redevelop this space to meet the needs of future employees? Those are the next challenges we face.”

The Workplace on the Go

BigCommerce’s Jason Schultz reveals its renovated headquarters as the ultimate accommodation for employee mobility

by Peter Fabris

Jason Schultz faced a two-headed monster of a challenge while reinventing the office space for Austin, Texas-based BigCommerce. The fast-growing cloud e-commerce platform provider needed more space at the headquarters but also an extensive redesign of the office to align with the evolving work habits of its dynamic workforce.

BigCommerce had been growing by more than 15 percent a year when Schultz was hired as director of global real estate and facilities in October 2017. With robust growth expected to continue, the company’s 37,000-square-foot headquarters, in downtown Austin, was “bursting at the seams,” Schultz says. Plus, employees were increasingly gravitating to the modern office environment as they moved from space to space during the day, based on their tasks.

That’s why BigCommerce jumped at the chance to lease the first floor of the same building when the tenant, a security software company, decided to vacate its 30,000-square-foot space. Schultz had the space he needed, but he also knew that to optimize utilization and create the contemporary environment desired by employees, he would have to depart from the existing design. A detailed analysis of BigCommerce’s space use and employee work styles was needed.

Schultz hired real estate consulting firm CBRE to conduct a two-week space utilization study and conduct employee surveys. The consultant would also help make sense of the results and translate them into programming. “Jason was instrumental in creating a dialog between the executive team at BigCommerce and the various real estate and design partners needed to execute this project,” says Lenny Beaudoin, executive managing director and global lead at CBRE. “His leadership helped the group challenge their individual assumptions and think more holistically about this opportunity. The result was an integrated real estate and workplace solution that was not only functional and cost-effective but aligned with the organization’s vision and brand.”

Surveyors went from room to room and desk to desk at regular intervals throughout the day, noting who was occupying specific spaces and what they were doing. They also asked a group of volunteer employ-

ees from different departments to report their activity once daily for a week, recording what they liked and disliked about the spaces they were using. Both studies yielded findings that guided the expansion and redesign project.

“There was a great desire among employees to be more mobile throughout the day,” Schultz says. Many employees wanted to move to areas designated for specific tasks—conference rooms for planned and impromptu meetings, quiet nooks for work requiring extended periods of sharp focus, and kitchen tables for grabbing a snack while catching up on email.

Although the existing office provided a variety of spaces, it fell far short of the vision for the new design. For example, some workers took to seats in a large game room for quiet work space—not what the space was meant for, but the best available. Also, most of the existing conference rooms accommodated eight to sixteen people, but many meetings consisted of

Jason Schultz Director of Global Real Estate & Facilities

BigCommerce

“Giving up a personal desk is a sensitive subject.”

small groups of two to four. That indicated a significant amount of wasted space set aside for meetings. The remedies for these deficiencies will be more quiet space and a greater number of smaller meeting rooms.

The most sweeping change, however, will be a switch from assigned seating to task-based seating in which employees will move around during the day to spaces most suitable to their activities. To optimize space allocation, there will be a ratio of 1.2 people per desk. The utilization study supported that formula, as it found about 20 percent of workstations were unoccupied at any given time during a typical day. Part of the reason: certain employees, such as salespeople, spend a lot of time on the road. There’s no need to reserve a desk at headquarters for those individuals spending most of their time elsewhere.

The renovated office space will be divided into “neighborhoods” for each department or function. This will allow for closer collaboration for those who work together most frequently than random seating would allow. The employee-to-desk ratio, derived from the space utilization study, is meant to reduce the percentage of unused workstations. Utilization varies, so there will be times when there isn’t a desk available in the employee’s neighborhood. “In those cases, the employee will go to a nearby focus room, booth, or café,” Schultz says. Yet he expects that those occasions will be infrequent.

The new design will present a cultural adjustment. “Giving up a personal desk is a sensitive subject,” Schultz says. People like to feel they have ownership of a space and like to personalize it, he notes. Even

so, Schultz is confident that employees will embrace the new environment after they experience the advantages of multiple, comfortable spaces for various tasks. Employees who have traveled to the company’s London office, a WeWork space similar in concept to the headquarters plan, have given that design positive reviews. “Some have said, ‘I’ll trade my office for WeWork space anytime,’” he adds.

Notable amenity upgrades include a considerably larger communal kitchen than the kitchen in the current space. Two new training rooms ranging from 1,500 square feet to 2,000 square feet will be outfitted with the latest presentation technology. The rooms’ primary purpose is to host clients for training sessions, but movable walls that open to the kitchen area will also provide expandable space for lunches, meetings, or other events.

BigCommerce signed the lease on the new first floor environs in January 2018. The company began occupying 8,000 square feet of swing space in the same office complex last March, which provided temporary relief for the space crunch. Schultz expects to have a construction permit in December or January 2019 for the firstfloor expansion. He anticipates a four-month build-out period with significant demolition required to revamp the honeycomb-like space. Dozens of walled offices will be removed to realize the more open concept.

The result will use space more efficiently and ultimately reduce real estate expenses. Even more importantly, it should foster an environment better suited to the changing ways of modern office work habits—and produce happier employees.

Chasing Area Inspiration

for

One-of-a-Kind Design

At Stantec, Susan LaFleur finds inspiration from art and the community to create diverse luxury properties that reflect their surroundings

by Randall Colburn

Susan LaFleur Principal and Director of Hospitality & Residential Interiors

Stantec Architecture

Kate Benson Photography

White light. White marble. White linens. Once upon a time, Miami interior design had a particular aesthetic; one that, after so many years, began to lose its warmth. As the city’s neighborhoods continue to evolve, however, so too does its design. At the forefront of this evolution are designers such as Stantec Architecture’s Susan LaFleur, who’s working to bring an ingenuity to the city’s diverse luxury spaces that matches the city’s vibrant, colorful milieu while tailoring it to each neighborhood’s unique identity.

As Stantec’s principal and director of hospitality and residential interiors for the Miami office, LaFleur oversees the entire design process for the international consulting company’s interior design projects, from space planning to installation. She’s as likely to be on-site installing model units as she is to be in her office brainstorming solutions. And, she’s surrounded by a wealth of talent and resources that help finesse designs and bring new and exciting ideas to the team. She arrived at Stantec when it acquired her previous firm, ADD, and now, as the multibillion-dollar company’s principal, her commitment to distinctive and functional design remains as boundless as it was at ADD.

“At Stantec, we see design as a collaborative activity; rooted in a multidisciplinary integrative approach focused on a client’s project goals and aspirations,” says LaFleur, who explains that every project is sustained by five key pillars: clarity, purpose, discovery, performance, and craft. Wrapped up in those pillars is a commitment to locality and personality— each design, she says, begins with mood boards exuding a particular vibe and character—that draws upon the area in which it’s set to occupy.

“We always look for new, unique ways to connect the city with local materials that will set the project apart from others in the marketplace,” LaFleur says. “But, we’re also giving them something that speaks to the demographic they’re targeting. There’s no stale, cookie-cutter design for every project. Each developer gets something truly unique; a design that speaks to its surroundings.”

Take Solitair Brickell, a 50-story residential tower that marks Stantec’s first collaboration with developer ZOM Living. Solitair Brickell is situated in the heart of Miami’s Brickell neighborhood, an urban oasis rich in luxury, fine dining, and shopping. LaFleur’s design caters to the clientele: you’ll find a spa, bar, and fitness center inside, not to mention a rooftop pool. Yet it distinguishes itself with a design that finds inspiration in the Medjool date palm tree native to South Florida.

“The butterfly effect on the garage evokes the palm tree trunk pattern, and it continues to the sky with

The amenities in Stantec’s Solitair Brickell building include a lounge with a pool table (pictured), a fitness center, and a spa.

angled balconies,” LaFleur says. “It’s just as if you’re standing, looking up at a palm tree. This architectural design is carried through the interiors in small subtle ways, like the basket weaved metal reception desk, the feature wood ceiling and wall in the lobby, and the paving pattern on the amenity decks.”

LaFleur cites another Miami property, Eve at the District, as a significant experience in her design repertoire. The design was born from an art piece she discovered at Art Basel years before the project hit her desk. LaFleur returned to the piece—it depicts a woman’s face partially obscured by a leaf—when the project found a home in Miami’s artsy Wynwood district. Then she received permission from the artist to incorporate it into her design, and the developer liked the story of the piece so much that they ended up naming the property after the piece.

“Here was something I found years before the project broke ground, and it went on to inform the design

Troy Campbell Photography

Troy Campbell Photography

Perhaps Solitair Brickell’s finest amenity is its rooftop pool, which offers sweeping views of Miami.

and branding,” LaFleur says. “It’s a really cool story of how art and a physical location can tie into what we did with the interiors.”

So successful was Solitair Brickell that Stantec and ZOM are forging ahead on more high-profile designs, including three architectural and six interiors projects. Not all of them are in Miami, either. One is Atelier, a 41-story luxury high-rise in the Dallas Arts District, in Texas. There, once again, LaFleur is drawing upon the neighborhood in her design by incorporating a genuine art gallery into the lobby space, complete with rotating walls.

Such work ties back to one of LaFleur’s favorite aspects of working at Stantec: the chance to design globally. The company is based in Edmonton, Alberta, and spans 450 locations around the world, so she has lots of opportunities to collaborate with talent outside her Miami office.

It may feel daunting to start each project with, as LaFleur calls it, a “blank slate.” But the possibilities this approach brings is where Stantec’s design expert finds freedom. For LaFleur, it offers the chance to explore the area and see just where the muse strikes.

“We’re finding inspiration every day,” she says.

Smaller Footprint,

As part of its Montreal consolidation, Symcor relocated its customer communications services team to a singlefloor warehouse at 650 Bridge Street.

Bigger Benefits

By leading the successful merger of some of Symcor’s Montreal business units, Tim Hocking helped improve efficiencies, save on costs, and elevate team spirit by

Jeff Silver

Business and production environments are always evolving. The most successful companies stay closely attuned to the ongoing changes and develop creative strategies to respond accordingly.

Such was recently the case for Symcor, one of Canada’s leading providers of business-processing and communications-management services for major financial, insurance, retail, and telecommunications companies.

The company was facing a pending lease expiry in Montreal at its 80,000-square-foot payment-processing facility at a time when the city’s real estate market was very tight. The situation made it difficult to find new space that was cost-effective, conveniently located, and compatible with the company’s operational needs.

At the same time, Symcor was experiencing overall business fluctuations, including in production volumes at 650 Bridge Street, its 50,000-square-foot facility that handles work for its print and insertion clients. The alignment of the two circumstances presented the opportunity to merge the two business units, reduce the

The use of wood pergolas in the staff lunchroom of Symcor’s newly merged Montreal space adds character and provides a more intimate atmosphere.

company’s overall footprint and expenses in Montreal, and leverage other operational and HR benefits.

Tim Hocking, Symcor’s vice president of real estate and facilities, helped lead the consolidation, which included working closely with the landlord at 650 Bridge Street, who had additional appropriate space available at 654 Bridge Street, approximately 10 meters away.

“There are usually property managers and thirdparty brokers involved in negotiating a lease agreement,” Hocking says. “But, considering we were one of the first anchor tenants when the Bridge Street location was initially developed, we leveraged our strong personal relationship with Fadi Melki at Carpet Art Deco [the landlord] to negotiate the relocation of the adjacent tenant and prepare the space.”

The consolidation of Symcor’s Montreal facilities reduced their combined footprint by 48,000 square feet and saved approximately $2.4 million in occupancy costs annually, but there were some challenges along the way. Planning for the relocation began twelve months ahead of time, and Hocking says the total number of employees and the business volume

that had to be accommodated during that period was rather “fluid.” Symcor’s real estate and facility teams collaborated with the operational business leads, technology partners, EPO, and other internal and external stakeholders to develop appropriate solutions, functioning as a single, closely aligned unit to address the complex requirements of daily operations. Among other strategies, they set schedules and routines for incoming data and supplies to meet predetermined time frames for various projects, ensured compliance with the necessary security configurations, and made sure that electrical infrastructure was sized correctly for new equipment and that particular departments were placed in appropriate proximity to one another.

“We’ve all worked together for a long time and understand what’s required to keep operations running smoothly,” Hocking says. “Even a small, unaccounted-for change might affect the storage requirements for incoming cartons or even the dock configuration itself, which can interfere with successfully meeting deadlines and being up and running around the clock.”

Once on-site at the new location, there were additional subtleties that had to be adjusted, including balancing human-comfort factors with the requirements of a production environment. For example, adjustments had to be made to the facility’s air flow because high-volume movement was initially causing paper jams during printing processes.

Otherwise, the facilities merger has produced noticeable benefits. It has reduced personnel redundancies and improved the effectiveness and consistency of company communications. Remote

Tim Hocking VP of Real Estate & Facilities Symcor

monitoring of an extensive security network of access control points, close-circuit video, and temperatureand power-monitoring sensors is saving approximately $200,000 annually. And, the space is also designed to be responsive to changing business volumes and requirements, allowing for the seamless integration of new clients and production projects.

Due to the merged facility’s configuration and the new culture of “one team under one roof,” there have also been increased levels of cooperation across all departments. “We’re all better aligned with company objectives,” says Robert Gagne, Symcor’s general manager in Montreal. “When there are heavier volumes in one area, everyone who’s available from other areas is ready to roll up their sleeves to help get work out the door.”

The company has since implemented similar consolidations at three other locations across Canada. Along the way, Hocking has learned that the more communication there is to prepare personnel to know what to expect, the better. “This blended model of developing more flexible industrial environments is definitely becoming the norm for any future site opportunities,” he says. “But, it’s still a continuous learning curve.”

Innovation Served Fresh, Daily

In more than two decades with Raley’s Markets, Michael Helzer has built on its strong history of originality, ensuring that its stores are much more than just places to buy food

by Paul Snyder

Fred Greaves Photography

When Michael Helzer got his first construction job in Sacramento, California, in 1990, it was to build a Raley’s Markets supermarket. Five years later, he joined the Raley’s team, and he hasn’t looked back as he’s helped the California-based grocer expand to more than 120 locations throughout its home state and Nevada, develop new brands, and operate its own in-house cabinet and fixture business.

“After 23 years, I still enjoy coming to work,” says Helzer, now Raley’s director of store design and construction. “I loved building tree forts as a kid, and I’ve been in construction since I was 15. Raley’s is built on trust, honesty, and integrity, and I’m treated like family here. They allow me the autonomy to operate my business, be innovative, and think outside the box.”

Helzer is continuing a tradition of innovation that Raley’s has fostered since its 1935 inception. The company was the first to introduce a “drive-in” market and also the first to break down the wall that used to separate drug stores and grocery stores, to create a full-service market.

The company’s outside vendor partners have been impressed with it and Helzer’s forward-thinking approach as well. “Mike has always been an innovator, and it shows,” says Mark Marvelli, director of commercial and retail architecture at Coact Designworks. “Raley’s isn’t your typical grocer, and its decisions to focus on health, develop new concepts, and tailor stores to its communities is reflected in its reputation.”

With laser focus on cultivating its reputation in the health-andwellness space (Raley’s has eliminated all tobacco products from its stores, and it has removed sodas and candy from its check-out lines in favor of healthier snack options), the grocer continues to embody a spirit of innovation that now includes new business models for the 21st century. Here, Helzer discusses them with American Builders Quarterly.

A New Flagship Store in Truckee

Although Truckee, California, represents a new market for Raley’s, it’s one that Helzer says the company has worked toward for nearly 15 years. The company pursued another location in the area for almost seven years, but various design hurdles—coupled with the economic recession that started in 2008—led the company to walk away from its original plans. However, given the Raley family’s presence in the area and a longstanding desire to be in the Truckee community, new plans were formed at a new site, and at long last they came to fruition.

The 39,000-square-foot space was designed to fit community design guidelines, with natural wood elements reminiscent of lodge-style architecture. The space also honors Raley’s commitment to sustainability, though, with technology for both energy conservation and water management. Additionally, the company used a local sawmill to fall and mill the trees that will be used in the store’s interior, and once they’re milled and dried, they will be transported to Raley’s millwork shop to be cut to size and finished.

As with most Raley’s locations, the store will be much more than just a place to pick up groceries. It will be a full-service store with assortments of healthy and high-quality food, including natural and organic offerings. It will also place an emphasis on specialty services, including restaurant-quality grab-and-go options.

Even with a revived economy, Helzer says, the local approval process was not a quick walk-in-the-park, but it was helped along significantly by the company’s willingness to incorporate the community’s ideas and desires into the project.

“We want to be able to come into a new location and reach the local community,” Helzer says. “Beyond sharing with them what we’re doing, when we’re doing it, and what we’d like to do to get their takes, we also make sure to ask, ‘If you had the chance to make some input on this store, what would you like to see?’ It’s not lip service. There are plenty of examples that get incorporated into the design, from signage to incorporating local themes into the structure.”

Michael Helzer Director of Store Design & Construction

Raley’s Markets

A New Way Forward with Market 5-ONE-5

Market 5-ONE-5 is a new, modern market that’s focused on consumers’ wellbeing, providing more affordable options that will help people eat well. The first location opened May 15 of last year, in the R Street District of downtown Sacramento, California. Healthier eating drives the store’s entire setup and design, from team members that include chefs, urban farmers, and nutrition experts to an environment where shoppers can eat and socialize, with indoor and outdoor dining spaces connected to cafés, bistros, and a wine bar.

“It’s unlike anything that exists in the marketplace,” Helzer says. “It’s reminiscent of a neighborhood market founded on the principle that discovering quality and nutritious food should be easy, accessible, and affordable.”

Every item in Market 5-ONE-5 is curated on three core values: organic living, nutrition, and education (thus the “ONE” in the name). The two fives refer to the five essential nutrients in foods (carbohydrates, fats, proteins, minerals, and water) and the five senses used when you eat food. Service items in the store are made fresh daily, and team members are directed to create a unique customer experience on a daily basis.

Sacramento soon won’t be the only location to feature this brand. Helzer says that Raley’s is currently planning two new locations for Market 5-ONE-5 in the coming year, and it’s investigating other suburban neighborhoods throughout Northern California that could be a good fit.

Coact Designworks is proud to have worked with Raley’s for over 30 years, developing innovative architectural solutions that support their vision, help build their brand and strengthen their reputation as family-owned, health focused, community-oriented grocer throughout Northern California and Nevada.

For 73 years Coact Designworks has provided full-service architectural design solutions for the commercial/retail, education, and healthcare markets in Northern California and Nevada. Visit us at www.coactdesignworks.com

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA’S PREMIER TENANT IMPROVEMENT CONTRACTOR

Raley’s new flagship store, in Truckee, CA, shown here in a rendering, will be a 39,000-square-foot space with a lodge-style aesthetic.

In-House Talent Finally Gets Out-of-House Recognition

Raley’s has been in the cabinet and fixture business for more than 80 years, and it has cultivated not only a talented team but state-of-the-art automated equipment. As the business has grown over the decades, Helzer says, the company has received several inquiries about building fixtures for others, and it finally decided to do so recently.

In March 2018, Raley’s acquired a local cabinet business that had been in place for 30 years. Its new entity, called Capitol Millworks, was up and running by early July. “We have the ability to design and fabricate both millwork and metals for retail locations, schools, hospitals, airports, hotels, and much more,” Helzer says. “We welcome all opportunities and are in the process of developing a website to extend this service to others.”

Asked if he (or anyone else at the company) minds the idea of other stores using the same kinds of fixtures that have been proprietary at Raley’s for nearly half a century, Helzer brushes off the notion immediately. “We love to set the bar for others,” he says.

Beyond the Office Walls

In its many workplaces around the world, including its San Francisco headquarters, Square Inc. makes space not only for employees but also its sellers and their local communities

by Joan Livingston

For Chris Gorman, of financial-technology company Square Inc., community is the tie that binds when it comes to office design. There’s the community of Square’s employees and sellers, the community beyond Square’s offices that has to connect to the people working inside, and the overall community of the company as a whole.

It makes sense, then, that Square’s offices are designed in “a human-centric manner,” as Gorman, the company’s global real estate and workplace lead, puts it. It is, in other words, a manner in which community can be showcased.

“When we looked at our San Francisco space, we really wanted to reinforce who we are as an organization, to reinforce our values, and to connect with our sellers and with each other,” Gorman says. “You start there and start working through design considerations.”

Square, based in San Francisco, has made card transactions accessible for businesses of all sizes. Founded in 2009 by Twitter creator Jack Dorsey and Jim McKelvey, its purpose is to foster economic empowerment. Gorman started with the company six years ago, when it had 300 employees and just two offices. In the nine years since, though, it has grown to 2,000 employees, in offices in the US, Canada, the UK, Ireland, Japan, and Australia.

Before Square, Gorman worked in retail for apparel and technology, but he says his latest employer has provided him with a first opportunity to use his experience and skill to rethink office space. Today, working internally with Square’s external design partners, including Bohlin Cywinski Jackson, Gorman and his team help ensure each of the company’s new offices meets the needs of those who work there, inspires those who use it, and acts as a canvas to feature Square’s sellers and communities.

Social pods in Square Inc.’s San Francisco HQ provide space for the company’s employees to engage collaboratively.

The company’s initial San Francisco office has provided the template that it continues to follow in its other offices to this day. The first phase of the San Francisco office was completed in 2013, but it has gone through multiple expansions and today spans six floors, with spaces ranging from 25,000 to 100,000 square feet. To help employees navigate the sizable office, its design resembles a city grid, with a central boulevard and glass-paneled conference rooms named for local streets.

The office also includes dedicated spaces for local Square sellers. Anchoring two of the main floors’ boulevards, for instance, are Andytown Coffee Roasters and Wise Sons Delicatessen. “We thought it would be a great opportunity to learn from a local seller by having them inside our space and being able to interact with them,” Gorman says. The company invites other local Square users in for a variety of pop-up opportunities, including Seller Wednesdays, in which the culinary team brings in food vendors to set up shop during lunchtime.

“Traditionally you look at an office as primarily a place to do work, and you have this natural barrier, these four walls that surround you,” Gorman says. “One of the things we wanted to challenge ourselves to do was be more connected with the community. Even with these four walls, it was easy to reimagine that and invite our sellers into this space.”

Square’s San Francisco office was completed in 2013 but has gone through several expansions. Today, it spans six floors.

Square’s offices are designed so that when people move between spaces, they can simply open a laptop or notebook and work.

“One of the things we wanted to challenge ourselves to do was be more connected with the community. Even with these four walls, it was easy to reimagine that and invite our sellers into this space.”

Other points of interests surround the office’s central boulevard, too, including a spotlight wall where the company partners with various internal community groups to design an inspiring installation each month. Another notable feature is the grand staircase, which climbs three floors, and Maya Angelou’s poem “Rise” was recently installed on its risers. “It’s another example of how we use another architectural piece of the office to highlight who we are,” Gorman says.

Square’s other global offices similarly reflect their local settings because, as Gorman explains, imprinting San Francisco on a London office, for example, wouldn’t be the best way to tell that community’s story. Although the offices are individualized, they are still organized so that Square’s employees can settle in easily. It’s the number one compliment from employees.

“When people travel from one office to another,” Gorman says, “they can simply open their laptop and get to work.”

Workplaces for the Worker

Laurie Turano puts employees first when creating new spaces for Fresenius Medical Care

by Valerie Menard

Designing an office doesn’t typically engender thoughts of creativity. Fluorescent lights, desks, and cubicles typically conspire to create a functional—if unimaginative—environment. However, for Laurie Turano, senior corporate designer at Fresenius Medical Care North America, a new work space is a tantalizing blank canvas.

“What I design is about people, light, and airflow,” Turano says. “I want to create a space for employees to be comfortable at work and to collaborate. It’s not so much about decorating the space but how the space functions.”

That drive is a family trait. The Long Island native is the middle of three daughters, born to Sybil and Emanuel Turano, an artist and an architect, respectively. Her father took full advantage of raising a family in New York, taking his kids on visits to the Guggenheim Museum and the World Trade Center.

“At the Guggenheim, I’d go to the top of the spiral and then run all the way down,” Turano says. “I didn’t really get exactly what Frank Lloyd Wright intended with his design, but I got the fact that it was round, fast, and moving. It wasn’t just a square building.” Similarly, while riding the elevator to the top floor of the World Trade Center, Turano could feel how the building had give.

Still, architecture wasn’t her first inclination. Following a youth spent in dance classes, she hoped to be a ballerina, and she even chose art history as her major at Stephens College. However, after graduating, she realized that her prospects were limited, so she had to rethink her goals.

“When I was younger, I had a dollhouse but spent more time redoing the flooring and arranging furniture than playing with dolls,” she says. “So, I decided to get another degree, this time in interior design.”

Laurie Turano puts together idea boards for each of Fresenius Medical Care’s projects. Pictured are a few of the materials and images for a building the company recently gutted.

Turano recently improved the cafeteria at one Fresenius office, with more two- and four-seat tables for solo or small-group meals.

She pursued a BA at Endicott College while caring for her three young children. Later, she returned to Endicott to earn an MA in interior architecture, which she says was a life-changing experience. “I wanted to perfect my craft, and I knew I needed something to take me to the next level,” she says. “It was all I had hoped for and more. I loved learning and became a better, deeper designer as a result of it.”

She also gained an understanding of worker-conscious design that considers the employee as well as the space. To illustrate what that means, she mentions a video chat she once had with her younger sister, a law professor at the University of London. At one point, the lights in her sister’s office turned off, and her sister started jumping up and down. When the lights came back on, Turano asked her sister what had happened. The building had recently been renovated to include lighting set to a timer and motion sensor.

“As my sister explained, the designers forgot to consider that most of the offices would be filled with academics who sit for hours at their desks, so there wasn’t enough motion to keep the lights on,” Turano

“What I design is about people, light, and airflow. I want to create a space for employees to be comfortable at work and to collaborate.”

says. “People who don’t think about the user do things like that. I think about users first, then design.”

At Fresenius, she has had numerous opportunities to apply her skills—most recently to the company’s call center in Lake Bluff, Illinois. Turano begins her process by investigating a site and observing its employees. At the call center, one issue was that the managers and workers were in separate buildings, which she deemed inefficient. Additionally, the call center was in an office park, secluded from any local eateries, and when Turano saw its cafeteria, she was shocked.

“It was a dingy, beige room with twelve huge tables and tiny windows looking out to a parking lot and smoking hut,” she says. “This was no place to eat lunch and was without nearby options for eating. Also, many people feel conscious about taking up a table for 10 when they are eating solo, so they tend to eat at their desks. Since the employees were on the phones all day with physicians and patients, I felt they should be able to have options in their day.”

So, Turano found a new building where managers and employees could work together, and she designed a cafeteria with two walls of windows, flooded with natural light and looking out on a hillside. The roomy café provides seats for two, four, or more for a lunch break, and there’s a cantilevered a counter along one window wall for those who want to get away from their desk and eat solo. The new building is also flanked by two highways, and there are seven-

Laurie Turano Senior Corporate Designer Fresenius Medical Care North America

teen eateries located within 500 steps of the doorway. “I had improved the quality of the employees’ day, even if just for their half hour of lunch,” Turano says. “What’s more thrilling than getting two groups together? Plus, I found room for growth.”

Her next challenge will be to design Fresenius’s new headquarters in Waltham, Massachusetts, as well as a nearby campus in Lexington, and she has the full support of her senior director, John Gioioso. “He said at my review, ‘You know, I let you do 95 percent of what you want in all the build-outs across the country,’ and he’s right!” Turano says.

She’ll design the new headquarters based on direction laid out by CEO William Valle. “He identified challenges in three areas: communication, collaboration, and coordination—the three C’s,” she says. “He wants us to focus on these to become a stronger company, and I design spaces for employees to be able to do just that. It’s very exciting in an in-house designer’s career to build out an entire company HQ. It’s a three-year -long project I’m thrilled to be able to do.”

Michael Miller

Design, Build, Repeat

Bob Bolton is helping lead San Diego International Airport into a new era of highly successful construction projects byJeffSilver

The San Diego County Regional Airport Authority entered a new era in 2005 when it began planning San Diego International Airport’s (SAN) Green Build expansion of Terminal 2—its first design-build construction project. The Airport Authority Board approved the transition from a traditional bid-design-build approach in an effort to avoid that approach’s common pitfalls: cost and schedule overruns, delay claims and litigation.

Progressive design-build scenarios create a partnership in which the builder helps guide the design phase and determines a guaranteed maximum price. But there were still initial concerns, according to Bob Bolton, SAN’s director of airport design and construction. “We thought we might lose control of design because the contract would be managed by the builder—but that was wrong,” Bolton says. “The builder provided practical expertise on design and cost issues and assumed full responsibility when problems arose.”

With the builder as the single point of contact for all parties, construction was streamlined for the Green Build and projects that followed: the Terminal 2 Parking Plaza and the Terminal 2 International Arrivals facility build-out.

“Our results were so positive that other agencies have asked our board for advice on how to implement design-build projects,” Bolton says.

Terminal 2 Expansion

Green Build construction began in 2009, just after the start of the national economic downturn. The resulting financial conditions eliminated scenarios for budgeted cost escalations and actually helped the project come in under budget.

The $1 billion Green Build was the largest in the SAN’s history. It included ten new gates, a dual-level roadway with enhanced curbside check-in, more security lanes, and expanded concessions. It also became the first commercial airport terminal in the world to receive Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Platinum certification from the U.S. Green Building Council.

“We always kept our sights on our original goal of achieving a minimum of silver certification,” Bolton says. “But through very intentional strategies that put the right expertise in the right places, we accumulated enough points to put us in the platinum range.”

San Diego International Airport’s Terminal 2

Parking Plaza is colorfully lit to create a more inviting atmosphere, Bob Bolton says.

Pablo Mason

The project gathered extensive documentation from subcontractors on the handling of construction materials and incorporated LEED innovation points— additional points from sustainable, environmentally friendly assets outside the formal terminal construction area. Examples were waste recycling programs, green cleaning processes, and solar panel arrays.

Benefits from the LEED efforts have included lower energy costs and water consumption, and extensive natural light that has contributed to energy savings and improved customer satisfaction surveys. The on-site solar farms supply 20 percent of SAN’s energy needs.

Terminal 2 Parking Plaza

The designation as a parking plaza was an intentional choice to indicate exceptional expectations for the Terminal 2 parking structure. Plans were to make it different from typical commercial garages that are dark, noisy, and filled with exhaust.

In addition to 2,900 parking stalls, the plaza includes glass front elevators, open light wells, a below-ground 100,000-gallon storm water capture and

reuse system, and two permanent public art installations. It also provides an automated parking management system that offers advance reservations, guides customers to an available parking spot, and supports online payment to streamline exiting.

The plaza design was guided by the phrases “safety by design” and “see and be seen.” This led to a safer and more inviting environment, Bolton says. The interior of the concrete structure is painted white, maximizes natural light through three light wells and glass elevators, and uses energy efficient computercontrolled lighting.

“We’ve created an entirely new customer experience,” Bolton says. “The light, the color, stress-free access in and out, and public art all help create a more inviting and personal experience than you would expect from a parking structure.”

The design-build approach helped the team complete the parking plaza in twenty months, generated extensive cost savings associated with the concrete preparation, pouring, and finishing, and helped proactively address building code issues associated with the art installations.

Pablo Mason

Terminal 2 International Arrivals Facility Build-Out

The International Arrivals facility build-out presented Bolton with what he called a Mission Impossible assignment. The project paved the way to double the number of SAN’s international gates. To accommodate the increased volume of international passengers and be ready for new international airlines’ arrivals in the summer of 2018, a 130,000 square-foot space within the Green Build had to be built-out in fourteen months— ten months shorter than the original plan.

Because Customs and Border Protection has stringent standards that apply to customs facilities, Bolton and his team were in constant contact with the agency’s local office to address compliance issues. This facilitated finding solutions to issues such as requirements for time delays on emergency exits that would interfere with SAN’s fire alarm systems, and technology standards that had changed since the plans were originally drawn up as part of the Green Build Terminal 2 expansion.

Much of the facility’s construction occurred overnight and had to be finished before the airport opened to passengers in the morning. “We worked very closely with the contractor to draw up carefully thought-out work and contingency plans,” Bolton says. “That made what could have been an impossible schedule very successful.”

A message from Turner-PCL, a joint venture:

The Terminal 2 West Federal Inspection Service (FIS) buildout, completed in June 2018, accommodates increased capacity needs by expanding processing areas, adding a second baggage-reclaim device and more queuing space in the lower-level customs hall, and utilizing the newest Customs and Border Protection processing technology.

Bob Bolton Director of Airport Design & Construction San Diego International Airport

Keeping Physical Retail Relevant

In the digital age, Lands’ End is focusing on the experiential aspects of brick-and-mortar retail to boost customer engagement, with help from Melissa Titcher

by Rebecca Roberts

When Melissa Titcher moved to the US from Australia 21 years ago, she jumped into the dynamic world of retail. After nine years at French Connection, she joined Lands’ End in 2007, where she has since cultivated a career in visual merchandising and construction. Now, as director of store planning and design construction, Titcher is channeling her experiences to drive her ambition and innovation at the global lifestyle retailer. She is evolving the American lifestyle brand’s legacy of service and quality products by optimizing multichannel customer experiences around the world.

“Reestablishing myself was a challenge, and it feels like a major accomplishment,” Titcher says. “Being able to get a foot in the door in the retail industry here and building a reputation over again has been extremely rewarding.”

Her first experience working in the retail industry was on the front lines, in a store, which she says taught her how the in-store experience affects both customers and sales associates. Today, at Lands’ End, Titcher is in the midst of aggressively expanding the company’s portfolio of stores with a new retail concept that provides a seamless customer experience between the digital marketplace and brick-and-mortar stores while underscoring the brand’s emphasis on loyalty, family, and functionality. Founded in Chicago in 1963, Lands’ End has spent decades establishing an agile heritage brand that Titcher and her team are equipping for success in the decades to come.

The contemporary Lands’ End customer is sophisticated but not fussy, values products that serve a purpose, wants simple solutions, and tends to be loyal

Melissa Titcher Director of Store Planning & Design Construction

Lands’ End

Lands’ End’s Melissa Titcher is helping the company make its brick-and-mortar locations more experiential to continue to draw in customers in the online age.

to the brand, according to Titcher. This customer visits brick-and-mortar stores to try on items, talk with an associate, or exchange products purchased online. Lands’ End stores are designed with these customers in mind, supporting e-commerce and serving as a platform for brand storytelling.

Fulfilling these objectives begins with site selection. Lands’ End opens stores in areas where it already has a large customer base stemming from its catalog and landsend.com. The design of Lands’ End stores is highly tailored to evoke a sense of home, family, and comfort. “Each store’s exterior is modeled off of a residential feel, with some decorative exterior lighting,” Titcher says. “That helps you feel like you’re walking up to the Lands’ End home.”

Millwork surrounding the doors is custom made. “The doors are a signature piece that help define the space and create this moment where you’re walking into somewhere with a presence,” Titcher says.

As customers enter a store, they walk through an archway that resembles the foyer of a house. From there, custom flooring, laid out like a runway, directs

customers’ attention to a 12-foot-high experience wall featuring a large monitor that plays video content.

“This is the first time we’ve done more than static imagery,” Titcher says. “It creates a lot of visual movement in the store. It creates some energy and excitement. We have great stories to tell about how our products help serve our customers’ needs and life. We wanted to bring this to life in a more modern and digitally driven way.”

Other design elements of Lands’ End’s store interiors reinforce the brand’s notion of home and family. The cash wrap is made to look like a kitchen table and stationed in a prominent, central location. It feels more like a meeting place than a spot purely for transactions. The fitting rooms have a cushioned seating area, where friends and family can wait while a customer tries on products. A fireplace mantle that is custom made in a woodshop at Lands’ End’s Dodgeville, Wisconsin, campus faces the seating area and displays heritage artwork, including catalogue covers from throughout the years. These features make the fitting area more social, allowing customers to experience Lands’ End’s products themselves as well as the brand’s lifestyle vision.

Nancy Giard/Lands’ End

“Each store’s exterior is modeled off of a residential feel . . . that helps you feel like you’re walking up to the Lands’ End home.”

The lighting scheme and acoustics in the new stores are also modeled around the idea of comfort and home. Pendant lighting highlights the front entrance and cash wrap, but lighting in the fitting rooms is softer to create a more intimate atmosphere. Music plays in the background at a volume that does not prevent customers from having a conversation with associates or with each other.

At only 5,000–7,000 square feet in area, the new concept stores need to maximize the space they have. Each store’s layout is divided into zones, separated by wing walls. This makes it easy for customers to navigate from one product type to another, and the flexibility of the fixture package allows each store to customize the space allotment for seasonal items such as swimsuits and winter coats.

Aside from moving merchandise, Titcher says, the role of a Lands’ End store is to “provide opportunity and access to the brand that is going to be easy and functional.” If a customer comes in to make an exchange, the store has an opportunity for the customer to engage with the brand in a meaningful way. While Titcher says the opportunity to build the new store concept from scratch is one of the most exciting aspects of her role, on a microlevel, the new concept uses the retail experience to build interest and loyalty in each individual customer.

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Built on Sound Beliefs

When designing CHG Healthcare’s new headquarters, Bobby Stevens embarked on a quest to physically embody the company’s core values

by Stephanie Zeilenga

When creating a company’s headquarters, any designer worth their salt will turn to the business’s core values for inspiration.

More difficult, however, is representing these values in a tangible way—showing someone a physical structure and explaining in no uncertain terms just how it embodies an organization. But, after nine years spent as an interior designer in commercial architecture, Bobby Stevens was up for such a challenge at CHG Healthcare, the largest privately held healthcare staffing company in the US.

As CHG's current director of real estate and project management, Stevens guides the workplace strategy for all the company’s locations nationwide. She recently led CHG’s high-profile headquarters project, which resulted in a new 281,000-square-foot LEED-certified campus in Midvale, Utah.

Tailored to employees’ needs and meant to feel more like a home than an office, the campus includes two five-story buildings connected by a glass “People Hub” with casual lounge areas as well as meeting and dining spaces. To kick off the project, Stevens and her

Outdoors, CHG Healthcare’s new HQ includes an amphitheater, a basketball court, tables, seating for warmer seasons, and heated walkways for the winter.

team conducted research for a year to determine the exact needs of the company and its employees.

“We’re a high-growth company and are always moving and changing to meet the needs of the healthcare market, with teams growing and shrinking based on that market,” she says. “We asked very specific questions about storage—what works, what doesn’t. Every decision we made was based on what people told us. We also made sure to tell people why we did certain things, which helps them feel more comfortable with changes.”

One of the most significant findings was that there are between 25 and 50 desk moves a week, thus creating a significant amount of downtime. The solution? Stop moving workstations and start moving people.

To accomplish this, Stevens and her team outfitted the CHG headquarters with height-adjustable workstations bolstered by dual-monitor arms, adjustable lighting, and personal power plugs. Since each workstation is now a “plug-and-play” experience, employees can get their space put together in mere minutes after moving. Gone are the days of lugging one’s hardware and belongings from desk to desk, then waiting for IT to connect them.

“Every decision we made was based on what people told us. We also made sure to tell people why we did certain things.”

The headquarters’ meeting spaces were built with a similar flexibility in mind, resulting in customizable features and demountable walls. “We created a kit of parts we can play with, which allows us to be agile,” Stevens says.

Likewise, the “People Hub,” a nonreservable, indoor-outdoor public space, allows employees to gather in a more casual environment, take a break outside, or simply enjoy a change of scenery while working—all without having to leave campus.

But, the anchor of the headquarters goes back to core values—in CHG’s case, five: putting people first, continuous improvement, integrity and ethics, quality and professionalism, and growth. When designing the workplace, Stevens didn’t just use these words as a guiding light; she physically manifested each one. That is to say, each of the building’s five floors corresponds to a core value and a specific color. The second floor, for instance, the “Continuous Improvement” floor, is paired with the royal color of purple and twinkles with a light installation—its constantly pulsating light reflecting the theme of evolution. The third floor is the “Growth” floor and incorporates various green elements, including a growing plant wall.

CHG’s core values, including quality and professionalism, are displayed as art throughout the HQ.

Further leaning into the theme of growth, the learning and development center has a “making a difference” wall that displays stats about CHG’s customer experience: the number of people served, how many rental cars and airline tickets have been booked, etc. “As we grow, it will be updated,” Stevens says. “It helps connect employees with the larger purpose of the company.”

Employees also get to connect on a more individual level through some of visuals around the building. Local artists have been commissioned to paint temporary walls with quotes from employees—a visualization of how each of them has viewed their time at CHG.

Before move-in day, Stevens and her team organized employee tours through headquarters. Staff members got to see their seats, learn how their workstations operated, and familiarize themselves with the building. When they moved in, they were even given large yellow “help” cards that could be waved for immediate assistance.

“We tried to make the whole process geared toward having a good experience,” Stevens says. And that means more than just having a good building.

Section 04: Portraits

Sharing stories that detail motivations, ambitions, and missions of executives in the building industry and getting a firsthand look at what they are achieving today

In his role as director of facilities operations for CBS Corporation, Paul Sears balances the immediate and future needs of the broadcaster

by

Stephanie Zeilenga

Photos by Cass Davis

Paul Sears Director of Facilities Operations

Turning on your favorite TV show is effortless, but every moment of entertainment is fueled by a behindthe-scenes team of engineers who build and maintain studios and make sure all technical systems run smoothly. At CBS, that team is led by Paul Sears.

As CBS’s director of facilities operations, Sears oversees a team of 27, including 15 operating engineers and 10 electricians. He describes his leadership style as “democratic,” working collaboratively and giving team members enough autonomy to solve challenges on their own. Together, the team manages the New York City Broadcast Center’s 811,000 square feet— which is spread out over eight buildings and takes up almost an entire city block— as well as 290,000 feet of leased space. The team maintains operations and performs maintenance on the mechanical, electrical, plumbing, and vertical transportation systems at CBS.

Sears partly attributes his success to his drive to constantly improve himself and chase new challenges. In the early days of his engineering career, he took every opportunity to gain new credentials, earning his master’s degree in electrical engineering and an MBA. He also became a licensed professional engineer in New York. He first landed at CBS in 2006, as a project manager. “After close to five years in utilities, I was looking to make a career move that aligned with my personal interests,” he says. His résumé ended up in the hands of CBS’s VP of design and construction. Impressed, he cold-called Sears and offered him an interview.

After four years at CBS, Sears left in search of career growth. He spent time at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and HBO before being hired on as a project manager at JRM Construction Management. While at JRM, Sears managed the design-build of SPYSCAPE, New York City’s spy museum that opened in 2018. An unusually complicated, intricate project,

the design intent was to create a city within a city. “We built multiple freestanding structures within the space to give the appearance of walking between buildings down a city street, and inside each ‘building’ is an interactive exhibit related to spycraft,” Sears explains.

Sears’s work at JRM also led him right back to CBS’s door. He managed a variety of projects for the broadcasting company through JRM, including a two-year electrical infrastructure upgrade at the Broadcast Center, completed in 2017. “We added a new utility service point of entry, a new UPS system to add redundancy to the existing systems, and an additional generator to CBS’s existing generator yard,” Sears says. The project also required Sears and his team to collaborate with multiple city agencies, including the parks department, the department of transportation, and the department of environmental protection.

As a JRM project manager, Sears also oversaw a lightning-quick renovation of the Ed Sullivan Theater, now home of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, after the comedian took over for David Letterman. The goal was to modernize the look of the theater and rebrand it for the show’s new host, all while maintaining a feel that would be cohesive with the show’s history. “We had nine weeks to renovate the main theater space, replace major air-handling units, and renovate three floors of office space that hadn’t been touched since Letterman started the show in 1993,” Sears says.

Every project comes with surprises, and this was no different. The removal of ductwork from the ceiling revealed the original dome structure and stunning stained-glass windows. “We ended up restoring a lot of finishes back to their original form, which wasn’t part of the original plan,” Sears explains.

811,000

plus 290,000 square feet of leased space.

Paul Sears and his team oversee

square feet of studio, news, and work space at CBS’s New York City Broadcast Center,

Sears and his team uncovered the original domed ceiling of the Ed Sullivan Theater after removing ductwork that had been in place since at least the early days of David Letterman’s tenure on The Late Show

Skilled artisans came in to revive the theater’s plasterwork and columns, and they also refabricated missing or damaged stained-glass elements.

Within the New York City Broadcast Center, Sears helped finalize a complete upgrade of the electrical infrastructure in 2017, including in the control rooms.

During his time managing JRM projects at CBS, Sears developed a close friendship with the director of facilities operations there. When the director decided he was ready to retire in early 2018, he called Sears up and encouraged him to apply to be his replacement. It was an easy decision for Sears. “I always liked the people and the culture, and being on the contractor side, I had missed the challenges of project planning and strategy,” he says.

Sears stepped into the director of facilities operations role in early 2018. “There’s a lot that goes into producing TV and broadcasting it out to consumers,” he says. The highest priority is maintaining uninterrupted up time— after all, TV never sleeps. “That starts with ensuring your power systems are operating flawlessly and your air-conditioning systems are cooling the equipment that brings the content to air,” Sears explains.

Beyond running the day-to-day, Sears is involved in capital projects at CBS, from ideation to completion. In the early stages, he weighs in with the design team and the design and construction department. “This includes evaluating the existing infrastructure and determining if there is enough capacity to cover the power and HVAC needs,” he says. “I then follow the entire project through commissioning to make sure the systems operate as designed at turnover of the building and our team of engineers and electricians are trained on the new installation, since they will be taking over the responsibility to operate it moving forward.”

Sears is also part of a team working on CBS’s corporate-level energy-management initiative, which aims to reduce the company’s energy consumption and carbon footprint. “We’ve looked at ways to source our energy responsibly and currently are involved in a program to purchase from renewable energy sources, such as hydro power,” Sears says. “We are also part of a gridsaver program, where we remove load from the utility system and support it on our generators to reduce load during high-impact days.” At the Broadcast Center in New York, his team is looking into replacing lighting with LED fixtures and working with Vertiv, the original

equipment manufacturer for the majority of the center’s CAC units, to complete upgrades that would allow the data center to function better, saving significant energy.

Always hungry for new challenges, Sears enjoys having to balance the immediate needs of CBS with its forward-looking projects and initiatives. “For me,” he says, “it made a lot of sense to come back in a position with more responsibility and new challenges.”

Congratulations to Paul Sears & CBS Corporation on your well-deserved recognition in American Builders Quarterly

Well-Fitted

Jeffrey Totaro

Office Design

For Under Armour, Scott Gassen focuses on how its corporate real estate can serve a strategic function and reflect the company’s mission

by Rebecca Roberts

For the first 11 years of his career, Scott Gassen worked for the Whiting-Turner Contracting Company. While there, he was encouraged to grow and explore his interest in Building Information Modeling (BIM) and sustainable design and construction practices. He also “learned a tremendous amount about the business of real estate and how it influences culture in multiple industries,” he says. “It was a strong foundation for the transition to corporate real estate. We would have to maintain the morale of a job site with 400 workers and think about how to inspire them.”

Today, Gassen brings his business expertise to bear on the corporate facilities of Under Armour, where he serves as director of project delivery. His approach to building and maintaining the company’s global footprint is grounded in learning as much as he can about the needs of his teammates and using the built environment to help them succeed.

This approach to real estate as an enabler of success is directly in line with the Under Armour brand. Founded in 1996, the company produces apparel, footwear, and accessories designed to help athletes achieve their peak performance. “We look at our buildings like another Under Armour product,” Gassen says. “What can we incorporate into the building that can provide even the slightest edge?”

Right now, the elements producing that edge are at the intersection of culture, place-making, and technology. Gassen views corporate real estate as a strategic support function for Under Armour and bases his decisions on the needs and input of others, who are part of the Under Armour team. He works closely with IT to determine how technological systems within a building can help facilitate business goals and relieve friction points that would otherwise slow down the progress of Under Armour’s employees.

Under Armour’s Sydney, Australia, office was retrofitted into an existing industrial space by Renascent, a local company.

Courtesy of Under Armour

Scott Gassen Director of Project Delivery Under Armour

“We

When soliciting feedback, Gassen asks others not only what they need but why they need it. “We get interesting and compelling information that helps us consider how culture, space, and technology harmonize with each other,” Gassen says.

In turn, his team’s work embodies Under Armour’s vision of inspiring consumers with performance solutions they never knew they needed but can’t imagine living without. “Real estate creates a backdrop for our teammates to execute the mission and vision of the company,” Gassen says.

Gassen describes the various buildings on the Under Armour campus as an interconnected network. The campus has grown organically over the years, and as Under Armour continues to grow, his real estate strategy is aimed at increasing and enhancing connectedness among teammates. “We have studied spatial relationships quite extensively, and in every renovation we do, we think about how to interconnect spaces to build on that network,” Gassen says.

In terms of design, Gassen focuses on functionality, and he prioritizes wayfinding and clear navigation to ensure connectivity. Although his formal education in civil engineering draws on quantitative analysis, he is quick to tout the value of qualitative design choices. He believes Under Armour’s corporate structures should convey a consistency but also reflect their local cultures. Natural light is a particularly important characteristic. While its effects may not be quantifiable, natural light simply improves the way Under Armour employees experience their environment. The same goes for adaptive reuses of existing buildings and elements such as green walls. At first glance, they may seem unnecessary, but by exemplifying sustainability, creativity, and uniqueness, they underscore Under Armour’s values in a special way.

Under Armour’s San Francisco office is built into a former warehouse space in the South of Market neighborhood.

The San Francisco office’s kitchen includes a demonstration area where employees can shoot videos on healthy cooking.

Matthew Millman Photography

When Gassen joined Under Armour in 2014 to lead project delivery, the role was a new one on the corporate real estate team. One of the things he has enjoyed most is the opportunity to effectively apply his construction background to corporate real estate. “Learning laterally about leasing, development, facilities, and operations—incorporated with a deeper understanding of design—started to set the framework for future goals,” he says.

Gassen’s goals are rooted in the idea that real estate needs to evolve alongside societal and economic trends to best position the Under Armour team for present and future growth. There is no fear of implementing new strategies and altering them as needed. “We might deploy something different and unique to Under Armour,” Gassen says. “Not because of a trending real estate or design idea but because we listened and partnered with our teammates. Then, we measure it and make sure it’s working. If not, we adjust it. This creates a learning environment and organic partnerships.”

Gassen interacts with various Under Armour teammates across the world and knows this is an opportunity to leverage knowledge from other cultures. “I’m able to be the conduit that relays pieces of information that might not have found their way back through traditional channels,” he says.

Ultimately, Gassen knows it all comes together at the team level. From designer to laborer to end user, he understands the inner workings of every role in getting to any project’s end goal. As he works to maintain his real estate strategy in the face of new construction and delivery challenges, he remains grounded in the day-to-day efforts of his team and is the first to champion their achievements in overcoming adversity and adapting to change. He knows it is not simply about building a bigger campus for the sake of building.

“Little moments along the journey can be major accomplishments in navigating through the complexities of any project,” he says. “Getting things to work together in real estate for a tremendous outcome creates multiple small moments that register the most with me as they all cumulate into the larger vision.”

Construction (DPR) is a forward-thinking national general contractor and construction manager specializing in technically complex and sustainable projects for the healthcare, advanced technology/mission critical, life sciences, higher education, and commercial markets. Founded in 1990, DPR is a privately held, employee-owned company that has grown into a multibillion-dollar organization with offices around the country.

Under Armour | Baltimore, MD

Shoe Palace’s Perfect Pair

Facilities and operations often interface at Shoe Palace, where Elliot Flaum and Shawn Higdon team up to coordinate the footwear retailer’s next steps

by Clint Worthington

Courtesy of Shoe Palace

Since Elliot Flaum’s arrival at Shoe Palace almost three years ago, the burgeoning footwear retailer has doubled in size. As the vice president of construction and facilities, Flaum has navigated the rapid expansion from 75 stores to 150 across the United States. Now, with each site under Flaum’s supervision, the larger footprint is supporting Shoe Palace’s transformation into one of the most trusted athletic shoe and apparel chains in the country.

Flaum credits much of Shoe Palace’s success to his close partnership with the vice president of operations, Shawn Higdon. Throughout their tenure (Higdon joined in 2014, Flaum in 2016), the executives have partnered to ensure the success of the remodeling of Shoe Palace’s existing stores and the building of 30 new stores per year.

Together, the two Shoe Palace leaders have a symbiotic relationship that involves checks and balances and a spirit of open, honest communication. That dynamic allows them to weigh in on each other’s corporate responsibilities without judgment and facilitate the strategic changes in store for Shoe Palace.

On Creating an Effective Partnership

Flaum sees his collaboration with Higdon like bowling: “I set the pins up, and he mows them down,” he explains. Higdon coordinates the staffing in each location that Flaum and his team construct. The two check in with one another two to four times a day to identify issues or share ideas on how to be ahead of the competition.

One of the most important elements of their partnership is the comfort with which they can veer into each other’s lanes and give feedback. “When he tours a store and sees an issue, he can call me and say, ‘Hey, I’m at this store, and something isn’t right here,’ and I can address it,” Flaum says. “At the same time, I’ll be at a store, noticing an operational issue, and I can feel comfortable that I can bring this to him.”

Flaum and Higdon have built a strong relationship based on professional respect. “If Shawn calls me for something, it holds a lot of weight,” Flaum says. Both executives listen to each other’s concerns, suggestions, and ideas and treat them with the utmost importance.

On Managing Facilities with Higdon

From a facilities standpoint, Flaum welcomes Higdon’s input. “To an extent, Shawn is my customer,” Flaum says. The two frequently discuss the designs and layouts of new stores together, collaborating on aesthetic choices and the installation of fixtures, among other aspects. Flaum sees tremendous value in Higdon’s operations perspective and the way it helps him enhance the presentation of the stores. “Although I don't manage 3,000 employees like he does, those people are directly affected by my actions,” Flaum says. “And that must be my priority.”

In that respect, Flaum’s work in facilities must take Higdon’s staff into consideration. If an air-conditioning unit breaks down, for instance, he understands not only the urgency of the issue but also the larger scope of impact: employees are affected just as much as the customers. Largely thanks to the positive relationships he’s developed with vendors, he’s able to complete work swiftly, and he’s proud of that. “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been told by Shawn, ‘I can’t believe it’s fixed already,’” Flaum says.

Elliot Flaum VP of Construction & Facilities Shoe Palace

Shawn Higdon VP of Operations Shoe Palace

Priority Lighting is a national account lighting distributor of high quality lighting products – we help our valued clientele with everything from a simple bulb replacement to energy-efficient retrofits, a single fixture that completes a room to an entire construction package.

Elliot Flaum and Shawn Higdon work closely, overseeing the construction and operation of 30 new Shoe Palace locations per year.

On the Culture of Collaboration

The partnership with Higdon stems from the culture of teamwork and accountability cultivated at Shoe Palace. To ensure his team’s success, Flaum follows an established leadership philosophy: “trust but verify.” He often checks in with his team, which must perform its stated tasks and solve problems as expected. That hands-on awareness is different from micromanagement, according to Flaum. “If something goes wrong, I want to make sure I do my due diligence,” he says, “so that I may be just as accountable.”

Guided by this strong sense of responsibility, Flaum approaches his role with tremendous transparency. Shoe Palace’s operational culture entails a relatively flat communication structure, where one person on the sales floor can easily connect with almost anyone in upper management on the phone at any given time. It’s a foundational value of Shoe Palace as a company, Flaum says. “Titles are there for specific reasons, but outside of those responsibilities, they mean nothing,” he adds.

Flaum appreciates this structure and its ability to ensure a true open-door policy for employees. “In my experience, when other executives say, ‘My door’s always open,’ it often isn’t,” he says. “I try to follow through with that by keeping my door actually open.” Flaum aims to foster more of the transparent, constructive communication that makes his partnership with Higdon so successful while leading Shoe Palace into the future.

Courtesy of Shoe Palace

Working Toward the Endgame

University of Texas at Austin’s Michael Carmagnola is using servant leadership to motivate his team through a multiyear spaceallocation initiative that is only a few years from completion

by Clint Worthington

As the director of project management and construction services (PMCS) at the University of Texas at Austin (UT), Michael Carmagnola has a lot on his plate. UT is one of the largest universities in the country—and the biggest institution Carmagnola has worked on in his 35 years in the construction field. “It’s a city,” he says, noting that its roughly 20,000 employees serve about 52,000 students across nearly 200 buildings.

Alongside his regular responsibilities managing small- and medium-size design and construction projects on campus, he is currently overseeing an ambitious space-allocation initiative that aims to renovate targeted buildings in the core campus to create a more efficient, productive experience for students.

“I’ve seen the whole range of good and bad at all different places,” Carmagnola says of his decades of experience in construction, which helps him immensely with the size and scale of UT Austin’s many projects. Among his major concerns today is ensuring that his office continually meets the needs of the university, which can be challenging; between athletics, engineering, and other departments at UT,

Among the projects Michael Carmagnola has planned for the University of Texas at Austin is a new welcome center for students.

“We have some of the most dedicated people I’ve ever worked with. They’re smart, skilled, and they care. That’s huge.”

the PMCS department serves as many as 30 different clients at a time. What is Carmagnola’s secret to handling all these responsibilities?

“Prayer,” he says with a laugh.

Humor aside, Carmagnola stresses client focus as the key to ensuring completed work. His 145-person department divides projects between management teams focused on each school client, allowing there to be a senior liaison for day-to-day issues for any ongoing work. In addition, Carmagnola has improved many centralized processes throughout his department, including premade forms, contracts, and construction standards, which make the work much more efficient.

Amid all this streamlining and centralizing is Carmagnola’s dedication to professional development

Courtesy of McKinney York Architects

and servant leadership among his employees. “The key is to be available and support your folks,” he says, adding that it’s also important to build trust within internal staff. One example of this availability came during the recent renovation of the PMCS office itself, which moved Carmagnola’s office from a far corner to a spot right next to the department’s entry door. “People can come in, and my office is right there,” he says. It makes it easier for team members to come to him for questions and advice.

This work to better centralize and organize his department has been valuable for UT’s massive initiative to improve space allocation throughout its 20 million-square-foot campus. In May 2016, university president Gregory L. Fenves wanted to look more closely at how space was used across campus and repurpose core campus space for student use. To that end, a study was conducted, evaluating 45 different units across campus and interviewing faculty and staff to determine whether their needs were being met. Carmagnola and his department quickly determined that many spaces were due for renovation. A lot of existing space was allocated for office and support use, and for the past two years, Carmagnola has been spearheading efforts to optimize it for student use.

According to Carmagnola, UT’s space needs can be solved in one of two ways: constructing new buildings or renovating existing ones. For its space-allocation initiative, the latter strategy was chosen. To date, Carmagnola estimates, the project has touched 270,000 square feet of space, emptying two buildings and repurposing them for academic use. The team has executed minor renovations, updated furniture, added IT support, and improved functional arrangements. One of the biggest projects thus far will be the transformation of an area in what is called the Main Building, in the middle of campus, into a one-stop center for student-support departments such as financial aid, registrar, admissions, and more.

Carmagnola estimates another two to three years before the initiative is finished. Among other future projects, he plans to create a welcome center for prospective students and their families and a dedicated career center. However, he is extremely pleased with the work done thus far. “Most of what’s ahead of us is the endgame—more student support spaces in the campus core,” he says.

Along with the massive amount of work involved in the space-allocation initiative, the PMCS department

has experienced a 20 percent increase in its workload over the past year, a challenge Carmagnola has faced with excitement (and, as he says, “more prayer”.) To meet the increase, his team has been working to further centralize processes and improve client focus, including by implementing a new project-management technology system that, among other improvements, will allow construction inspectors to do on-site field reports with tablets. These tools are vital to his team’s work. “I can load people up all day long, but if I don’t give them the tools, support, and pay they need, it’s a futile effort,” Carmagnola says.

Carmagnola credits his team members with the massive accomplishments his department has achieved at UT over the past few years. “We have some of the most dedicated people I’ve ever worked with,” he says. “They’re smart, skilled, and they care. That’s huge.”

Michael Carmagnola Director of Project Management & Construction Services

University of Texas at Austin

Tollan Black

A Strategic Shift to Integration

Squeezed by the financial crisis, Point 1 has regrouped and reemerged as a systems-integration leader

by Joseph Kay

Point 1 was founded in 1998 with a name that reflects what the company strives to be: a one-stop shop for all low-voltage solutions such as security, fire- and lifesafety, and voice-data systems.

That namesake and approach has led to healthy growth over Point 1’s 19 years in business. A few short years after its inception, though, Point 1 realized that, in order to be a true one-stop low-voltage solution, it needed to add systems integration to its suite of services. It was time for a strategic change, so Point 1 repositioned itself as an integration-solutions provider.

Shane Stoltenberg, the firm’s director of construction, says the change of direction has paid dividends as he oversees construction and project management and stewards the company’s relationships with its clients and workforce. “Our offering is unique,” he says. “It not only differentiates us from our competition, but it also allows us to add value to our customers. We do it all.”

Point 1 strategically remains a midsize entity, providing its A team to every client on every project. The team is nimble, and with fewer levels of management, the company can adapt to changes at a faster pace and lower cost than big-name, big-footprint

Shane Stoltenberg Director of Construction

1

Point

Michael Bruner

competitors. The company can also identify problems and communicate solutions quickly, and that means lower prices and more personal service for clients. “We really tie the customer to our team,” Stoltenberg says. “We have some clients who ask, ‘Well, who will we deal with in Europe?’ It’s the same person they see here in the United States. They like that.”

He’s also quick to note that most of Point 1’s leadership has climbed the ranks inside the company. “Our people actually care; it’s more than just a job or a contract,” he says. “It’s not about profits; it’s about partnership.”

With its growth, Point 1 has considered branch opportunities but has consistently decided against them. The company’s working culture is key to its success. The demands for its services has taught the company to be intentional about the opportunities it takes, too. Its goals are simply to maintain a stellar reputation and continue to grow at a responsible rate. “Some clients are so focused on being the low-bid win that they lose the clarification of a responsible bid,” Stoltenberg says. “When a client’s focused strictly on price, we tend not to bid; it doesn’t match who we are. We’re trying to provide what they want and service it properly.”

Three Point 1 Partners

Airbnb

Airbnb was the first of Point 1’s global clients, and the working relationship inspired Point 1’s current culture. Airbnb’s “belong anywhere” corporate philosophy was legible in its work space, where shared open areas took the place of traditional offices and closed doors, and Point 1’s space now shares that vibe. “We changed our office structure to create more open collaboration,” Stoltenberg says. “We put our teams together in these open areas, and they’re able to quickly collaborate and problem-solve. When you start to work with a company day in and day out, you start to see how their culture works, and you start to adapt. They expect you to be able to operate within their culture, and then you start to see benefits of how they do business.”

Blocka Construction

Blocka Construction subcontracts its most challenging projects to Point 1. The jobs demand creative thinking and precise execution, and the ongoing partnership has raised the level of Point 1’s performance. “When they need someone they can trust, they go to us,” Stoltenberg says. “They look at us to help them with the harder projects.”

Nutanix Industries

Nutanix is a cloud-computing provider that specializes in virtualized infrastructure. Headquartered in San Jose, California, it maintains offices around the world. Point 1’s Nutanix contact stems from a relationship with a previous employer, and since it was first established, Point 1 has broadened the services it provides to the company.

“At first, we were just helping them with construction consulting,” Stoltenberg says. “We weren’t doing installations or security services, but that’s evolved. Now, we are the installation provider for security systems.”

Walter Elliott Photography

Georgia on His Mind

Daryl Long and his company, ICB Construction, are giving back to the Peach State’s communities—one building at a time

by Clint Worthington

Back in 1990, after working together in the construction industry for many years, Daryl Long and Ronnie Blalock partnered up with the vision of a construction company focused on its community. “We were committed to and passionate about demonstrating our abilities—brick by brick and building by building—in the communities where we lived,” Long says.

They founded ICB Construction that year, in Middle, Georgia. It was incorporated in 1993, and it has since grown from its modest roots into a major regional business that has worked on more than $400 million worth of facilities across its home state, including corporate complexes, industrial facilities, medical facilities, religious spaces, educational complexes, and municipal buildings.

As the company has grown, so has its staff. In 2012, ICB welcomed a construction industry veteran, Kenna Scragg, who currently serves as the president of ICB Construction Group. Scragg’s experience has brought a vast knowledge of educational construction, which has allowed the company to reach a new depth of community involvement in the educational sector.

Even as it has grown, though, it has never wavered from its dedication to the areas in which it works. “We feel like our communities have given more to us than we could ever give back; these people are our community and friends,” says Long, now ICB’s CEO (Blalock is now vice president). “We want to be involved in their lives in a way that has a positive impact.”

Community uplift is therefore a top priority for the firm. ICB takes every possible opportunity to hire and mentor local employees and subcontractors, helping them build skills that they can give back to the community. And, today the company works primarily on socially beneficial public projects, including schools,

parks, and libraries. Long feels such projects achieve uplift “from the service they ultimately deliver to the jobs that are produced to the sense of pride they instill in the communities’ families.”

ICB’s passion for community can even be found in some of the firm’s bigger projects across the state. For instance, the SE Little League Headquarters in the town of Warner Robins was a very personal project for Long. “It brought back memories of my time playing in the Little League,” he says. As the design-build contractor for the headquarters, ICB teamed up with JMA Architecture to completely design and construct the facility. “This is one of the most exciting projects we have worked on,” Long says, “and an opportunity we are certainly thankful for.”

An ambitious project ICB completed nearby was the Warner Robins Law Enforcement Center. The company was selected to be the construction manager “at risk,” before the design process began, meaning it was responsible for preconstruction services as well as the

facility’s completion. The 44,000-square-foot facility, now a cornerstone of Warner Robins’s governmental corridor, contains state-of-the-art law-enforcement resources, including laboratories, interview rooms, and more.

Meanwhile, back in Macon, ICB was recently involved in the construction of Veterans Elementary School, a new complex built to replace the aging Morgan Elementary School, in an economically depressed area of the city. Through hard work and the recruitment of local workers, ICB finished the 109,000-square-foot facility, which today provides students and faculty with the latest educational technology as well as sustainable elements such as intelligent windows that respond to outdoor conditions.

Large windows provide substantial daylighting inside ICB Construction’s Lab Sciences Building at Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College, in Tifton, GA. The company focuses on Peach State projects.

Walter Elliott Photography

ICB renovated and expanded the Rosa Jackson Community Center in Macon, GA. It’s worked on many projects in the town.

The Rosa Jackson Community Center holds a gymnasium, an exercise room, a multipurpose room, and more.

Walter Elliott Photography

“As we work through these projects, they become more than sticks and bricks. They become part of us, and we are excited to go deeper to see our community excel.”

ICB doesn’t just assume its projects will lead to community uplift, though. The firm actually tracks the metrics. In constructing Veterans Elementary School, for instance, the company was able to put together a workforce that was 82 percent local, and it achieved similar numbers for the Warner Robins projects. Additionally, ICB has determined that its projects have contributed actively to Georgia’s economic growth, revitalizing aging communities and increasing property values. The company’s work in Warner Robins alone has fueled the need for new local businesses, including an entertainment center and water park near the SE Little League Headquarters.

The company has also found that with each community project comes opportunities to go deeper into the communities it serves. For example, after completing the Hutchings College and Career Academy project for the Bibb County School District, Scragg was asked to serve as a board member on Hutchings’s board of directors. And, after ICB’s involvement in a park improvement project in Central City, which hosts the long-standing Macon/ Bibb International Cherry Blossom Festival, Scragg

accepted a nomination to serve on the festival’s board of directors, too. “As we work through these projects, they become more than sticks and bricks,” Scragg says. “They become part of us, and we are excited to go deeper to see our community excel.”

Long hopes that ICB’s work throughout and its investment in Georgia will continue to improve the health of the state and the towns that populate it.

“Our hope is that we have changed the lives of people that live in our community for the better,” he says.

“We want to be known as a company that listened to our clients and delivered on the promises that we made to each person.”

Congratulations to Daryl Long and his team at ICB Construction Group! They have developed and maintained many strong relationships with both clients and subcontractors throughout the years. Their commitment to completing quality construction projects on time and in budget has proven to benefit all involved. We’re proud to be a part of their success!

—Pyles

Plumbing & Utility

JMA works on projects meant to benefit the communities they go up in. A major Warner Robins, GA, project the firm worked on was the Southeastern Little League Headquarters.

Walter Elliot

Strides Toward the Future

Jim and Meg Mehserle of JMA Architecture are using stateof-the-art technology to create pioneering projects for the state of Georgia

by Clint Worthington

Since 1997, Jim and Meg Mehserle have broken new ground in unexpected places. Having opened JMA Architecture, the first architecture and interior design firm in the small southern city of Perry, Georgia, they have seen their practice grow from providing service to local homeowners to creating commercial projects for clients across the state of Georgia. Along the way, their office has expanded to include a highly professional staff that embraces new technology to create and construct its designs.

JMA Architecture had modest beginnings. Jim and Meg moved to Perry in the late 1990’s after cutting their teeth as staff architects with large firms in Atlanta. Jim fondly remembers, “We started as sole practitioners, from answering the phone and hand-creating each project to doing the cleaning.”

After initially handling residential and small commercial projects, their first large project was for a local county government. This experience led to work with other municipal and county governments as JMA expanded its staff of highly qualified and inspired

Another Warner Robins project JMA completed was the office of United Medical Specialists.

design professionals. Their current workload includes projects for the State of Georgia, higher education clients, and corporate facilities and headquarters. “We’re very blessed that our whole Georgia community continues to allow us to serve them even more in our current growing economy,” Meg says. “As we celebrate our now 20 years in business, it’s amazing to look back and see how many people we have come to know and appreciate. Our work has resulted in so many good friendships.”

JMA’s design process is rooted in an approach that encourages clients to be engaged in the process of design. “The design benefits foremost by our listening to and learning from our clients—early and throughout the design process,” Jim says. “This makes our building designs richer and more responsive—and clients happiest. We seek to give each client the best solution. That really is the ultimate goal for us.”

The firm’s designers find that the tools now available in their profession enhance their ability to communicate with clients and more quickly create clear client understanding and responses. “There has never been a more exciting time to be a design professional,”

Jean Williams

Jim says. “We have tools, materials, and systems that architects and designers in the past could only dream about.” JMA is committed to providing state-of-the-art services and to continuously developing and enhancing its offerings.

The firm consistently seeks out the most reasonable and cost-effective ways to create sustainable solutions. With this approach, the firm is currently designing a building that incorporates electrochromic glazing, a clear energy-saving solution. According to Jim, the use of this material is key to achieving an envelope that benefits the building life-cycle and the client. “We are committed to developing buildings for our clients that bring effective and long-term value” he says.

The use of new technologies for design and construction allows JMA to be more creative and efficient as it works with each client. “In many cases, these technologies allow us to be more creative as we look for value.” Jim says. With its commitment to the success of each client, there’s plenty of room for creative thinking in JMA’s future.

“We have tools, materials, and systems that architects and designers in the past could only dream about.”

JMA also worked on the lobby and other portions of the Flint Energies Member Service Center in Warner Robins.

points of interest

Some of the quirkier takeaways from this issue

Where Lucky Lindy Got His Start

Before it was the bustling home to millions of passengers a year from all over the world, San Diego International Airport was known as San Diego Municipal Airport–Lindbergh Field, for Charles Lindbergh. The pilot lent his name to the site a few years after starting off from San Diego on his way to St. Louis, New York, and finally Paris on the first-ever nonstop transatlantic flight. (P. 118)

Staying Afloat

To maximize profitability, Holland America Group keeps its boats on the water for as long as possible between dry-dock retrofits— and it also keeps those dry-dock stays as short as possible. Its teams are so orderly and efficient with their work that they can completely overhaul Holland America’s 600- to 2,600-guest cruise ships in just 8–14 days, and they do this only every five years. (P. 16)

Water, Water Everywhere

Swarovski’s philanthropic focus on water sustainability extends back to the company’s beginnings, in 1895, when Daniel Swarovski founded it in the small town of Wattens, in the Austrian Alps, where the company now has a museum (pictured above). He chose the location because of the many snowmelt rivers nearby, which provided energy for his business’s first production site. (P. 70)

Copy Editors Are Important

Scratching your head over placement of the apostrophe in the company name Lands’ End? Turns out that you’re right to do so. When the company sent out its first mail-order catalog in 1963, the typo was right there on the cover. Because it was too late to do anything about it, Lands’ End decided to stick with it. (P. 124)

CBS’s Paul Sears got the OK to do his photo shoot with staff photographer Cass Davis on the set of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. He took some time to practice making his entrance, complete with some choice dance moves.

The Sprinkler

The Travolta

The Lawn Mower

The Robot

Cass Davis

“We had nine weeks to renovate the main theater space, replace major air-handling units, and renovate three floors of office space that hadn’t been touched since Letterman started the show in 1993.”

—Paul Sears, on renovating Stephen Colbert’s Late Show set