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McMillan Pazdan Smith expands education capabilities with merger

By Molly Hulsey

mhulsey@scbiznews.com

Eleven stories of thousands of windowless bedrooms, complete with TV-monitors designed to emulate natural light — all designed by a 97-yearold billionaire without any architectural experience.

If it sounds like a prison from 2080, think again. It’s just one of the ways University of California Santa Barbara is “minimizing costs by maximizing the number of beds,” according to the school, during a time when many university budgets are still reeling from pandemic-related pressures.

Munger Hall, named after its designer, Berkshire Hathaway investor Charlie Munger, could epitomize the future for educational architecture, but McMillan Pazdan Smith and its new associates from ed-focused Watson Tate Savory have other ideas: blueprints with lots of natural sunlight with student’s health in mind.

“Natural light benefits people in a variety of ways,” Ron Smith, founding principal of McMillan Pazdan Smith and the firm’s education expert, told GSA Business Report. “It helps you learn better. It helps with absenteeism.”

LEED and Green Globe certification still prevail on college campus buildings, according to Smith, but Well-certified structures are the new gold standard.

“Which is how a building can help a student or faculty member perform better,” he said, adding that Well-certified buildings tend to be defined by “a great heating and air conditioning system, has lots of natural light, has lots of things that help them physically, mentally and emotionally perform better.”

The evolving higher education space and common goals prompted an October merger of the two firms under the banner of McMillan Pazdan Smith at its Columbia and Charlotte offices.

“We have the ability to have researchers on staff, so we have the ability in real time to continue to stay current with trends, which is a great benefit to higher education clients,” said Tom Savory, principal of Watson Tate Savory and Clemson University adjunct professor. “Higher education is extremely competitive. All of the national firms are always in the room competing for any significant higher education projects. So this merger really brings the same level of expertise and the same human resources and breadth of talent to bear that national firms bring when they come to the higher education table.”

In the past, McMillan Pazdan Smith’s client base has focused in on independent colleges and universities, according to Smith, with K-12 to higher education work making up 35% of the firm’s projects.

Chad Cousins, CEO of the Greenville firm, added that its presence in the commercial space also gives his team a keen sense of workforce development needs on the educational level from health care to manufacturing.

“There’s an ability to leverage resources who have strengths and experiences in really all aspects of community as part of the higher-ed campus conversation,” Cousins said about the merger.

Watson Tate Savory has made a name with designing state-owned university buildings. A lot of them. Education, especially higher-education, projects make up 80% of the firm’s portfolio.

An architect’s architect, the firm designed the American Institute of Architects’ Center for Architecture within the shell of a historic storefront on Columbia’s Main Street. But it’s another Columbia project that the team brings up as a prime example of adaptive reuse geared toward new trends in education.

In 2020, Historic Columbia lauded the firm for its work in converting the University of South Carolina’s former law school, a brooding brutalist “virtually windowless” structure into a chemistry building with a multi-story open lobby and soaring views of the outdoors, according to Watson Tate Savory’s Sanders Tate.

“Even though we completely gutted the thing, literally moving stairs and elevators to make it work right and took pieces of the precast off to provide the natural light that was needed, it was still a viable worthwhile effort to not tear down something that was constructed,” Tate said. “It’s kind of fun because its different than working in an open field, but really the reward is the willingness of a client to allow that thought process to go on and realize there’s just of embodied energy that just shouldn’t be thrown away and started over.”

Collaboration spaces, especially in scientific spaces like USC’s chemistry building, are key to the next wave of education architecture, according to the team.

“They talk about the principal of ‘loose fit, long life,’” Savory said. “Which is not so much a matter of hyper-flexibility. It’s more a matter of buildings that serve a variety of functions and can bring different disciplines in to collide, intellectually and creatively.”

In line with Well Building’s focus on harnessing a place’s natural energy and aesthetic, photovoltaic building skins and mass timber structures are other highlights of 2021’s higher-ed architectural currents.

“Certainly, solar panels are commonplace in some respect,” Tate said, adding that photovoltaic materials integrated across an entire building’s surface will be the next step for the higher-ed space.

One of McMillan Pazdan Smith’s recent projects, Wofford College’s Center for Environmental Studies, won the 2021 Louis I. Kahn Citation from American School & University for its use of solar panels and cross-laminated timber. The magazine called the project “an excellent example of how a building is the third teacher, supporting the curriculum of the facility” and “incorporates sustainability and flexible design.”

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Savannah Lakes Village is a 5,000-lot planned community with more than 3,000 developed lots in need of homes. (Photo/Provided)

New Greenwood plant to build more than 100 homes for development

By Molly Hulsey

mhulsey@scbiznews.com

Greenwood’s Impresa Modular has not yet begun operations but the company already landed a contract to build more than 100 homes a year for a McCormick County development.

The development, Savannah Lakes Village, is a private lakefront community off Lake Thurmond developed by the SLV Windfall Group.

“We are thankful to be partnering with Impresa in this development to bring much needed product to market,” Jim Walsh, CEO of SLV Windfall Group, said in a news release. “I am a firm believer in Impresa’s quality products and processes, and couldn’t be more thrilled to have their factory just down the road in Greenwood to support our partnership.”

The community features two championship golf courses, four restaurants, a 23,000 square foot recreation center with tennis, pickleball, indoor-outdoor pools, bowling alleys and fitness areas.

More than 3,000 developed lots on the property will need homes built by the Impresa with the first model expected in the first quarter of 2022 after the manufacturer’s January launch, the release said.

Components built offsite in Impresa’s 240,000-square-foot production facility are expected to reduce construction delays due in part to the limited sub-contractor workforce in the local region and reduce the amount of construction time from site preparation to final certificate of occupancy, according to the release.

“We are thrilled to have our new manufacturing facility so close to Savannah Lakes Village,” Ken Semler, president of Impresa Homes, said in the release. “We look forward to partnering with the developer and community to bring the next level of home building technology to such a wonderful established community.”

In September, Impresa announced plans to invest $9 million in its construction facility at 161 Rock Church Road S.E. in Greenwood.

The multi-million dollar project is expected to create 180 jobs.

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Jim Walsh CEO, SLV Windfall Group