ARCHITECT AS DEVELOPER

Solving development problems using design thinking

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Urban rehab architect

Transforming under utilized urban buildings for clients ranging from speculative developers to non-profit and educational clients is the specialty Eric Army, AIA has built through his commercial architecture firm, Studio MEJA. Their driving philosophy of “be the guide” for the clients lead them to create a thorough process-driven delivery method, which highlighted how much project success was predicated on issues far outside of design.

For Eric, the satisfaction of making a lasting effect for people through their buildings was tempered slightly only by the comparatively short-term engagement of the building’s design phase. This longing for deep, enduring impact through ownership and management, combined with his experience guiding clients through project’s associated challenges, lead him to branch out into development.

vertically integrated delivery

As he has built his re-development portfolio through his Wide Plank Development Group through three asset classes in two states, he has found his focus on repositioning buildings to meet changing market & community needs, in walkable, mixed-use communities.

While he loves being personally involved in “opportunity identification”, he has scaled his team so they can solve the development challenges through design, provide in-house construction management and create enduring value for the community, building owner and tenants with ongoing asset management services.

 LESSONS LEARNED

Design Solutions for Business Issues

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ENERGY

The greenest building is the one already there… but it sure uses a lot of energy!

As architect's, we are well attuned to the fact the buildings account for nearly half of all energy use. As we rehabilitate existing buildings, we reap the benefit of the “embodied energy” in the materials and existing construction— key factors in life-cycle energy use. We augment the performance of the existing structure with insulation, air barriers and thermal breaks where ever possible. Historic buildings provide an added challenge; to maintain character defining features, we are limited on what surfaces can be covered, and to what thickness.
At Atlantic Design Works we used a few of our favorite tricks to ensure this historic structure wouldn’t continue to be an energy hog:
-High density continuous insulation provides more heat resistance per inch of thickness and eliminates thermal bridging when compared to typical fiberglass insulation between joists or studs
-High efficiency condensing furnaces & electric heat pumps. While these need to connected to drains, and may have more technical requirements, you often save the floor space (on each story) of needed a large chimney or flue to vent them.
-Two solar panel arrays on roof were sized respectively to offset 50% of the rotunda’s total energy demand (including 100% of its electricity) all while keeping a low profile and roof-edge offsets for historic and fire code standards.

Historic preservation

Preservation easements are great for culture, but necessitate creative problem solving.

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The building’s previous owner, a woman’s art collective, utilized a state historic grant to preserve the rotunda’s elegant and character defining roof structure, for which I am daily thankful. This came, however, with a 30 year historic preservation easement, which my very thorough attorney discovered three days before closing. Fortunately I was already planning on renovating according to the standards, which I guess makes me the right owner for the right time.
Now my familiarity with the state’s historic preservation standards, from my ongoing client work in historic industrial rehabilitations didn’t exactly make this simple, per se.
-Window Replacement: We had to replace existing, non-closing steel windows with double-pane aluminum replicas, which required thorough documentation of the existing glazing widths and configuration— and then just as thorough shop drawing review prior to fabrication.
-Repointing between Bricks: Time, and previous owners, had done a number on the mortar between the courses of the triple-wythe bricks walls. While white lime mortar would have been originally used for this, we had to mix some additional portland cement with white mortar to create a tone in-line with the existing mortar’s aging process.
-Roof Profile: In order to maintain the character defining brick surfaces, for many of these spaces the roof is the only location to add meaningful insulation. The details must be carefully considered, so as not to make the building fascia significantly larger, and throwing off a key proportion. Using tapered insulation around the edges at roof overhangs, and studying the proportion of shadow boards can help create the desired composition.

WAYFINDING

Cool building, but where is the door?

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The project brief sounds like an architecture school design-studio assignment: a cylinder is attached to an extruded triangle, set into a hill and bounded by streets on two of its three sides. As cool as that sounds to work on (it was!) there really isn’t any “front”, and with four different businesses there end up being a lot of different people who want to get in.

To address the lack of obvious entry we created a series of wayfinding layers:

  • Create a common entry point: we turned an existing window into a door and added a stair at the building’s only inside corner. This helped create a focal point to the site design, from where one could enter any of the four spaces within a few steps.

  • Craft a site experience: in addition to addressing stormwater, urban heat island and invasive species, the landscaping and walkways focuses users to the key entry point, and provides formal and secondary access paths.

  • Infographics: Signage should be the last resort of any wayfinding strategy, and— as usual— less is more. Here we created a punchy, annotated info-graphic and located it at multiple key entry points to the site. Secondly, we used comically large address numbers on each door to allow differentiation from the street level. Finally, each space has a small, eye-level sign at its entry to create clarity for new visitors.

Incremental development

How to cast vision to your banker.

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When you are rehabilitating a vacant building in a developing part of town, it’s expected your banker— or their appraiser— may not be as bullish on your rental projections as you are. Don’t take it as an insult, their job is to protect their investment— and by extension, you— from calamity, so they really do have your best interest in mind.

We had a similar story, as our initial appraisal came in reasonable, but conservative. We ended using our initial loan amount to create a “minimally viable project”. When this test showed there was demand for the creative collaborative space we had a vision for, this proof-of-concept gave us— and our banking partner— confidence to fund the remainder of the fit-out.

What if our initial guess was wrong? We would have been ok. Because we did not take on a large initial debt burden, project could have been rented as storage or industrial space at a lower rate that would have supported the carrying cost. We would have been disappointed we didn’t get to bring our vision to life, but our initial test would have been a successful study.

  • Listen to Feedback: Your banker wants you to succeed, so listen for the “Why” behind the “No”— that will usually lead you to where the “Yes” is.

  • Incremental Approach: What is the minimally viable project you can launch as proof-of-concept?

  • Alternative Exit: Having a pre-prepared fall-back plan lowers your risk and can bolster your— and your financial partner’s— confidence.