I was in Jackson this week, meeting with Duckworth Realty, and got to visit a cool restoration project that their company did nearly 15 years ago, the Electric 308 Building. The restoration was well done on this circa 1930s building. Among other things, they brought back its original façade and the period wood windows, in …
Restoring buildings to their original state, or at other times giving them new purpose, brings a lot of satisfaction. Our Thomas Jefferson project falls into this category. We are in the process of converting the circa 1920s hotel into 96 apartments targeted at Millennials, complete with food and retail on the ground floor. One of …
Lately, we’ve worked on a handful of historic renovation projects, and it always seems something interesting rolls out from them. At our Hotel Thomas Jefferson project, we found bellhop uniforms and menus stored since the Great Depression. At the Lyric Theatre, we unearthed ticket stubs from the Flapper era. As we were finishing The Lyric, …
We recently started work on the renovation of a 100-year-old structure in the city as the Construction Manager for The Lyric Theatre, a project which has proved interesting for many reasons. One is the history lesson we are getting about construction practices in 1913. The foundations, rebar and structural steel have proven particularly interesting. We …
Growing up, I often visited South Georgia, where my father told me what it was like in the early days of a cotton farmer. As I recall, they would plant the same crop annually, repeating year after year. There were lots of reasons for this of course–I am certainly not chucking spears at the farmers–but …
A couple of years ago, we had the opportunity to work on a piece of Americana. Rickwood Field, the oldest baseball park in the country, called on us to remodel the locker rooms, perform structural modifications to the grandstand and our favorite–build a historically accurate scoreboard. Our work there was a part of history, something to …
While I’ve been visiting the Blue Ridge Mountains for a long time, a few years ago I found a place that captivated me. I connected with the story of Lonesome Valley and the beautiful land there. Last week, the Jennings family (brother Dick, sisters Sally and Binford) stopped by our place for a visit. They shared …
Under the Clean Water Act, quantity and quality of storm water discharge continue to be right in the EPA’s bulls eye. I remember years ago, the late 70s to be exact, I was involved in a project where we graded 5 acres uphill from the surrounding terrain. You guessed it: every time it rained thousands …
Have you heard of “locavores?” These folks are interested in eating food that is produced within a 100-mile radius of their home. The idea is to minimize fossil fuels from shipping and nutrition lost from farm to table. We like to consider ourselves a small part of the locavore movement. We started three years back …
Every year, we have a Christmas gathering to bring all the Stewart Perry families together. The first year this reunion was held at our place, we spent one Saturday morning planting several hundred daffodils across the lake on the hillside. We chose that spot because it is visible from our conference room and is a …
Lately it seems like an increasing number of folks have seen the light when it comes to the drawbacks of dark-colored pavement. Black asphalt has traditionally been the surface of choice for our nation’s roadways and parking lots, but asphalt can act as a heat sink that retains the warmth of sunlight. The effect is …
Nearly every sizeable city in the United States struggles with clogged arteries. It’s a sea of traffic signals, brake lights and all-around urban sprawl. The roads in and out of town stack up during rush hour with smog-spewing traffic jams. Nobody enjoys sitting in traffic, so there is personal motivation to eliminate tie-ups. It saves …