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, …
Several decades ago, in most of the larger southeastern cities, union contractors prevailed. As the market began to change toward a more open working environment, these companies formed what would be referred to as a “double-breasted operation,” where the ownership of one company was the same as the other, and yet one was union and …
I was at a lunch last week sponsored by an engineering firm, and unlucky me happen to sit with someone who works in business development. It was the same old conversation I’ve had with this person many times over. It starts with the standard “how’s business?” and “been playing any golf recently?” line of questioning, …
While there are a number of contract forms for building services, they all sort of revolve around these four: Design and Bid. The architect prepares plans and the contractor builds. Fairly simple. Over the last several years, it seems the budgets for architectural design are getting tighter and thus there is not enough design money …
Your average apartment building might be changing. I’m referring to multi-family buildings that are taller than garden-style, but not so tall as a high rise–generally five stories or 75’ in top elevation according to current codes. Wood is coming back into favor as a construction material for multi-family construction. As one of the oldest and …
A while back, when I was working on a project with the CEO of a $2 billion company, his favorite phrase was, “there’s only one opportunity to make a good first impression.” It stuck with me over the years, and I have since boiled the philosophy down to four basic rules that go a long way toward …
I spent this week at ICSC‘s RECON, the gold standard annual convention for the bricks and mortar component of the retail industry. This year marked the event’s 3oth anniversary in Las Vegas. Retail feels like an old friend to me. For a decade or two when we first started building, retail construction was our mainstay. During …
To me, it’s always seemed like a good thing to give back just little of our time–maybe more–toward developing the next generation of professionals in our industry. Plenty of people certainly did the same for me. One way I serve is on the Advisory Council of the Auburn University Master of Real Estate Development program, …
Last Saturday evening, it was a privilege to be the guest of NPR Nashville and the Robinson family for the final showing of “A Prairie Home Companion” at The Ryman. (In case you aren’t familiar, it’s the only live music and variety show aired nationwide today, and has been on the air for more than …
Over the last week or so, we migrated from an onsite server closet to the Microsoft Office 365 cloud, for our email, Excel, Word and the rest of the Office suite. I will not say that the transition has been without headaches or easy, but I was told the change was for good reason. A …
Like other construction firms, we work with a lot of different companies that help us deliver. We’ve found that whether it’s construction, engineering or architecture, two things are vital: working with a firm that thinks creatively instead of always taking the textbook path, and finding the right person to work with at that firm. The …
We have been using pervious concrete paving for about 10 years now. In case you are not familiar with the product, I came across this clip that sums it up pretty well. Our success rate is pretty good, as long as we have had a decent drainage system underneath the concrete to allow the water …