Poly Canyon Village Complete

Carried out by the Bridging project delivery method, Cal Poly’s exciting new Poly Canyon Village at San Luis Obispo is completed and furnished. This project includes the largest student housing complex undertaken by an American university to date in a single construction project.

Located in San Luis Obispo on the Central Coast of California between Los Angeles and San Francisco, the project sits at the base of picturesque Poly Canyon.

Much more than student housing, the project consists of 4 and 5 story apartment buildings comprising 2,676 beds for students in a variety of suite and apartments plans.

The village center has food vendors and retail shops and provides students outdoor recreation areas including a swimming pool as well as study rooms, a knowledge center, and a Post Office. On opposite sides of the village are two 950-car parking decks.

The $299 million campus expansion construction program also includes extensive roadway and utilities installations as well as new facilities for the College of Agriculture, being built on another site several miles away, replacing those facilities that were previously located on the Poly Canyon Village site.

Brookwood Group has provided full Program Management services for the project from the pre-design planning phase through construction. By employing the Bridging project delivery method the project experienced very cost effective original construction bids within the original budget. The project has had only 5 contractor initiated Change Orders, totaling less than 0.2% of the construction contract price.

Design began in August 2004 with McLarand Vasquez Emsiek & Partners, Inc., Architects as the Owner’s Design Consultant (“Bridging Architect”). The Bridging type design-build construction contract was awarded to Clark Design/Build of California as a result of competitive proposals. Niles Bolton Associates is serving as the Contractor’s Architect and Engineers.

Poly Canyon Village is LEED™ certified. LEED™ certification provides independent, third-party verification that a building project meets the highest green building and performance measures. Some of the specific items for which Poly Canyon Village will earn certification points include a new storm water system and a 30% water use reduction. The facilities have operable windows and natural ventilation and will recycle 75% of its construction waste. 10% of the total value of the materials in the project will be recycled with 20% of the materials having been manufactured regionally. The structures will use low emitting sealants, paint, carpet and composite wood products. 90% of the regularly occupied spaces will provide daylight and most of the 3,500 windows in the project will have views of the surrounding area. Care was taken in the project’s planning to reduce of the number of buildings in the project as well as their footprints, while at the same time retaining the initial requirements of the program.

Spelman College’s New Residence And Dining Hall
Is ‘Green’ All Over

“The Suites” is Spelman College’s newest facility. At the opening ceremonies, Spelman College’s president, Dr. Beverly Tatum, stressed the importance of colleges and universities designing and building “green” facilities. She made sure that Spelman was leading the way in this respect, building the first new major facility on a Historically Black College or University campus. 

This high quality and handsome new facility has 300 beds, mostly in single occupancy rooms within suites, a dining hall with a seating capacity of 175, several guest apartments for visiting faculty and trustees, and a structured underground parking garage which accommodates 100 vehicles.

Brookwood Group has served as Spelman’s Program Manager for the project from pre-design planning through construction and furnishing. Under Brookwood’s guidance, the project has been designed for LEED™ certification with Brookwood adding this requirement for the Design Architect for this Bridging method project as well as in the Bridging Contract Documents for the Design-Build Contractor and its Architectural/Engineering subcontractor. It will be the first LEED™ certified building on the campus as well as the first LEED™ certified building on a Historically Black College or University campus.

The Owner’s Design Consultant was Sizemore Group of Atlanta. The Bridging Design-Build Contractor was New South Construction Company of Atlanta. The Contractor’s AE was the architectural and engineering division of The Facility Group of Cobb County, Georgia.

Program Management Services Provided For Monongalia County Board Of Education Building Program

Brookwood Group has provided a series of full program management and advisory services to the Monongalia County Board of Education at Morgantown, West Virginia, since early 2005.

The six-project school building program included three new schools, Skyview Elementary, Mylan Park Elementary, and Mason Dixon Elementary, and three school expansion projects. Morgantown Senior High received additions including a media center, a distance learning lab, a new lobby and administration offices. Brookwood also provided program management services for the new 217,330 square foot University High School complex. Renovations and additions to Clay-Battelle Middle/High School rounded out the program for the Monongalia County Board of Education.

Monongalia County Board of Education Superintendent, Frank Devono, had this to say about Brookwood Group: “Brookwood’s attention to detail in the management of the pre-design, design, construction, and closeout phases of all six of the Monongalia County School facilities has been exemplary. The Board, administration, school principals, students, and the community have all been extremely pleased with the results.”

Shepherd Heery Becomes Brookwood's President

Brookwood Group co-founder and board member, S. Shepherd Heery, became the company's President at the beginning of February, 2009. A resident of the San Francisco Bay Area since 1982, Shep has established a West Coast corporate office.

George Heery continues as Brookwood's Chairman. In making the announcement, George Heery said, “Having Shep join us in the senior management of Brookwood has been an objective of our other Board member, Tom Blount, and myself for some time. Tom and I are thrilled that Shep accepted our offer.”

Since 2002, Shep had served as Senior Vice President of Myers Development Company in San Francisco where he had overall responsibility for implementing the firm's development and construction activities.

Shep has extensive management, leadership and marketing experience, especially in the realms of high-rise office and residential developments, encompassing all aspects of the development process. Since 1989, Shep has continuously served as the Chairman of The Wakefield Development Companies, affiliate companies of Brookwood Group. He and George Heery were co-principals for the development of The Wakefield residential tower in Atlanta.

As co-founder of Satulah Group (the original name of Brookwood Group), Shep guided the growth of the firm from 1989-1997 and, in late 1997, he negotiated the sale of Satulah's corporate facilities project management business to LaSalle Partners, predecessor to Jones Lang LaSalle. In conjunction with the sale of that business unit, he joined Jones Lang LaSalle where he worked for two years in a multi-disciplinary marketing capacity. At the time of the sale to LaSalle, the Company's name was changed to Brookwood Group.

From 2000-2001, Shep was employed with Tishman Speyer Properties as the Director of Development in San Francisco where he and his colleagues secured planning and zoning approvals to develop the recently completed the 33-story, 650,000sf office tower at 555 Mission. He also initiated the environmental review process for several residential towers that are now under construction in downtown San Francisco.

From 1982-1989, Shep was a Project Manager with Gerald D. Hines Interests, responsible for the development of several high-rise projects in Oakland and San Francisco.

Prior to Shep’s experience at Hines, he was a practicing architect and construction program manager in Philadelphia, Atlanta and Aspen, Colorado.

Shep is a graduate in architecture from Cornell University and he holds a Master of Business Administration from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He is a full member of the Urban Land Institute and a member of SPUR (San Franciscans for Planning and Urban Research).

The Blooming of Buckhead

Completion of Phase One of the Peachtree Boulevard transformation, carried out as result of the efforts of the Buckhead Community Improvement District, was celebrated in October 2008 with a ribbon cutting by Mayor Shirley Franklin and other community officials. The Peachtree Road transformation is the major enhancement of a section of Peachtree Road in Buckhead into a more livable, walkable, bikeable and drivable avenue.

In the past twenty years the population of the Atlanta metropolitan area has doubled and the resultant increase in vehicular traffic has created problem spots around the city, on roadways that were never intended or designed to accomodate this increase in volume. As the traffic around the city grew, so too grew the market for high-end, high rise, in-town, multi-family residences, especially along the Buckhead corridor of Peachtree Road. While the increased population density in Buckhead reduced traffic elsewhere, it meant a more constant flow of traffic along Peachtree during the day, and at peak hours the volume became overwhelming.

The idea of developing the street into a destination, not just a thoroughfare, was originally envisioned by Sam Friedman, Chairman of the Buckhead Coalition. The Buckhead Coalition is a group formed by former Mayor Sam Massell and is made up of property owners and others interested in improving the urban development of Buckhead and the well being of the area.

As a member of the Buckhead Coalition, architect George Heery, Brookwood’s CEO, contributed preliminary ideas in the form of a study and design concepts for transforming the Peachtree Road corridor into a handsome and more convenient boulevard.  This conceptual design, which was based on Sam Friedman’s vision, covered the entire length of Peachtree within the greater Buckhead area, from the Peachtree Street overpass at I-85 at Brookwood Station running northward through the old original Buckhead area to the City Limits on the north.

Later a number of property owners who were associated with the Buckhead Coalition formed the Buckhead Community Improvement District with David Allman of Regent Partners as Chairman of the Board of BCID and with Scotty Green as BCID’s Executive Director.

Brookwood Group was subsequently retained by the Buckhead Community Improvement District to develop more details of a design for a portion of the Peachtree corridor from just south of the Peachtree-Piedmont intersection to a point north of Phipps Plaza.

Architect Laura Heery, then a member of the Brookwood management team, with her father, George and other members of the Brookwood firm, developed the original concept for the new Peachtree Boulevard. In the development of the concept Laura Heery and the Brookwood team worked closely with David Allman and Scotty Green, both of whom continue to provide guidance and leadership to the BCID and other developments of the Buckhead area.

In the mid 1990s, Brookwood Group, as both designer and development manager for the George Heery family, broke ground on the highest quality high-rise multi-family project built to date in Atlanta, The Wakefield.  The Wakefield is a luxury cooperative located on the Northwest corner of Peachtree Road and West Wesley Road, NW. The building permit for The Wakefield was the first private sector high rise building permit issued within the City of Atlanta in over two years at the time it was issued and the building was sold out shortly after its completion.

It is readily evident today to those in the real estate development field that The Wakefield set in motion the raising of design and construction quality standards of mid to high rise multi-family housing projects. The Wakefield also sparked the acceptance in the Atlanta market of the idea that very high quality homes could be located in high rise structures with settings that allowed easier access to work, shopping, places of worship and community activities.

Shown below are "before and after" examples of two locations in Buckhead, both of which are from George Heery’s original study on redeveloping Peachtree Road from Brookwood Station all the way up to the northern City Limits. The most obvious difference in these early study images is the visual impact of moving power and communication cables to underground routes. Though not shown in these images, the median and the left turn sideslips were also a part of the original study’s proposal.

Brookwood Serving Atlanta Public Schools

A major part of Brookwood Group’s professional practice includes serving education clients in both the public and private sectors, providing construction program management (“program management”), design consulting and planning services.  Atlanta Public Schools ("APS") is one of the “K-12” systems for which Brookwood is currently providing services, so it is with great pleasure we note that Atlanta Public Schools were recently in the headlines when the system’s superintendent, Dr. Beverly Hall, was named the 2009 National Superintendent of the Year at the American Association of School Administrators’ National Conference on Education.

The present construction program of the Atlanta Public Schools (a separate governmental body from the City of Atlanta) includes the remodeling, expansion and “greening” of existing schools, as well as the construction of new schools, along with services related to some school closings as the system continues to respond to changing neighborhood needs.

Brookwood project managers, Danny Gutlay and Al Scenna are two members of the Brookwood professional staff who are assigned full time to the Atlanta Public Schools; usually working from the system’s new headquarters in downtown Atlanta. Brookwood Group is in a joint venture with the firm A. L. Johnson & Associates, project managers, costing consultants and construction schedulers on this program.

Bridging Method Website

Brookwood Group has developed and maintains a free access informational website about the Bridging method of construction project delivery. The site, BridgingMethod.com, provides owners, other professional service providers, attorneys, and members of the construction industry full access to details of the Bridging method.