Waltham Woods Corporate Center, Waltham, Mass.
Let’s face it. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a 20-acre undeveloped site in the suburbs, a newly acquired aging property in the center of downtown, an underutilized parking lot next to a college campus or a group of abutting parcels in a resort area, every developer wants to get as much out of their valuable asset as they possibly can. They want to limit their risk, they want to get to market fast, they want to realize a substantial return on their investment and they want to ensure that their property will remain viable for years to come.
Key to any successful project is getting the right team involved early on. Developer’s architects innately think like a developer and have the capacity to understand what the client needs every step of the way. They know how to quickly and accurately analyze possibilities for a site, create a variety of workable building-type options, develop long-term operating projections for an asset and balance all of these needs with extensive economic feasibility studies – all in order to get the development team to what works and what doesn’t as fast as possible.
According to Eric Sheffels, president of Leggat McCall Properties, “Being in the development business, lots of potential new properties come my way all the time. Choosing the right ones that will make great investments for us is critical. A lot has to due with how well we think the asset will perform for us and for our clients now and down the road. Projects like our Waltham Woods office park or our new building for Raytheon are great examples of how an experienced design firm like Jung|Brannen, with its developer’s mindset, can help us make the right decisions, smartly and quickly.”
Architects with this kind of strategic vision have the necessary business frame of mind to help the developer creatively uncover more development capacity for a property than they ever imagined.
They play an important role helping the developer assess a property up front prior to acquisition, perform due diligence and limit their risk by quickly taking them from where to site the building, to schematic designs, to flexible uses for the project should market conditions change – well before they close on any deal. They add value to the team, they enhance the marketability of any project and they enable the developer to speedily make and close the best possible deal.
With an understanding of what drives the dynamics of the market and with the broad knowledge that comes from a multi-building type practice, the developer’s architect has the ability and business savvy to approach a new project with the same entrepreneurial instincts and performance requirements as the developer. They have the necessary real estate perspective and the experience needed to offer alternate and feasible uses for an asset that gives the developer a building with an exit strategy capable of holding tenants and protecting the value of the property, even when markets lag.
The developer’s architect understands these important pressures and uses their deep market knowledge to design adaptability as well as flexibility into every property, setting the stage for easy repurposing and easy repositioning if needed. This demands that the designers do everything they can to create the right modular formula of floor plate sizes, corridor widths, ceiling heights, clear-span spaces and lease lines that can be delineated without “land-locking” any small tenant.
“An architect can make or break a project for a developer,” says Patricia Simboli, principal at ACS Development Corp. “The really good ones – the ones we like to work with – are usually those with deep experience able to bring a unique perspective and smarter, more flexible options to a potential site. We rely on them to bring a range of different pieces and options to the puzzle that enable us to move from one extreme to another with site development possibilities, until we can determine where we realistically want to settle. The experience and enthusiasm a developer’s architect brings to the table gives our development team the added credibility, confidence and value that we can take to our prospective brokers, lenders and end-users,” added Simboli.
Role Playing
In order to truly understand the developer’s expectations and measurements for success, the architect must be able to view every new project from the developer’s perspective. Walking in the developer’s shoes, the architect must anticipate permitting issues, cost and efficiency ratios, market indicators, site conditions for choosing the right building type, construction logistics, sales or leasing projections, marketing plans for the property and more – all with an eye to limiting risk well before a single design line is drawn.
It takes the right team to help the developer efficiently and creatively sort through an array of options, develop viable concepts and make the project pro formas work with the design so the development team can get the backing they need from investors, lenders and public officials.
“Our ultimate goal of course, is to build the right kind of profitable project for the site. However, as a developer, we’re as much concerned about the creative side of a project as we are with the economic side,” says Brian Dacey, principal of Manchester Place, Manchester, N.H., a venture of Main Street Development Group. “A critical part of our job is to pull together a superb team of professionals with the experience to understand our requirements, the knowledge to help us successfully realize our goals, the business smarts to help us limit risks and the creative skills needed to design a great looking property,” added Dacey.
For a developer, timing can be everything. How fast a project can get up and running and how long it will take to break ground and move in tenants are pressures that can have a tremendous effect on raising capital and limiting carrying costs. As important as these considerations are, the ability for the architect to create a truly exciting, budget-based design that captures the vision and imagination of the developer and readily attracts future buyers or tenants is one of the most important aspects of bringing any project quickly and profitably to market.
Designing a memorable new icon that a developer can point to, a city can be proud of, and tenants want to be in, not only builds the long-term reputation and credibility of the development team, it also helps the developer obtain the most favorable financing, get through the approval and permitting process, complete construction, limit carrying costs and most importantly, realize the fastest return on their investment.
“Having an architectural team on board who really thinks like we do helped make State Street Financial Center [formerly called One Lincoln St., Boston] – even during a down market – the extraordinarily successful project it is,” says John B. Hynes III, managing partner and principal of The Gale Co. “In addition to helping us work through the complex approval process, the numerous city and community concerns, the stringent building security issues and the important economic feasibility analyses, Jung|Brannen designed and helped us build a great new high-rise that has quickly become a great new symbol for our company, for the building’s new owners and for the city of Boston,” stated Hynes.
Ultimately, the most important role a developer’s architect can play is to provide the developer with more value than they usually get for an asset, with no cost premium associated with it. A developer’s architect, working as an integral part of the development team, consistently delivers added value to every project by finding the optimal design solutions that solve all of the critical technical, functional, financial and aesthetic requirements of the project. It is the added value generated for a developer that ensures each new project will deliver a memorable, vital and distinctive design with a performance that will exceed all expectations for the owners and for the tenants, well into the future.
