October 2017 CAM Magazine Special Issue

Charged and Ready

Whether it’s an electric vehicle charger installation in a corporate or municipal parking garage, design and construction of a solar array, or the installation of new emerging technologies for healthcare facilities, Ferndale Electric is charging forward to be on the leading edge of technology and expansion into new markets. Offering engineering, design, construction and installation for specialized electrical services.

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QUALITY GROUP MEDICAL COVERAGE CONTACT YOUR AGENT OR CALL US TODAY FOR PRICING AND FURTHER DETAILS This program complies with Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) also referred to as Federal HealthCare Reform.

Rob Walters • CAM Administrative Services Phone: 248.233.2114 • Fax: 248.827.2112 Email: rwalters@camads.com

DIRECTORS

Kerlin Blaise Blaze Contracting

PUBLISHER EDITOR

Kevin Koehler Amanda Tackett

Thomas Broad Midwest Steel, Inc.

Kevin Foucher ASSOCIATE EDITOR

Commercial Contracting Corp.

Mary Kremposky McArdle

Stephen Frantz GRAPHIC DESIGN ACCOUNT EXECUTIVE ADMINISTRATIVE

Joseph Coots

Motor City Electric Co.

Jennifer Panning

Roy Jones Cathy Jones

Artisan Tile, Inc.

Samuel Ruegsegger III The Christman Co.

DIRECTORS OFFICERS Chairman

Paul Stachowiak Integrated Design Solutions, LLC

John Raimondo

Erik Wordhouse

Roncelli, Inc.

Vice Chairman

Edwards Glass Co.

Brad Leidal Leidal & Hart Mason Contractors

Vice Chairman

Preston Wallace Limbach Company, LLC

Treasurer

CAM MAGAZINE EDITORIAL ADVISORY COMMITTEE

Division 8 Solutions, Inc.

Joseph Fontanesi

Marty Burnstein

Fontanesi & Kann Company/ Architectural Building Components, Inc.

President

Gary Boyajian Law Office of Marty Burnstein

George Dobrowitsky Walbridge

Kevin Koehler

Daniel Englehart Peter Basso and Associates, Inc.

CAM Magazine (ISSN08837880) is published monthly by the Construction Association of Michigan, 43636 Woodward Ave., P.O. Box 3204, Bloomfield Hills, MI 48302-3204 (248) 972-1000. $24.00 of annual membership dues is allocated to a subscription to CAM Magazine. Additional subscriptions $40.00 annually. Periodical postage paid at Bloomfield Hills, MI and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER, SEND ADDRESS CHANGES TO: CAM MAGAZINE, 43636 WOODWARD AVE., BLOOMFIELD HILLS, MI 48302-3204.

Dennis King DMKING Consulting, LLC

Sanford (Sandy) Sulkes International Building Products, Inc.

James Vargo

For editorial comment or more information: tackett@cam-online.com For reprints or to sell CAM Magazine: 248-972-1000

Capac Construction Company, Inc.

Copyright © 2017 Construction Association of Michigan. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or part without permission is prohibited. CAM Magazine is a registered trademark of the Construction Association of Michigan.

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Special Issue 17

CONTENTS Table of

8 8 10

About the Authors Letter From the Editor Headlands International Dark Sky Park Star Gazing on the Straits

20

DMC Children’s Hospital - Troy

Puts all the Pieces Together for Kids’ Care

30

The U of M Stephen M. Ross School of Business

Creates a Modern Empire for a New Generation of Business Students

38

Brightmoor Christian Church

Sweeping New Church Expansion Rises in Novi

48

W.C.A.A. Michael Berry Administration Building Arrives at Metro Airport, Departs from the Norm

56

Jimmy John’s Baseball Stadium From Landfill to Luxury Ball Field

62

Genesee Career Institute

Designing and Building the Future at GCI

72

Country Club of Detroit

Renovation Infuses Athletic Wing with Modern Energy

84

M1 Concourse

On the Throttle - M1 Concourse Revs Up Car Excitement

92

Brembo’s North American Foundry

A Plant for Connoisseurs of the Industrial Arts

102

The Scott at Brush Park

The Scott Brings Luxury and Elegance to Brush Park Living

110

Lawrence Tech’s Taubman Complex Bridging Science and Engineering

120 126

Project Subcontractor Lists AD Index

Cover Photo Courtesy of Joseph M. Coots

6 CAM MAGAZINE OCTOBER 2017

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A B O U T

T H E

A U T H O R S

M A RY

K R E M P O S K Y

M CA R D L E

Mary graduated from Wayne State University with a Bachelor of Arts in English. As associate editor, she has been writing articles for CAM Magazine for over 25 years. She appreciates the opportunity to tour wonderfully crafted and beautifully designed spaces, and feels that learning about sustainability, urban restoration efforts and other vital trends is yet another bonus of working for the design and construction industry.

M A R I LY N

S .

J O N E S - W I L S O N

Marilyn graduated from Wayne State University with a Bachelor’s degree in electronic journalism, and has over 35 years of experience in writing, publications and promotion. Currently, she works at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan on member and customer communications. Previously, she was assistant public affairs officer at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers – Detroit District. As a native Detroiter, she is excited by the city’s resurgence and downtown development.

L I S A

B R I G G S

Freelance writer Lisa is a versatile writer who brings every subject or content to life – with flair, marketability and distinctiveness. She collaborates with businesses and individuals for their long-term or short-term writing projects.

Lisa currently writes for three Michigan-based magazines, and she can be contacted at briggs1020lisa@gmail.com.

Letter from the Editor A M A N DA

TAC K E T T

As we bring you the 22nd edition of our Special Issue, you’ll discover a truly diverse cross-section of recently completed projects throughout Michigan. They range from a northern dark sky park to an automotive performance track… from a historic area country club to a new hospital for children… and from a noted school of business to a cast iron foundry in the rolling Michigan countryside.

Other projects will take you to Metro Detroit Airport, a fun new baseball stadium, a state-of-theart career institute, a beautiful place of worship, luxury living in Detroit, and to a premier university for designers and engineers.

We wish to extend our thanks to all of the owners, general contractors, construction managers, subcontractors, architects and engineers whose talent is reflected in these pages. The hard work of Michigan’s construction and design professionals never ceases to amaze us.

Amanda Tackett Editor 8 CAM MAGAZINE OCTOBER 2017

“The Voice of The Construction Industry®”

Star Gazing on the Straits Waterfront Event Center and Observatory Opens West of Mackinaw City

Photo by Gary aPPold

Generating a sense of motion in stasis, the curvilinear sweep of the building and the site is in harmony with the wild sweep of shoreline and with other curves in nature, such as the grand arc traced by the rising and setting of both the sun and the moon.

By

Mary Kremposky McArdle Associate Editor

A

s darkness falls at the Headlands International Dark Sky Park, the stars return to their places and the Milky Way Galaxy’s “star-bow” bring the heavens back to the Earth. Hundreds of star-hungry people have been flocking each night to this sanctuary of the stars west of Mackinaw City.

As the sun sets and Jupiter rises on a cool summer evening, well over 500 people have gathered for the nightly unveiling of the cosmos in this public 600-acre park protected from the harsh glare of artificial light.

A stunning gem of a building is adding to the popularity of this natural and cultural treasure. AECOM, Traverse City, and Spence Brothers, Traverse City, worked with Emmet County and the Headlands team to build the recently opened Headlands Waterfront Event Center and Observatory. The building is in perfect harmony with the park’s old-growth forests, its two miles of undeveloped Lake Michigan shoreline, and of course, with the starry heavens above it all.

The license plates in the parking lot read Kentucky, Mississippi and Colorado. One couple is even from the United Kingdom. The visitors sit in a half-moon shaped outdoor seating area to witness what they cannot see in much of the country: the great turning of the night’s wheel and a seasonal sampling of the 5,000 to 7,000 stars visible to the naked eye in a dark sky environment. The sun dips into the waters of Lake Michigan, and the show begins, narrated by star shaman and night sky evangelist - aka Headlands Program Director - Mary Stewart Adams.

“Two-thirds of the residents of the United States now live where they can’t see most of the stars at night because of light pollution,” said Adams.

“My goal is to protect dark skies, and to raise awareness about what we are losing as humanity when we can’t see the night sky.”

Under the guidance of Adams, the crowd enters the stargazers’ universe by repeating the phrase, “Arc to Arcturus,” a common mnemonic device in astronomy. A thousand eyes simultaneously follow the arc or handle of the Big Dipper to locate one of the brightest stars in the northern

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hemisphere. The star-blind begin to see, and to become aware of a celestial body that had only been a random point of light a few minutes ago.

As a star lore historian, story-teller and author, Adams is deeply committed to keeping humanity’s cultural history alive as told by the stories stenciled in starlight across the dark sky. “We are not necessarily taught how to identify constellations or to even know the names of the stars,” said Adams.

“Learning the name of a star might lead one to wonder, ‘Who named the star? Why did they name it that?’ One starts to see an entire cultural history unfold. If you fast-forward to a time when not only can we not see it, we no longer know its name, then we have lost that cultural history.”

In late July, the celestial pageant unfolds at the Headlands: the waxing crescent moon sets and the great river of heaven – our own Milky Way Galaxy – is revealed in all its glory.

As the night deepens, the falling stars of the Delta Aquarid meteor shower begin to appear.

For every blazing white tail, a collective gasp rises from the crowd, reclining on lawn chairs or perched on the low masonry walls of the tiered outdoor viewing area.

Adams points out one of the main stars in the Aquarius constellation called Skat (pronounced Scott). In Arabic, Skat means wish, and on this night, Adams’ long-held wish for a star haven is coming true before her very eyes. “After people gathered at sunset and the skies darkened, it was beautiful to hear the voices of people murmuring and the sound of children,” said Adams. “I thought to myself, ‘It’s happening!’”

An amazing team of passionate and committed companies and individuals made it happen, including Emmet County and Adams herself. AECOM designed a building that “Arcs to Arcturus” in its sweeping curves and in a roofline actually formed of six concave arcs.

For a well-managed firm like Spence Brothers, no learning curve was necessary to construct this curvilinear building. Spence Brothers built this spherical $7 million dollar structure, on budget, on time and with incredible accuracy in crafting the building’s varied angles and slopes.

“This building would not be what it is if we did not have Spence Brothers and their onsite people who made sure it happened the right way,” said Emmet County Asset and Facilities Director Gary Appold. “We are very happy with the outcome, with Spence Brothers, and with Spence’s management of Visit us online at www.cammagazineonline.com

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the funds. Spence went above and beyond to make sure we were well covered as the owners, and to make sure we got the result we wanted.”

The building fulfills Emmet County’s wish for a public event space in the northern reaches of the County, and supports Adams’ long-held dream of reaching a broader audience with her message. For the last 30 years, she has been speaking in public schools, community colleges and to radio audiences about star lore and the need to protect dark sky environments. “I wrote to newspapers, and spoke anywhere I could get an audience,” said Adams, a mesmerizing speaker with an encyclopedic knowledge of star lore and a far-ranging perspective on the meaning of it all.

Today, hundreds of people attend her programs at the Headlands, a park that at the time of its designation in 2011 by the International Dark Sky Association was one of only nine dark sky parks in Photo by Edward McardlE the world. “Now that we have a The observatory’s three optic instruments include a building, the number of people six-inch Takahashi telescope for viewing our solar attending the programs has risen system; a Baiardi Family Foundation solar telescope exponentially,” said Adams. “It numbers for viewing the sun in three different ways via three in the hundreds regularly, and over the course different filters; and the Roger McCormick PlaneWave of a week, we easily have a thousand for deep space imaging. visitors.”

Delivering the Moon Designing a building to fit this unique park was a daunting task. The Emmet County Board of Commissioners told AECOM’s architectural lead designer John Kirsch, “We want something more than just a building.” Design-wise, the county asked for the moon, and AECOM delivered. Kirsch is based in AECOM’s National Water Design Center, Midwest Architecture located in Green Bay, Wisconsin.

AECOM’s Great Lakes offices used their collective talents to deliver this Great Lakes jewel.

AECOM’s cross-disciplinary team included its offices in Marquette (client liaisons, civil and structural engineering); Green Bay (architecture, mechanical, electrical and audio/video engineering; Traverse City (client liaisons and construction-related services); and Chicago (landscape architecture).

In this simply beautiful design, the vegetated, timber-framed roof turns the overall building into a type of dome-like sphere. “The shape is an architectural reference to a celestial dome, an ancient and modern tool used by observers to plot objects in the sky,” said Kirsch in a design summary.

Open from below, the sloped, spherical roof exposes the building’s walls to varying degrees, sloping towards the ground on the east and opening widely on the west for a grand view of lake and sky. The actual roofline is a series of scalloped concave arcs in harmony with the natural world. “The building expresses the intent to communicate with the environment,” said Adams. “The building is in conversation with the sweep of the shoreline, and with the curves that we see in nature, such as the rising and the setting of the sun and moon.”

Part of this conversation is between the building and the mind’s eye. Like a crescent moon, each concave arc of the roof represents one part of an unseen sphere; all of the spheres intersect and shape the building in a metaphorical sense. More readily apparent in a plan view, the roof “is sculpted by imaginary, intersecting spheres, resulting in the scalloped form with distinct low points,” said Kirsch, the low points being where the end of each arc touches its neighboring arc. In a sense, the human imagination completes the building’s design.

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The design dovetails with Adams’ mission to help re-energize the human imagination by re-kindling the age-old connection between human beings and the stars. In Adams’ view, humanity’s collective night-sky gazing throughout history has inspired not only stories in the sky, but also the ability to wonder, the capacity to think more deeply, and the establishment of a relationship with the cosmos that has influenced every culture’s architecture, agriculture, the arts and other endeavors.

“For thousands of years, some of humanity’s greatest achievements have been about aligning with and trying to understand that,” said Adams pointing to the sky. “Think of Galileo’s first use of the telescope. Think of the great pyramid at Giza that is built and aligned with what was then the North Star. (The Earth’s axis wobbles, or subtly shifts, so the North Star is actually a different star in different eons.)

“Of all the arts, architecture is the one that most reveals the influence of the stars,” said Adams. Even older than the pyramids, the main passage of New Grange, a great

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earthen dome and masonry spherical structure built in 3200 BC in Ireland, was constructed to align with the sun on the Winter Solstice.

The design of the Headlands facility honors ancient natural structures and the science of astronomy itself. “The building’s natural palette of stone walls, a timber roof structure and a green roof references the ancient shelter building of the past,” said Kirsch. “The stone and wood materials also refer to materials from the land, while the high-tech materials, such as the metal on the observatory’s dome and on the roof fascia reference the sophistication of modern astronomy. The two work together, giving the building a high-tech rustic look.”

Earth Magic The building is in perfect harmony with this wild sweep of Lake Michigan shoreline, its dense forests of cedar and pine, and its five miles of hiking trails offering visitors a glimpse of the rare Dwarf Lake Iris. The design celebrates this beautiful land and its abundant bird life.

From a bird’s-eye view, the vegetated roof is just another clearing in the forest. “The green roof offers habitat and a continuous environment for migrating birds,” said Adams.

“This area is a very important migratory route for birds, particularly raptors, hawks, eagles and owls that cross over the Straits, because they want to minimize flight over large expanses of water.”

The east slope of the vegetated roof is calculated to camouflage the actual building as its flower-dotted turf dips towards the surrounding landscape. In design, Kirsch had to experiment with the roof’s slope, along with the placement and size of the different arcs and arc points, “to make sure there was a good low point facing the parking lot,” said Kirsch. “We wanted to celebrate the green roof, and give people the feeling that they were seeing a meadow. We continued some of the same roof plantings down into the actual ground. Because of the slope and similar plantings, visitors may not even see the building at first, but as one begins to approach it, little by little the building begins to open up.”

Kirsch praises Spence Brothers and AECOM, Chicago’s Michelle Inouye, who designed the landscape and its curvilinear walkways to naturally flow with the building.

Regarding the roof slope, “I think Spence was within one-inch of the slope I wanted and planned for, which is truly amazing,” said Kirsch.

A Natural Theater From land to lake, the roof slopes upward, and the building opens to the waters of Lake Michigan on the west. “It almost looks as if the building just lifts off,” said Adams. “It opens up to the environment.”

Natural timber columns of pressurized Southern Yellow Pine support a grand porch and its timber beam and wood deck overhang, said Spence Brothers Project Manager John Galnares. AECOM designed the timbers to express the maritime history of the Straits area. “The timbers and the columns with the steel connections are reminiscent of a ship’s mast or a spar,” said Kirsch.

Unlike 19th Century sailors, visitors can safely enjoy the storms under the shelter of this porch nestled in a double arc, one of the canopied porch itself and the other of the grand sweeping curve forming the entire west side of the actual building.

“It’s an unparalleled experience to stand on the porch to view the lightning during a thunderstorm rolling across the lake,” said Adams.

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H E A D L A N D S Spence brought the full force of its construction management expertise to this North Country architectural jewel.

Budgetwise, “we had a very fixed budget coming into this project, and we have stayed on budget,” said Galnares.

“Remaining contingencies are actually going back to the owner.”

Spence kept a tight watch over the budget. Rather than using the specified green roof Photo by John Kirsch, aEcoM contractor, Spence opened the The vegetated roof and stone walls almost turn the building into bidding process to an array of another natural feature within this 600-acre park. different green roof contractors and different types of vegetated roof systems. Switching to a hybrid tray/media This grand porch could be viewed as a system for the green roof yielded significant natural theater: By day, the timber columns savings. “We worked with AECOM and frame the cloudscapes and waters of Lake Emmet County, and we were able to make Michigan; by night, the stars begin to fill the available some much-needed money,” said dark canvas of night sky between each Galnares. column.

Other value engineering ideas included Kirsch views the timber columns as altering some of the interior walls from establishing a type of forest-edge masonry block to steel stud. “It is more perspective. “When people stand behind expensive to build a radius block wall than a the porch/plaza columns and look towards steel stud wall,” said Galnares. “The alteration the lake, I was hoping to create the effect of

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had no impact on the design of the main event space, because the finish wall was going to be drywall in either case.”

Spence also identified several alternates at bid time, including the potential, but not implemented, elimination of the indoor/outdoor fireplace. “We worked with the owner and AECOM to send the project out for bids at a budget level that we were comfortable with,” said Galnares.

For all of its projects, “We do a great job with our due diligence on costs,” Lynch said and Appold agreed. “We track costs very carefully, and we do not present anything to the owner until we’ve conducted our due diligence and we are comfortable that it is valid.”

Bears, Blizzards and Bugs In 2013, Emmet County demolished the Headlands beach house, a concrete monolith designed in an architectural style called Brutalism. Roger McCormick, the man who purchased the property and named it the Headlands in the 1950s, built and used the structure as a changing area adjacent to the property’s swimming pool. “The cost to refurbish the building would have been exorbitant,” said Adams.

standing at a forest’s edge and looking up at the sky through the trees framed by the upper edge of a forest canopy,” said Kirsch.

The outdoor stage and seating area - a series of tiered masonry walls and landscaped expanses of turf and flowers are perched on a slight rise between Lake Michigan and the porch. The stage is an eye-shaped space formed of two intersecting circles, “one side being the outdoor seating area, and the implied other side of it is the lake,” said Adams.

“Budget Gazing” The park’s mission and the building’s amazing design inspired Spence to go all in.

“When we first saw the initial drawings, we were just bowled over,” said Galnares.

Spence Assistant Project Manager Mairin Lynch concurs: “We could see it was a oneof-a-kind project. Everyone involved has been very passionate about this building and about what it serves. It is truly unique and amazing.”

Emmet County selected Spence based on the company’s commitment and its talent for cost control. “The County board members at the interview said Spence Brothers had the best team, and Spence was very enthusiastic about building the facility,” said Appold.

Visit us online at www.cammagazineonline.com

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“The building had some age and structural issues, and it wasn’t well-insulated, having been used as a summer facility,” added Appold. “The board of commissioners requested public input on the building and its financing.” After waiting a year-and-a-half and with no public response, the county proceeded with its removal.

McCormick’s guest house remains as a lakefront rental facility, while the site of the former beach house became the empty canvas for the rise of the Waterfront Event Center and Observatory. Reusing the exact site prevented carving another building footprint into the mature forests, and made full use of the access road already in place.

Site clearing began in late August 2015, immediately after the park’s popular Perseid meteor showers program. This jobsite in the woods was a tad like backcountry camping. Because the

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Headlands is home to bear, deer, porcupines and the full array of North Country creatures, food waste had to be disposed of in a dumpster located a mile away along the main road. Trade contractors had to be fully equipped and fully prepared, because professional contracting supplies were not readily available in nearby communities. In managing site logistics, Spence had to coordinate deliveries of concrete trucks and large semi-tractor trailers down an access road not built to accommodate such large vehicles, said Spence Superintendent Mike DeMaestri.

Power and data had to be brought in from the main road and through the site’s rock and clay. The project actually required the services of a blasting contractor to make way for site utilities and foundations. “We hit a massive limestone formation,” said Galnares.

Two conduits, one for data and cable and the other for the building’s three-phase power, had to be channeled underground through these difficult sub-surface conditions for the entire mile. “We even had to directionally bore down through a steep cliff that is right behind the site,” added Galnares.

This sub-surface obstacle course included the discovery of a small rivulet or underground water sheet during basement excavation. “We put in additional drain tile along the foundation that gathers that water and channels it further away from the building,” said Galnares.

The week after Thanksgiving marked the beginning of work on the concrete spread footings and slab-on-grade foundations. The blizzards began in earnest in January 2016.

Fortunately, Spence had the foresight to pave the main parking lot for use as a staging area before the snow started flying.

The hardy crew worked in heavy snowfall and cold temperatures. For the concrete, “we used heating blankets, tarps and groundthawing machines,” said DeMaestri. “We did small sections at a time. We heated the soil, did our formwork and placed the concrete, wrapping it up tightly to cure for three or four days. We had an independent testing company on site that took samples and witnessed our construction practices to ensure the structural integrity of the concrete.”

In March 2016, the land began to naturally thaw and the bugs began to hatch. Galnares’ so-called “Great Fly Pandemic” marked the beginning of the masonry phase. The spring midges are fierce north of the 45th parallel, and “we literally couldn’t see in front of our faces,” said Galnares.

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courtEsy of aEcoM

The six, concave arcs of the roofline (the black area) are sculpted by imaginary, or implied, intersecting spheres, resulting in the roof’s unique scalloped form.

Despite the midges, Straus Masonry, Inc., Weidman, produced a well-crafted, beautiful assembly of four different types of stones placed in a random but visually pleasing pattern. “Straus Masonry put together several mockup panels for the stone pattern,” said Lynch.

The beautiful stone graces both the building exterior and select interior walls in the main event space. In watching the masons work, Galnares witnessed the thought and care each mason brought to the selection and placement of every stone and to the execution of every masonry detail. “They did an excellent job,” said Galnares.

On the exterior wall, Straus Masonry cut and formed the stone tightly around the exposed timber beams of the roof overhangs.

“The masons were within an eighth-of-aninch tolerance,” said Kirsch.

The masonry is a virtuoso display of true craftsmanship; the cavity wall construction is a prime example of a well-designed, energyefficient building envelope. Kirsch details the cavity wall and its two layers of insulation: “The exterior face has four inches of stone veneer, a one-inch air space and two-and-ahalf-inches of rigid insulation. The concrete block structural wall is behind this first layer of insulation. On the inside of the structural wall, we have another layer of insulation and furred out gypsum board.”

This North County building on a windy lakeshore also has an extra layer of roof Visit us online at www.cammagazineonline.com

insulation. “To meet code, a typical roof has four inches of built up poly-iso,” said Galnares. “This building has six. From an insulation and envelope standpoint, the building is constructed above and beyond what would be termed ‘Michigan code.’”

The vegetated roof, high-efficiency glass and thermal break window frames all add to the building’s energy-efficiency.

The building’s high-efficiency mechanical system features control of individual zones, occupancy sensors and in-floor heating in the public areas. The building has a series of skylights and solar tubes to draw in natural light and reduce energy costs.

This building is both star- and bird-friendly.

As a dark sky park, every aperture and window has an automated shade or damper to block the exit of all artificial light from the building to the night sky. The west face of the building has a series of four large windows featuring bird-friendly glass imported from Germany. Without obstructing the view, the glass has a non-invasive glare, and upon close inspection a spider web-like pattern, to prevent birds from flying directly into the glass and becoming one of the billions of birds a year killed in bird-building collisions.

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overall spherical shape of this unique roof.

“We gave the model to the timber fabricator who converted it into their own software in order to generate all of the timbers for production,” said Kirsch.

“The top of each timber member had to be milled with a curve in order to model the shape of the roof,” continued Kirsch. “Rather than just being able to use a standard bracket or connection, each one had to be different, because they had to shape each one of these timber members separately. The roof has thousands of connections, but thanks to computer technology we were able to design this roof.”

The roof has a variety of slopes, including a slight downward slope along the porch side of the building. Like Mother Nature, the building is both beautiful and functional; the low points of each arc actually function as part of the roof drainage system.

Spence Brothers had to establish the bearing points and build the beam pockets and plates to receive the timbers. “Every timber member was precision cut in Lapeer and then trucked to the site for installation,” said Galnares. “The challenge was to have

Insomnia at the Dark Sky Park The complex geometry of the timber roof was the most demanding part of the building’s design and construction. AECOM used 3D modeling to design the varied slopes and the CAM MAGAZINE OCTOBER 2017

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every bearing point in place prior to the beams’ arrival.

The seats had to be established with precision, so that the beams could fall into place and be spot on. We had no room for error.”

The main timbers have a fan-shaped arrangement; the individual timbers of this spread “fan” stream towards and converge at a single area on the porch-side of the building. “We established our layout point in the upper seating area just 10 to 15 feet past the porch,” said DeMaestri.

Hard work and sleepless nights went into the making of this wonder of a roof. “A great deal of work went into verifying the anchor bolt locations and the set points for the timber system,” said DeMaestri. “That was the main challenge of the project, and it went very smoothly when it came down to actually setting the pieces. Only a few points were off by a minor degree and had to be solved in the field.”

Compounding the difficulty, almost every beam, except for three, is installed on an angle. “It is very unusual to have a roof system of this size and to only have three points where the beams are at a true 90 degree angle,” Galnares.

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“AECOM provided assistance during construction, using the 3D computer model to confirm the location and elevation of each bearing point, and checked the design of the connections at those locations,” said Kirsch.

“AECOM redesigned connections as needed to fit conditions in the field.”

“Overall, the roof was quite a challenge, and it caused many a sleepless night,” added Galnares. The Spence team can now rest easy. “The contractor did a great job,” said Kirsch. “We were all holding our breaths, but it was achieved beautifully.

Lucky Stars Spence Brothers also had the rare opportunity to construct an observatory. “We thank our lucky stars for the opportunity to be involved in this project,” said DeMaestri.

The 20-step circular tower to the stars has a poured concrete foundation, followed by block wall construction, and a steel-framed, 18-foot Ash Dome.

The sensitive instrumentation within the dome must be protected from vibration and thermal movement.

Spence constructed a massive four-byfour-foot reinforced concrete pier as the

vibration isolation mount for the 20-inch PlaneWave deep space imaging instrumentation and two telescopes. The 35foot-tall, self-supported pier travels the full height of the tower and rests on a footing placed about two to three feet below grade.

“Large reinforcement steel in the concrete ties together the pier footing and column,” said Galnares.

“We also used a flexible sealant to prevent transmitting vibration from the building into the column,” said Kirsch who traveled to several observatories in preparation for the design. The companies responsible for installing the PlaneWave and the two telescopes used a software program to measure movement. “The companies that installed the PlaneWave and two telescopes both said the isolation of movement in this facility is excellent,” said Appold.

In managing thermal movement, “the telescopes have to be in sync with the outside temperature and humidity,” said Galnares.

“When you open the dome, you don’t want condensation to form on the lens or mirrors, because of a temperature difference between the outside air and the interior of the dome.”

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AECOM brought its design finesse to this concern. “We designed a unique under-floor ventilation system to block heat from rising into the unheated dome from the lower parts of the observatory,” said Kirsch.

Three exhaust fans in the exterior wall can mechanically draw air from what is essentially a crawlspace to rapidly adjust the temperature in the dome.

“The system allows them to cool or warm the dome quickly to match the ambient temperature in the dome with outside conditions,” said Kirsch.

The dome is always Photo by Edward McardlE unheated, but AECOM designed an insulated ceiling to The stage in the lower left, the terraced viewing area and the grand porch with its colonnade of natural timbers face the open canvas of sky and lake, offering the ideal spot for star, sun and water-gazing. protect the exhibit room below from the dome’s cold. “We also A Song of the Stars interior offers a full-service kitchen, office created a small control room in the dome The observatory even has an unseen space and the main event space. with a heater for the operators,” said blessing. After pier excavation, Adams The event area offers a panoramic view of Kirsch. “The control room has highplaced a bottle of Arabian sand in the Lake Michigan, an indoor/outdoor stone efficiency windows that will not transmit excavated opening. Many stars have Arabic fireplace and a natural material palette of heat into the dome.” names, the Middle East having once been a beautiful stone walls, an exposed timber The circular, stone-clad observatory has prominent center of astronomy. Adams beam and wood roof deck, and a metal grid three different instruments for peering into even had the opportunity to travel to the ceiling overlay built in the facility’s signature the cosmos.

A six-inch Takahashi United Arab Emirates (UAE) to teach pattern of intersecting circles. telescope offers views of our own solar schoolchildren about the stars and to travel The trades who built this beautiful system; a Baiardi Family Foundation solar to the Arabian Desert where she gathered structure in the North Woods have returned telescope has three different filters, offering the sample of sand. to show their families their handiwork. One three different views of the sun, including “I was invited over to the UAE in April contractor even scheduled his own August the corona, the surface and a deeper view 2015 to teach children the names of the wedding at the Headlands. into the sun’s interior for a glimpse of stars and the stories of the stars,” said “Across the board, the people who sunspot activity and other phenomena; and Adams. “The night before I arrived in the installed the masonry, the glass, the timber the Roger McCormick PlaneWave for deep Middle East, I had been at a Michigan framing and all the trades have a space imaging. The PlaneWave is a type school presenting these same stories. I tremendous sense of pride and of sophisticated light-gathering camera. thought, ‘This is how the stars bring people accomplishment in having been a part of The images are projected on flat-screen together.’ When you look at global relations, such a unique project,” Galnares said. monitors installed in the lobby, the main it is exciting to think we are bringing these About 95 percent of the trade contractors event space and in the observatory’s firstchildren something that unites us.” were from Michigan, many within a 50-mile level exhibit room.

Adams was moved to write this message radius of the project.

Meridian Manufacturing, Deerfield, in the bottle at the Headlands Observatory: A beautiful natural oasis by day and a star produces the PlaneWave, and Cranbrook “This sand was carried back from the refuge at night, the Headlands is open 24/7.

Institute of Science in Bloomfield Hills Turn off your smartphones, turn on your redArabian Desert and buried near the sands of offered guidance to the Headlands team. filtered flashlights for optimal night vision, Lake Michigan with the intent that it would Cranbrook provided an important contact, and take in the grand sweep of the star-filled join the children of the world in a song of the Greg Stafford, the person responsible for skies. With its wild acreage and a beautiful stars.” automating the dome movement in sync building, rooted in the Earth but reaching for with the computer. Jeff Granger, Sound & the stars, this soul-feeding, wonder-inducing Pure Michigan Pride Video Systems, and Appold managed the place is truly a rare gift, courtesy of Emmet The well-received Event Center has been unique, two-way audiovisual County, Mary Stewart Adams and her rented virtually every weekend for weddings, communication system linking the compatriots in the dark sky movement, anniversaries, photography exhibits and PlaneWave and the building’s audiovisual AECOM, Spence Brothers, and the entire other celebrations, as well as indoor and computer systems. trade contracting team. portions of Adams’ star programs. The Visit us online at www.cammagazineonline.com

CAM MAGAZINE OCTOBER 2017

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The Pathway to the Stars

By Mary

Kremposky McArdle, CAM Magazine

The use of this wild forested site as an International Dark Sky Park may have been written in the stars. In the mid-19th Century, a Cincinnati businessman named Edgar Conkling purchased the property and other large swaths of land for lumber and to build a great city on the Straits of Mackinac. Many believed the area would become as prosperous as Chicago because of its location on this water highway. A forest fire swept through the area, and his dream of a lumber empire turned to ashes.

In the late 1950s, Roger McCormick, son of the vice president of International Harvester, purchased the property and envisioned a lodge on a ridge. Sadly, he died very young. For 25 years, the McCormick Foundation offered the property and its two existing structures as a place to tutor Native American students in the healthcare field. “Roger McCormick was dedicated to Native American culture,” said Headlands Program Director Mary Stewart Adams, “and his family decided to honor his memory by using the building for University of Oklahoma Native American students during the summer months.”

In the 1990s, the University of Oklahoma decided to bring the summer tutoring program back to its own campus. Ultimately, the McCormick Foundation sold the property, formerly called the Roger McCormick Estates, to Emmet County in 1996. For property acquisition, the county secured most of the funds - $3.4 million dollars - from the Michigan Natural Resources Trust Fund. Further funding was obtained from the Chauncy & Marion Deering McCormick Foundation and the Harold C. Schott Foundation. The funding came with certain restrictions, such as the creation of a public park and no camping, said Emmet County Asset and Facilities Director, Gary Appold.

Perhaps, fate was holding this rare stretch of land and shoreline.

“Conkling wanted to lumber the land, but a fire came through,” said Adams. “Roger McCormick wanted to build a lodge, but then he died.

The land was purchased, but these restrictions were placed on the land.

The land was being held for something. That is how I look at it, but then I’m a poet and a romantic.”

This romantic didn’t just wish on a star. Adams actively worked to make it happen. After moving to the Petoskey/Harbor Springs area and having begun to teach about the night sky, she became involved in the Outdoor Lighting Forum in Petoskey. “This organization developed in the early 2000s to keep people informed about the proper use of artificial light at night in new developments as a way to try to inhibit future light pollution,” said Adams.

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Adams began lunch meetings with active members of the community, one told her about the International Dark Sky Association (IDSA) and the other about the Headlands as a possible venue for her star talks. In 2009, Adams began actively campaigned for a Dark Sky Park, speaking to meetings of the Emmet County Board of Commissioners. “They were very supportive and also very intrigued, because they had never heard of this before,” said Adams. “It took us two years and about 75 pages of application to get the designation from the IDSA We had to provide an inventory of the existing light sources in the area, do sky quality meter readings, obtain letters of support from area stakeholders and provide regular public programming that teaches about why we need to protect the night sky.”

Her commitment remains unshakeable, and the crowds have become unstoppable. “We can be stewards not only of the land, water and habitat, but of the sky,” said Adams. “It belongs to us as much as these other elements. We need to be protecting the dark sky, because we are losing it due to light pollution.”

Adams has a humanities-based approached to teaching about the night sky. “This approach is my attempt to sustain the human imagination that is inspired by direct encounter with the celestial world around us,” said Adams on the Headlands website.

Her open-minded mother introduced Adams to astronomy, astrology and other areas of inquiry at a young age. Adams was hooked from the first moment she opened a book on the stars. Today, Adams is fascinated by what she terms social astronomy. “What intrigues me most is how our contemporary understanding of our celestial environment informs us as a culture,” she said. In the 16th Century, the Copernican Revolution (the Earth orbits the Sun, and is not the fixed central point of the universe) dramatically changed the culture.

“Today, we have technology to inform us, which means that there is a very small portion of people in our culture capable of understanding and informing us about what is being discovered,” said Adams.

“Without malicious intent, the language used is sometimes very violent.

“Whether the Sun is at the center or a black hole is at the center, I am all about restoring the noble position of the human being,” said Adams.

“How can we use what we know now to ennoble the human being, and that doesn’t just say, ‘You are an insignificant speck on an insignificant piece of dust going around an average star.’ The fact that we can even conceive of these discoveries should be affirming our majesty as human beings.”

“The Voice of The Construction Industry®”

DMC Children’s Hospital-Troy Puts All the Pieces Together for Kids’ Care

The Children’s Hospital of Michigan-Troy’s colorful exterior brings to mind kids’ building blocks. The yellow section welcomes everyday patients, while the red section represents emergency and urgent care services.

By Marilyn S. Jones-Wilson

Photos by Justin Maconochie

The Children’s Hospital of Michigan-Troy is not a shy building. It stands bold and bright when you exit the freeway at Big Beaver Road. Like stacked toy building bricks in primary colors, the specialty medical center immediately calls out to children, who recognize at once that it’s a place built especially for them.

Offering outpatient specialist, diagnostic, emergency and walk-in health care, the Children’s Hospital fills a need by bringing pediatric experts and high-quality medical services to the suburbs. “We wanted to take the very high level of pediatric care that we offer in Detroit, and bring that out to the suburbs,” said Ronald Henry, Detroit Medical Center senior vice president and chief facility engineering and construction officer.

Designed in candy colors of yellow, red and blue, orange and green by Harley Ellis Devereaux (HED), Southfield, the three-story, 63,000-squarefoot building greeted 3,500 visitors at its September 2016 opening. Constructed at a cost of $21 million - $44 million fully appointed – the David K. Page Building houses medical services ranging from allergy, asthma and audiology to outpatient surgery, cancer care and a sleep center.

With a 24-hour laboratory, imaging services and other diagnostics, the hospital was conceived through lean integrated design to ensure no steps are wasted while delivering care to children. Beginning in late 2014, the project team looked for engineering and construction management that could handle the specific needs and code requirements of such a technical facility.

“Both HED and Christman (construction manager) were selected primarily for the expertise of the team members that they brought forward, and their experience in health care,” Henry said. “HED came to the interview with some very creative ideas that were intriguing, and Christman came to the table with a very aggressive construction schedule shaving three months off the timeframe. We had anticipated an 18-month build, and for us, getting open and in the market was very important.”

“This was an extremely fast-track project,” said Arthur Smith, principal architect at HED. Phased in three main bid packs, the site work and foundations had begun while design was ongoing. “Working with Christman, we quickly identified the perimeter, knowing that the pieces were going to change within it.”

While they focused on the exterior building enclosure, the interior work was bid out in the third bid package, which consisted of the fit-out work, along with the mechanical and electrical scope. The design, meanwhile, followed some basic objectives. “There were a couple of things we wanted,” Henry said. “We knew we wanted to use a lean process, including integrated facility design. We wanted it to be as efficient as possible, easily maintained over time, and absolutely driving out waste in processes, procedures and space that doesn’t add value. And, we wanted it to be a building unmistakably designed for children.”

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Leaning in to Design As part of a process of integrated facility design, using lean principles to plan the interior meant thinking about how to organize the delivery of health care to maximize efficiency and reduce waste. That meant gathering input from a range of people who understand health care inside and out.

“We had a significant number of Children’s Hospital of Michigan stakeholders involved,” Henry said, “from nurses, doctors, former patients, families, people in the community, regulatory agencies… there were literally over 100 people involved in user-group meetings.

HED worked very closely developing design ideas for review by everyone.

“Everyone would make comments on what were their likes, dislikes and ideas they wanted us to explore further,” he continued.

“We challenged those groups by taking small pieces of cut-out paper and letting them work with a blank slate on how they would lay out some of the departments in the building if given the opportunity.”

Drawings were just the start of the detailed design process. By including the stakeholders early, visualization of the hospital progressed through atypical methods, such as using yarn to trace potential routes between greeting a patient, taking vitals and delivering treatment.

“They would measure that distance, and if it is 250 feet that somebody travels, how can we reduce that?” Henry said. “If you were a child getting outpatient surgery at our central campus, you would walk 1,500 steps.”

At Children’s Hospital of Michigan-Troy, that child would take 115 steps for the same result, in and out of surgery. “So it’s less than ten percent of what it used to be,” he said.

The process continued until the team had drawings that everyone signed off on.

“Everyone said, ‘This is perfect, build it!’ But we didn’t build it,” Henry said. “We rented an ice rink in downtown Detroit. We built every floor, all three floors, full-sized out of cardboard. People referred to it as ‘cardboard city.’ Imagine that – 63,000 square feet of space, built out of eight-foot-tall cardboard.

“Now all those same stakeholders could walk through it any day of the week, with all the door openings and nurse stations, every room and corridor on the entire floor,” Henry said. “Walking through the mock-up, a nurse might say, ‘This just isn’t going to work. Every time I have to go get meds, I have to go ten feet that way, or 50 feet that way, and I’m going to be doing it 25 times a day.’ So we kept working to reduce those distances, to drive out the waste,” Henry said. “Ultimately, Visit us online at www.cammagazineonline.com

we reduced about 20 percent of the building’s square footage. We essentially saved $7-8 million on the project.”

On most projects, the end-user doesn’t have a significant level of involvement at the planning stage. Even if the user is invited in early that may not be enough if someone is not trained to look at blueprints.

“I think the tendency is, you see a drawing with a bunch of lines on it, and there’s a certain amount of anxiety,” Smith said.

“There’s a bit of pressure added in, say, a two-hour meeting. Is this okay? Are you going to sign off on this drawing?”

building. “It was a four-story box at the back of the site, surrounded by parking. We thought, this is not appropriate for a children’s facility,” Smith said. “We chose to show an idea of how we could make the building more efficient and appealing to kids. Our health care folks were a little anxious about what we came up with, but we just thought it would resonate.”

“I thought that the use of colored glass would do a lot to the environment. There would be a kaleidoscope of color as you walk through it during the day, and a kaleidoscope at night.”

Children who are being prepped for surgery watch the stop lights to know how far along they are in the process of getting ready. Sliding barn doors on the treatment rooms save space in the corridors.

By letting the experts – the ones who actually have to work in the building – review the plans in advance, expensive last-minute changes and fixes can be avoided. “You don’t have to build it out of cardboard,” Henry said.

“You can do it with computers, you can do it two-dimensionally. It’s getting the end-user involved as early on in the process as you can.

“As technology has quickly advanced, we are now using virtual reality as an alternative to the cardboard concept,” he said. “Time will tell how these two radically different approaches will compare.”

Crayon Color Box Today’s distinctive colorful design was not part of the original request for proposals, which outlined a typical dark brick medical

While HED put forward the bold color scheme, their choice of materials evolved. “As we got into the project, we didn’t really delineate what the material was, but we leaned toward a metal panel,” Smith said.

But in working with Christman and the owner, HED began to rethink the extensive use of metal panels, due to budget concerns and issues of durability, especially color retention with weathering. Masonry won out.

Smith noted that famed architect Eero Saarinen used glazed brick in the GM Technical Center, Warren. “I believe it was the first use of glazed brick in this area, if not the country, and that looks as good today as it did in 1956,” he said. “This product endures, so it’ll look this way 50 years from now. We chose it as a move to bring in economies, and it also gave us design freedom, so it was a perfect marriage.”

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Other elements evolved, as well. An early design envisioned pastel colors. “We wanted to make sure it had timelessness, so we went with primary colors because they tend to stand the test of time,” Henry said. “It was not intended to look like a LEGO® building when it started out.

It evolved that way.

“We kept asking ourselves, if a kid built this…,” he said. “Way down the road, as we started working with these multi-colored bricks, I said if you put a five-year-old in a room and gave him all these colorful pieces, it’s going to have many different colors and different pieces. It’s probably not going to be a perfect square of a single color. It’s probably going to have many interesting, unexpected forms and patterns.”

The building’s floorplan is generally rectangular, though the façade gives the impression of stacked shapes, with accent points and occasional irregularities for interest. All in all, the building uses seven different colors of glazed brick, and six colors of glass. “There’s some randomness to the color, but then there are other sections that have a lot of order,” Henry said.

“The formal organization was based upon a very efficient box that went to the seriousness of all the functions,” Smith said.

“In health care, you can’t just whimsically say something is going to have an angle or a curve to it.”

Combining the practical needs of a health care building with more playful aspects, the final design had a logic to its use of color.

“The blue box contained the major functions of the building,” Smith said. “Then there were two other boxes that attached to it. One was the main entrance lobby, which we call the yellow lobby, and then the red box was the emergency entrance. We were thinking not only about the experience of parents bringing their kids for a checkup, but more importantly, the anxiety of: my daughter broke her arm, and I need to get to emergency as soon as possible. You don’t need any signs, you don’t need an address. You would just look for the red stating ‘Emergency’ and you would be able to come into the door.”

“We wanted kids to know it was for them even if it didn’t have a sign on it,” Henry said.

“Long before this building had a sign on it, everybody in the community knew it had to be something about kids, just by the color scheme. Kids were very involved in the way this building looks. So now, if you’re going in to have tubes put in your ears, you’re not as terrified as you might have been, going into a sterile environment where it didn’t seem as friendly to kids.”

Kid-Centered Care The color scheme is only one element of the hospital’s approach to putting the needs of young patients and their families foremost.

The first thing a visitor notices is the relative absence of waiting rooms. “We don’t have waiting rooms,” said Robin Phillippe, Children’s Hospital of Michigan director of surgical ambulatory services. “We have ‘Pause Areas.’”

“There’s very limited wait-time anywhere,” Henry said. “It’s a managed process where people come in and are immediately seen or taken into an exam room. Waiting is waste.”

“We have receptionists only on the first

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with vivid artwork created by Oakland County school children.

Modular kid-friendly furniture makes the hospital less frightening and more accessible for children coming for health services. Sunshine pours in through bright glass windows for a kaleidoscope effect.

floor, who direct the families either to the firstfloor registration, the second floor, or the third floor. That’s really the only time families really need to be directed to where they’re heading,” Phillippe said. “The big red emergency room block is right there; and we refer to the yellow entrance when we talk to families about where to go to check in.”

“It’s set up more like a hotel,” said Harry Mikolowski, Jr., Children’s Hospital of Michigan-Troy facilities manager. “You walk down and see what room number you have.

The signage is all colorful and accurate. When they step out of a patient room, there’s no question of where the lobby is or where the exit is, so it works very well.”

Care is streamlined with an emphasis on reducing the number of personal interactions in favor of improved connection with each patient. “Every step of the way, steps are reduced so that there are fewer handoffs from one caregiver to the next,” Henry said.

For example, a scared three-year-old coming in for surgery could rely on one nurse to guide him through the whole process. “If you become their trusted connection, the child is going to be that much more comfortable,” Henry said.

Each treatment room has all the equipment for taking blood pressure, temperature and other vitals, including a wheelchair scale, so the patients don’t have to walk around from place to place. “Everything happens in here Visit us online at www.cammagazineonline.com

prior to them going to sleep,” Phillippe said.

Each patient is prepped and put to sleep in the same room, which has its own door into the operating area. The rooms feature redyellow-green traffic lights to let patients know how close they are to surgery.

“The red light means the door [to surgery] is locked,” Phillippe said. “As soon as that light turns yellow, they’ll call the nurse. ‘It’s yellow!’ So they actually take part in the whole thing. Anesthesia will come in and start the induction. They’ll go to sleep here. Once the light’s green, that door will open,” she said.

Unlike in traditional hospitals, where patients are taken from intake to pre-op and then into the operating room, leaving their families behind, here they stay with their families until they go to sleep, then wake up afterward in front of Mom and Dad. “The child sees two rooms, where they go to sleep and where they wake up. You can’t ask for anything better than that,” Phillippe said.

If the case is extremely long, the parent area was designed to make the waiting comfortable as well as convenient. “This particular area has the yellow windows, so it makes it extra bright and cheery,” she said.

Interior furniture is brightly colored and modular, kid-friendly and easy to roll around.

Interactive LED screens allow children to dig for treasure in virtual sandy beaches, pop virtual balloons, and play other games handson. Walls, columns and hallways are filled

Going with the Flow The innovations in the flow of services has positively impacted the staff as well as the patients. “The staff love being here. They appreciate this building so much more than any other place they’ve worked,” Phillippe said. “One employee said, ‘I thought I used to love my job,’ then she started to work here!

The atmosphere, how we’ve designed the work flow for the staff and patients, means more interaction in the departments. It works so much better for the families. They’re in and they’re out. Their treatments are less than an hour, as opposed to waiting an hour to get in, so that’s made a huge impact on the staff, as well.”

If, during an exam, the patient needs another type of service at the same time, that provider will come to the patient in the same room. “That’s huge among the providers,” Phillippe said, “to be able to call to a colleague and get that patient treated at the same time.”

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Every step is strategically planned. In the staff area, a magnetic board keeps track of all the patients and how much time they need, as well as openings in the schedule where new patients could fit in. “We took time with each of our services to determine, do I need 60 minutes per patient, 30 minutes per patient, how much time do I need in relation to the staffing I have,” Phillippe said.

“If there’s a patient that cancels or if there’s a walk-in patient, we’ll move the magnets around to accommodate,” she said. “The providers are all working together one-onone, doing what they can for each patient.”

A Tribute Conference Room The basic rectangle of the building has bumpout accents to vary the look of the exterior façade. One of these is a glassed-in conference room that pays tribute to the late architect Minoru Yamasaki, best known for designing the World Trade Center.

Yamasaki’s architectural firm was located on the Big Beaver DMC property previously.

A multi-layered concrete structure, the building could not be incorporated into the new construction and had to be torn down.

We Treat Everyone Like an Executive Efficient workflows for hospital staff ensure there are really no waiting rooms, only “pause rooms.” City of Troy zoning encouraged liberal use of transparency to infuse light into the interior spaces.

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“It was basically pre-cast concrete panels, with the exception that he had a projection for his office,” Smith said.

“Yamasaki’s office was a box of glass that projected out on the side of the office,” Henry said. Now, in the same approximate location, there is another glass box on the side of the building. “I refer to this as the Yamasaki Board Conference Room. It’s a very subtle gesture to a great architect who once practiced on this site.”

The jutting color features of the façade provide a whimsical, playful counterpart to the modern high-rise office buildings that surround the hospital. “The form-based zoning that the City of Troy had adopted looked at projects along this strip as retail and residential, and stipulated percentages of transparency and changes in material,” Smith said.

But a medical facility can’t be too transparent due to privacy concerns, not to

mention placement of stairs and elevators around the perimeter. “A lot of effort was put into getting the different functions of the building that could have glass on the sides to comply with City of Troy opacity requirements,” Henry said. “We had to get these percentages up. When working on a conference room, for example, we filled the exterior wall with glass because you needed the percentage that couldn’t be achieved in other areas while maintaining patient privacy.”

Creating a Sense of Place By adopting the new zoning code, the City of Troy wanted to encourage more storefronts facing Big Beaver instead of parking lots.

“They want to make it more like a boulevard, a walkable street. They wanted all the buildings on the street to be 15 feet off the property line,” said Steve Busen, Christman senior project manager.

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DMC CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL OF MICHIGAN - TROY

“They’re trying to create a friendlier environment,” Henry said. “Our original proposal had the building set back on the site and a big parking lot right in front. That’s what Troy is trying to get rid of.”

Of course, people don’t normally walk to the hospital; they drive. But to accommodate the requirements, the building’s proposed layout on the site flipped midway through the planning process. “That dramatically changed the way that we approached the building,” Henry said. “The site zoning drove a lot of design decisions.”

“The City of Troy played a large role in the success of this,” Smith said. There was trepidation about bringing the plan to the city, because a few years ago IKEA wanted to build a big blue box of a building here with a yellow entrance, and the city wouldn’t allow it.”

On plan approvals meetings, Henry tended to de-emphasize the primary color scheme in favor of other features. “We’re having all these discussions, and off to the side there are renderings of a building that’s all bright colors.

They’d ask, ‘Is it really going to be that color?’

I’d say don’t focus on the color, those are just

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blocking diagrams. Don’t worry about that now. We’re here to talk about the site plan. So after many months of these types of meetings, we go back to the city and now we have to present the drawings. They ask, ‘Is it really going to be that color?’

“I said, ‘We’ve already talked about that, and kept marching forward without hesitation,’” Henry said. “A lot of what the City of Troy realized was, in order to create better communities, you need a ‘sense of place.’

Now people, if they’re looking for a sense of place, they can say, ‘Meet me by that bright, multi-colored building,’ and there’s no doubt as to which one they’re talking about.”

Ultimately the city’s zoning and design requirements pushed the team toward making the building better. “You don’t need them to drive good design,” Henry said. “But it’s very easy for an owner to say, ‘Get rid of all the extras and make it as cheap as possible.’ The city officials came back and said, ‘This building epitomizes the intent of the zoning ordinance.’”

Good Neighbors The project’s success owed a great deal to

the relationships that developed between the team and those representing the City of Troy, whose offices are located just to the west of the hospital. The Marriott Hotel is on their east side.

“Christman did a tremendous job of working through to make sure the city and all the regulatory agencies were up-to-date,” Henry said. “You could say, ‘It’s great to have them right next door.’ But potentially you’re highly scrutinized. You can’t hide anything from them.”

“They were there even from the design phase,” said Brian Crumm, Christman project manager. “During construction, we were their first stop when they went out and their last stop when they came back. They could look out of their office window and say, ‘What are you doing over there?’”

“We got them involved,” Busen said. “They liked the building so much they wanted to have a little display of the different materials.

So when the brick was delivered, we brought them over each color of the brick and set them up in the office. When the panels were delivered, we cut off a piece and delivered that, also.”

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This close give-and-take resulted in cooperation over the occasional regulatory challenge. “The Fire Marshal, for instance, has a requirement that each canopy has to have a 14-foot clearance to get a fire truck underneath it,” Henry said. “We argued that point and said, ‘We’d like to reduce it to ten feet, to provide coverage to the people at the front entrance. We’ve all been at gas stations where you look up at that canopy and think, ‘It’s not protecting me - I’m getting wet!’ It doesn’t even have to be much of a driving rain, you’re still getting wet.

“By bringing the Fire Marshal in, getting him involved in the process, he called back and said, ‘I understand what you’re trying to do. If there was a fire, we would park on Big Beaver and set up for the fire there.’ So he let us lower it,” Henry said.

“We got a comment in an email, sent to us from the city planner,” Smith said. “He said every time he comes to work, he smiles when he sees our building.”

The relationship with the Marriott was equally positive. “Typically a neighbor would be calling every three days, saying there’s dirt

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in my parking lot,” Henry said. Instead, the level of cooperation was extraordinary.

“They were an awesome neighbor to deal with,” Crumm said. “I would call them in the morning and say, I need to work on this elevation. Will you let me shut down the parking lot? Or, if they had a conference and had to open it back up, we would move to work on the other side while they had their stuff going on. From day one, they were excited to have us as their neighbor.”

“Brian and I could walk in their offices right now, and they would probably still jump out of their seats to greet us,” Busen said. “That’s how it was – a really good relationship.”

Few Last-Minute Surprises Thanks to the lean planning process and the cardboard walk-throughs, there were few design changes and problems to solve throughout the course of the project. Busen estimates there were 25 to 30 percent fewer Requests For Information (RFIs) and change orders from a typical health care project this size, which means savings in both time and money.

He attributes that largely to the extensive lean planning upfront. “That really eliminated the need for large change orders to revise the floor plans after we started construction,” he said.

Early on, for example, caregivers had an “ah-ha” moment when, reviewing the 3dimensional plans made out of foam core, they realized that the sleep study department was planned for the second floor, directly above the bay for the magnetic resonance imaging trailer.

“The MRI makes a ton of noise,” Phillippe said, “so the patients wouldn’t have been sleeping during the MRI hours. That was a big problem.”

Changing the location of the sleep lab after construction would have been costly, because of the way the floor slab is customized for that function. By working together, they redesigned what was going where to avoid the juxtaposition with the MRI trailer below, and thus wouldn’t interfere with patient care.

“You wouldn’t have gotten that solution if you didn’t have the health care experts there,” Phillippe said. It was crucial to make that discovery prior to construction, because changing the sleep lab later would have been very costly.”

The MRI trailer brought more than its share of challenges. Because of the way the building was positioned on the site, the team

The Children’s Hospital of Michigan-Troy was designed inside and out to appeal to children. Glazed masonry lends a palette of primary colors to the building’s jutting angles and eye-catching facade.

did not want the large vehicle protruding in front of the building. “There was a question about where do you put that and not have it look like an eyesore out in front of your building,” Busen said.

Smith came up with the concept of having the MRI trailer back into the building. “Garage doors come down and you never know it’s there,” Henry said.

Out of Bounds Another change related to the MRI came from the discovery that the dock height – the platform leading from the hospital directly into the trailer – had been envisioned for an MRI trailer height of a different level, and would not achieve the smooth transportation needed for the patient on a gurney.

“The MRI trailer was higher than the one we planned for,” Henry said. “When the gurney went up, it had to make a 90-degree turn. One of the wheels was on the ramp and the other one wasn’t. Yes, you can get there, but it’s very risky. It probably not going to tip over if you have three nurses and a four-year-old kid, but now the 15-year-old football player comes in with a concussion and he weighs 225 pounds – he’s probably going to be at risk,” Henry said.

“The nursing staff brought the trailer and a gurney out and showed us that it wasn’t going to work,” Crumm said. “We were trying different options, lifts on the trailers.

“The Voice of The Construction Industry®”

Ultimately we worked together and came up with a ramp system that would work better for the nursing staff to get patients in and out of the different trailer.

“The preplanning, the mockups and the cardboard city, everything that was done before the construction team stepped foot on side, was huge,” Crumm said. “There weren’t major changes, we weren’t redesigning space. Those bridges had already been crossed.”

All in all, the reduced number of change orders due at least in part to the preplanning could be considered one measure of the building’s successful construction. “The issues we did have - and they were very, very few - I asked myself how we missed that,” Henry said.

He realized that those items tended to be ones that fell beyond the reach of the mockups at the ice rink. “This building is a little bit bigger than an ice rink, and there were certain things that we did not mock up. We didn’t have a model.”

The only issues that came up and needed last-minute solutions were those areas that were literally just outside the models.

Nothing Lost in Translation Even though the team chose not to apply for an official certification, the hospital meets the standards for LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Silver classification. “It was essentially designed as if it were a LEED Silver certification,” Smith said, mostly due to the mechanical systems, exterior walls, roof, insulation and the amount of recycled material used.

“From a construction standpoint, that’s our company’s standard,” Crumm said, “building to LEED with dumpsters for recycling, and air filters on all HVAC so you’re not bringing in the dirty air through finished systems.”

“The key thing is from Detroit Medical Center and Children’s Hospitals, sustainability is very important to us – building buildings that are beneficial or not adverse to our environment,” Henry said. “We didn’t go the LEED route because that’s a lot of paperwork, and we knew as long as we built the building this way, that’s what was important, not a plaque on the wall. We are only as good as our client, and in this case, our client was superb. That’s maybe the story behind this: it was DMC.” Henry said that unlike concept cars at the Auto Show that lose something once they reach production, the Children’s Hospital of Michigan hasn’t lost anything in translation to Visit us online at www.cammagazineonline.com

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Every aspect of the medical center is designed to be attractive and inviting to kids who are sick or stressed. Simple signage throughout the facility make it easy to find where to go.

the real world. “In this instance, from the initial sketches and with all the ideas, it came out better,” Henry said. “It truly is.”

He has been asked to present the building’s success story, from planning to completion, to the Construction Owners Association of America, to the Michigan Health Care Conference, and all over the country. The building has received several accolades already, including the 2017 American Institute of Architects People’s Choice Award; the 2017 Masonry Institute of Michigan Award; a 2017 Engineering Society of Detroit Award; and the National 2016 Brick in Architecture Silver Award.

Pride of Purpose The anticipation for the hospital’s opening was stoked by a media campaign that emphasized the LEGO appeal and resulted in the thousands of visitors for its opening.

But even during construction, there was a contagious good will surrounding the team’s colorful mission.

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“From a construction standpoint and the builder’s standpoint, the uniqueness of the building really energized the project team and all the subcontractors as well,” Busen said. “You could look at all the color renderings and just kind of open up your eyes and go, ‘Wow, I can’t believe we’re really building this.’ But it doesn’t really hit you until the materials show up on-site, and you’re watching these colors get installed on the building – this is the color of the brick, this is the color of the glass – this is very cool,” he said.

“You never saw a happier group of construction workers,” Henry said. “Every single person was so proud of what they were working on, and bringing their families out to see it.”

Crumm also stressed the importance of the collective effort in creating the building’s success. “It was a team approach,” he said.

“The construction team was happy, the owner’s happy, the nursing staff is happy, the facility staff is happy.”

“On every project, you can say you want a great team,” Henry said. “But everybody needs to have something to rally around. It’s a lot easier to get people to rally around kids, and do something beneficial for kids – especially sick kids.

“We could have done a building for kids that looked like the one next door,” he said.

“We wanted to do something that was pushing the envelope so much architecturally. You can drive through this whole state and there’s some awesome architecture, but there’s not a lot of buildings that are head-turners on the freeway.

“There aren’t a lot of buildings like that you can describe in detail from memory,” Henry said. “This one, you can ask a ten-year-old, and he’ll tell you all about it. That’s priceless.”

“The Voice of The Construction Industry®”

The University of Michigan’s Stephen M. Ross School of Business Creates a Modern Empire for a New Generation of Business Students

By Lisa Briggs 20 CAM MAGAZINE OCTOBER 2017

“The Voice of The Construction Industry®”

U OF M ROSS SCHOOL OF BUSINESS Photos Courtesy of the regents of the univereity of MiChigan

Blau Hall’s three-story atrium connects classrooms and student spaces.

C

hoosing to attend the ultra-modern, sleek and striking Stephen M. It was the heritage and future of one of America’s finest and elite Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor academic learning centers which compelled Fletcher to enroll in the campus was completely intentional for Christopher Fletcher, 27, a MBA program. He, and 3,000 other current students are part of the Master of Business Administration (MBA) student who spends every newest generation of pupils at the revitalized Ross School. other weekend in Ann Arbor, where he is currently enrolled in the Interestingly, the school’s population is 40 percent women, and 24 weekend MBA program. percent of students represent 33 countries.

“I drive from Chicago to attend class,” said Fletcher, who was born “My family and I were walking around the campus and I was super in Ann Arbor and admits he researched and visited other business impressed with the thought and care that went into this building,” said schools, but knew the prestigious Ann Arbor campus appealed to him Fletcher. “I especially like all of the natural sunlight; the garden and for two important reasons. “I’m from a big U of M family. My mom, dad, atrium area is especially spectacular. This project is how all siblings and grandparents are all graduates,” he said. “In fact, our family construction projects should be. I realized how the University of has had the same season football tickets since 1954.”

Michigan-Ann Arbor is genuinely investing in the future, my future, by The second reason he selected the Stephen M. Ross School of creating a building using the most advanced materials. It was Business isn’t surprising. “I was drawn to the construction project going definitely interesting to me how it is such a sustainable, efficient and on here,” said Fletcher, who currently lives and works at Chicago’s state-of-the-art building.”

Buzzfeed in digital marketing, and ironically made his final decision to In 1924, the University of Michigan Business School was attend the Stephen M. Ross School of Business on the same day that established, and roughly 75 years later U of M-Ann Arbor alumnus, University officials, Stephen M. Ross, Jeff T. Blau, and Detroit’s Stephen M. Ross, and owner of the Miami Dolphins, generously made Walbridge construction personnel, happened to be present at the a $100 million gift to the school’s regents who then renamed the ribbon-cutting ceremony for in October 2016, for the $135 million school after the real estate tycoon. A decade later, he gave another construction project. $200 million to be used between the business school and athletic The University of Michigan-Ann Arbor Campus Planner, Sue Gott, is department. Ross, who, to-date has donated $313 million to the pleased to hear Fletcher’s decision, and straightforwardly credits the university, is its largest donor. team who designed and built the distinguished, six-floor building “The re-development of the Stephen M. Ross School of Business featuring a stunning and unique exterior of glass and a terra-cotta rain complex is a continuation of the ongoing vision at the university to screen wall, in record time, even with dozens of challenges and offer learners the best, most technological, cutting edge, inspiring and obstacles along the way. serendipitous experience possible,” said Gott.

“The same legacy of this higher learning institution’s mission to do The construction project includes demolition of the aging Computer everything in excellence was honored by the stellar way in which all and Executive Building; renovation of Kresge Business Library now aspects of this project were handled by the people responsible – known as Kresge Hall, which received a renovation of 75,000 square including architects from Kohn Pedersen Fox, New York; Charles Amyx, feet for student support, collaborative research and study space; and director of operations and the addition of 104,000 facilities at Stephen M. square feet of new space, Ross School of Business; the Jeff T. Blau Hall, named Larry Bowman, project after the notable real estate director at Architecture, industry expert and CEO of Engineering and Related Companies, who Construction (AEC) at the made a $10 million University of Michigan; and donation to the university.

Tom Cucuz, senior project In addition, the Sam Wyly manager at Walbridge,” Hall, the Business said Gott.

Administration Executive “From the demolition of Dormitory and Hill Street the older buildings to the parking structure were opening day of the Stephen outfitted in a new exterior M. Ross School of designed to aesthetically Business, Blau and Kresge match and integrate the Halls, I consistently heard Ross School complex and witnessed the Tom Cucuz, senior professional, day-to-day project manager at type of work which Walbridge, made things happened in the trenches happen in the trenches Ross School of Business with new Blau Hall in the background. by this team to produce during all phases of the such an extraordinary project. “I knew we could building,” she said. build this building,” he said Visit us online at www.cammagazineonline.com

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U OF M ROSS SCHOOL OF BUSINESS

confidently, adding, “however, there were many intricate challenges. But our round-theclock collaboration efforts with Larry Bowman at AEC and the whole project team allowed us, even when it didn’t seem possible, to finish and get faculty in on the opening day in July 2016, and students arriving shortly after.”

AEC Project Director Larry Bowman, shares how three major areas were unceasingly cared for throughout the construction project. “People, classrooms and technology were always our priority,” he said. “We had to rearrange people and space to effectively maintain our mission to deliver educational services in a seamless fashion.

Classrooms were torn down and relocated in Sam Wyly Hall and in Ross I, a new building that was completed in 2008. Temporary modular offices were built to house the offices for staff and some of the PhD students. The mechanical, electrical, utilities and communication lines had to be relocated. All of this re-routing had to be planned out and put into place before constructing the new building and for the school, staff, students and technology to function smoothly with as

32 CAM MAGAZINE OCTOBER 2017

little disruption as possible.”

Bowman praises Kohn Pedersen Fox (KPF), the architectural firm who designed phase I of the Ross School and was selected to recreate the iconic image of the glass and terra cotta building in phase II. “It’s a tribute to KPF and their attention to designing this building around the pedagogy of active learning and refined teaching style of the Ross School. Their The historic 300-year-old, 65-foot-tall, Burr Oak tree was relocated to design of this worldthe front lawn of the Ross School of Business. class facility accentuates a fuller good, and it all functions flawlessly. Every classroom experience,” said Bowman. “The aspect of the space is academically inviting classroom model fully utilizes space, audio from the team-based learning focus on and visual technology, occupancy-sensor classrooms to the collaborative study areas lighting and the furniture deliberately looks and break-out rooms equipped with unsurpassed technology and distance learning capabilities. It is all designed to inspire innovation and creativity.

Aesthetically, it is impressive. Materials such as wood, sandstone, glass, terra cotta, granite, ash and cork are naturally displayed and woven throughout the design with elegance.”

Walbridge brought all of that to life, though it didn’t happen without an array of challenges. Cucuz recalls how the building timeline was first interrupted. “We discovered vermiculite, an insulating material at the exterior masonry walls, which contained asbestos and needed to be removed,” he said. “A remedial strategy was quickly implemented but it caused a three-month delay.”

Trying to make up for time with a strict deadline taunting everyone required concise pre-planning. The project team applied Building Information Modeling (BIM) when it came to connecting subcontractors and services between the simultaneous building projects.

It was critical to meet and communicate daily to keep everyone up to speed on deliveries, logistic changes, budget concerns, schedules and safety.

“It wasn’t easy coordinating all the revisions to the overall construction schedule,” said Cucuz. He explained how breakout schedules were required to effectively plan and direct “The Voice of The Construction Industry®”

U OF M ROSS SCHOOL OF BUSINESS

work out of sequence which allowed other trade work to proceed. It was a daunting task which required everyone’s participation to meet milestone dates. Especially, trying to track the long-lead items such as deliveries of terra cotta coming from Germany, sandstone and granite arriving from China, and curtain wall assemblies from Windsor, Canada.

“At the Executive Residence and Wyly buildings we at one point had seven cranes working on the site, about 10 swing-stages, and the building elevation filled with trade labor completing the work. The largest schedule impact from the vermiculate abatement meant we were working into the pinch point in lieu of working our way out. It put a large strain on managing the schedule of each of the subcontractors. The resequencing of critical trade contractors work and material deliveries included but were not limited to foundation, structural steel, exterior enclosure, and the balance of the high end finishes requiring field-applied measurements in regards to dissimilar details. We tried to facilitate our work and accommodated our

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people in the safest manner possible without interruption to the Ross School Building operations. The project logistics were overhauled from the original proposed

planning to accommodate the impacts. We might’ve had a total of 30 shifting walking paths and safety fences to re-direct pedestrians to their destinations.”

An aerial view, from the southeast, of the Ross School of Business complex.

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U OF M ROSS SCHOOL OF BUSINESS

With high volumes of foot traffic from students and staff, Charles Amyx’s role as director of operations and facilities at the Ross School was invaluable as he managed and tried to absorb everyone’s fears and frustrations when it came to the noise, barrier fences, detours, dust, temporary sidewalks, vibrations and constant clamor.

As a liaison between the construction crews and the university faculty and students, he handled challenges daily, sometimes even hourly. Amyx’s easy-going personality and disposition helped others comprehend the multitude of evolving changes. “If people know what is happening and why, they’re more likely to be understanding,” said Amyx.

“My job was to explain in plain language to university faculty and students what to expect. I did a lot of listening and tried to accommodate their needs.”

With a calm and poised manner, Amyx instills a sense of confidence in his colleagues while assuring them they’d all get through the construction project together. He earned their trust when he somehow miraculously halted construction just long enough to allow staff to

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conduct exams. “The people I’m dealing with respect data,” he reveals. “So, I armed myself with data I gathered from Larry at AEC, Tom at Walbridge, trade contractors and experts from the university’s safety office. I presented it to the administrative staff, the researchers who live in a cloistered and academic world and those at the Dean-level who might not always understand a construction environment, but, however do appreciate data and facts.”

Gott admires the way Amyx could diffuse everyone’s fears and concerns. “He is great at leveraging all his resources and connecting everyone in a team-like way to recognize how the detours and temporary alternate routes are part of the safety plan to protect people.

Amazingly he got everyone to be cooperative and patient when it came to all the inconveniences.”

Although Cucuz tried to anticipate what he could, “unknown events happened and unforeseen conditions existed,” he said.

Probably the most prominent unknown event during the construction project was both a nuisance and a natural wonder.

In progress... Blau Hall’s steel erection.

“The Voice of The Construction Industry®”

U OF M ROSS SCHOOL OF BUSINESS

“The removal of a 65-foot, 250-year-old Burr Oak tree situated near the Computer and Executive Building needed to be relocated before that CEEB structure could be demolished,” explained Cucuz. He said the underground tunnel with the U of M’s building services were mapped to locate the roots of the tree and presented potential risk crossing with the 700,000-pound root ball. Bowman acknowledges how the historic tree made headlines. “The relocating of the tree was a story inside itself,” he said. “There was a lot of scrutiny surrounding the tree. There were naysayers who believed it couldn’t be done and environmentalists who wanted to protect the historic tree. It became quite political.”

Gott sums it up best. “The University of Michigan and Ross Business School is a renowned research institution,” she said. “To be true to our mission and the university regents, we found this to be a great opportunity to do what we excel at – research.

We highly value formulating the pros and cons of any given subject, so we approached this quandary from that perspective.”

A collaborative learning lab formed including U of M staff, construction team members and other experts who carefully

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studied whether it was prudent to move the aging tree or not. A decision was made to explore vendors who specialize in moving trees.

“We began a national search for a potential, qualified candidate to take on this task,” said Bowman. The learning lab participants selected Environmental Design out of Texas to perform the monumental chore, even though it was costly and the risks were understood. “It’s a living organism,” states Bowman. “Moving it did not guarantee it would survive.”

The project team used a BIM plan for the two-day extraction of the immense 700,000pound tree. Abiding by Best Practices, the undertaking involved preparation, pruning, digging and lifting the massive root cluster and carefully transporting it by using ship launching air bags to its new home 100 yards away.

“Previously the tree was boxed in by buildings on three sides,” explains Bowman.

“Its new, upgraded home allows it to be in an open area. We believe the benefits of the tree’s new location offset the trauma of the move.”

The natural wonder is still getting attention.

Not the controversial kind, but the type which inspires a sense of awe. “I choose to sit facing the courtyard and look out at this massive oak tree,” said Fletcher. “I sit here on purpose. I love this area. It is open, bright and energizing to me.”

Months earlier, Fletcher’s favorite view was undoubtedly the construction project team’s biggest trial, but they persevered through the biology-based ordeal and they’re pleased with the results, along with the rest of the campus community.

Visitors to the campus or community members make a point to get a glimpse of the tree that could have been cut down to make room for the expansion, but wasn’t.

Fletcher is glad university officials opted to save the tree. He finds pleasure sitting in an ergonomic, posture-enhancing chair in his favorite study space. “I’m quite appreciative of this historic tree and I enjoy having the chance to look at it,” he said. He sports earbuds while he pecks at his laptop and glances out the floor-to-ceiling glass windows, where he says sometimes the blinds automatically shift up or down to block the sun’s glare from his eyes.

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U OF M ROSS SCHOOL OF BUSINESS

The sustainable features of Fletcher’s school go way beyond great views and natural sunlight, which, of course, help reduce the building’s electrical load. “We’re proud this project is registered under the LEED Green Building Council rating system with the certification goal of LEED Silver,” said Bowman.

Other noteworthy highlights about the Stephen M. Ross School construction project include: it utilizes an 86-percent reduction in storm-water runoff; water consumption is 40 percent lower by installing low-flow bathroom fixtures; construction waste was diverted from landfills; recycled materials were significantly used; and low volatile organic compounds (VOC) flooring, sealants and adhesives were used.

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Its design is energy-efficient and includes high performance glazing and exterior wall assemblies for improved thermal performance, chilled beams in the Kresge Hall building, air systems with improved design for low load operation to track occupancy, and air handling units that only cool to the minimum temperature needed.

All of that is the upshot of excellent design, teamwork, collaboration and responsible stewardship.

“The aggressive schedule we were working with is usually the type of project you see in New York City, not here,” said Amyx, adding, “however, building this project was something everyone involved was mindful of, in addition to being good stewards of the donor’s money and University funds.”

Cucuz and his Walbridge team understand what their client desires. It looks as though the University of Michigan’s calculated choice to collaborate with Walbridge is as successful as Fletcher’s choice to join the ranks of business leaders who are formed at one of the finest schools in the world.

“Walbridge has been building for the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor for many years,” said Tom Cucuz. “We’ve been a part of constructing and improving more than a billion dollars’ worth of buildings on campus and our goal is always to deliver a superior quality, high caliber project.”

The Stephen M. Ross School of Business appears to have reached Walbridge’s expectations, and they’re happy to express their gratitude to everyone involved.

“Walbridge would like to thank University of Michigan, UM-AEC group and the Ross School of Business for giving Walbridge a great opportunity to build such a unique and inspiring project, said Cucuz of Walbridge. “The project is ultimately for the staff, students and future. In addition, it is easy to generously thank the men and women from the local trades for their contribution to working long hours and weekends, and their commitment to safety. Their combined contributions are the result of the success of the build.”

“The Voice of The Construction Industry®”

The Building of Brightmoor’s Arc Sweeping New Church Expansion Rises in Novi

By Mary Kremposky McArdle Associate Editor B

rightmoor Christian Church doesn’t hide its light under a bushel. At night, its 60-foot-tall illuminated cross shines in the darkness, and by day, its sheer height draws the attention of drivers along M-5 and 13 Mile Road in Novi. Brightmoor has taken the Sermon on the Mount to heart in the design of its new expansion: “Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick and it gives light to all that are in the house.”

The prominent rise of the actual site is the “candlestick” for this towering cross of steel, built of four pieces of welded tube steel and hoisted into place fully formed. “We ask visitors to fill out a connect card and list the reason for coming to Brightmoor,” said Senior Pastor Jamie Kjos. “The number one reason is still a ‘friend invited me,’ but the number two reason is ‘We saw your building off M-5.’”

Visible from half-a-mile away, the cross attracts from afar, while the building’s two-story arc of glass curtain wall draws visitors into the building.

“We wanted the new expansion to be very transparent, warm and welcoming,” said Kjos. “We wanted people to look through the glass and see the life going on within the building.”

More than constructing a building, Brightmoor Christian Church wanted to build a community. Fellowship spaces were extremely limited in the existing facility; a corridor outside the existing worship center served as a claustrophobic gathering space. “Our former lobby was tight and small, and people moved in it almost like salmon swimming upstream,” said Kjos. “We were very deliberate in voicing our need for a new lobby and gathering area, and Progressive AE heard our message.”

The design of this Grand Rapids-based architectural firm promotes connections between people. The glass-faced Hub is a voluminous and light-filled gathering space with a coffee café and clusters of varied seating.

38 CAM MAGAZINE OCTOBER 2017

“The Voice of The Construction Industry®”

PhotograPhy by JrP Studio architectural PhotograPhy

The building’s two-story arc of glass curtain wall creates a transparent and welcoming place to gather as a faith community. An overhang shades the glass curtain wall, only one material in a diverse exterior palette of masonry and both metal and phenolic panels.

A 60-foot-tall illuminated cross welcomes church members and visitors to this newly expanded church in Novi.

The Hub forms the first of several nestled arcs in this eye-shaped structure, the layered arcs being the glass curtain wall, the Hub, and the new sanctuary’s stadia seating and main platform.

The seating curves around the platform, visually connecting opposite sides of the worship space and creating a sense of intimacy, despite the large size of this 2,137-seat sanctuary, said Progressive AE’s Senior Design Architect Adam Hopkins, AIA, LEED AP. The George W. Auch Company, Pontiac, constructed this complex shape, composed of the coming together of two graduating arcs. The Auch Company established eight different benchmarks to create a precise fusion of the building’s challenging geometry, along with double, and in some cases, triple-checking the layout with the aid of survey consultants. The Auch Company also maintained the church’s operations throughout the 16-month construction project.

This active church conducts Sunday and Wednesday services, hosts seminars, conferences and special events, and operates the K-12 Franklin Road Christian School.

Perfect Chemistry The new expansion unfolded according to the master plan. Having moved from Southfield to Novi in 2000, Brightmoor Christian Church built a new school and a 1,100-seat interim worship Visit us online at www.cammagazineonline.com

space as part of Phase I of its campus master plan. More people began flocking to this Assemblies of God church, drawn by inspired sermons and ministries supporting people at every stage of life. The congregation tripled in sized, and the existing sanctuary was overflowing with the faithful. On Sundays, parking became scarce, and many congregants had to watch the service on closed circuit television.

Brightmoor set into motion Phase II of its master plan, beginning with the search for the ideal project team. The search led to Progressive AE, a large architecture and engineering firm with dedicated worship design professionals and an established track record of successful national worship projects.

“Because of its national footprint in worship spaces, Progressive AE is aware of the latest trends in worship design,” said Brightmoor’s Building Committee Chairman and President of Whitehall Real Estate Interests Gary Steven Jonna. “We also felt Progressive AE could best coordinate the MEP and the architectural design, because it is a full-service firm.”

The final selection boiled down to the intangibles of personal chemistry. “We felt a great chemistry between ourselves and Progressive AE’s team,” said Jonna. “We felt that they were like-minded, and that they understood us.”

As another bonus, both Progressive AE and The Auch Company are employee-owned.

“We felt that categorically an employee-owned firm has less turn-over and more employee commitment to the company,” said Jonna.

“The Auch Company is a venerable, solid firm in business since 1908, and it was great to stay with a local company that focuses on Southeast Michigan. They also had a blend of younger associates experienced in high technology and more seasoned personnel who have seen and handled it all.”

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Taking the Devil Out of the Details Despite having never worked together, Progressive AE and The Auch Company formed a strong working relationship. Another partner in this process was Evans Caruso, project architect with Constantine George Pappas, AIA Architecture + Planning, Royal Oak, who performed regular site visits and construction progress documentation.

Open dialogue, constant communication and a true spirit of teamwork took the devil out of the details in the building of this complex project. No finger-pointing and no hint of an adversarial relationship marred the project.

“No one played the blame game,” said Auch Senior Project Manager Eric J. Shumaker.

“If an issue was raised, the question wasn’t whose fault it was. The question was, ‘How are we going to solve the problem?’ If there were any associated costs, we worked as a team and examined the most cost-effective way to resolve the issue.”

The project is proof of the positive influence of respect, both as a strong foundation for teamwork and as the basis of a quality project. “The big picture lesson E

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learned from this project is: Be respectful of each other and of everyone’s opinion,” said Progressive AE Principal and Worship Practice Leader John Van Houten, AIA, NCARB. “This is what we did as a team, and while it wasn’t always nice and rosy – in fact there were challenging times when we were working to resolve issues – but in the end, we always respected one another. Because of this approach, we always came away with the best solution.”

One would expect nothing less from a project whose concrete is literally filled with eight different Bibles.

Standing on the Word of God The steel structure for the Hub and the new sanctuary draws to a single focal point: a Bible embedded in the poured concrete of the sanctuary’s main platform.

“The steel structure radiates outward from this single point,” said Hopkins.

The pastor is literally “standing on the Word of God” when preaching to the congregation.

According to Auch Site Superintendent Frank Schmidt, the eight different Bibles embedded

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in the concrete, include two for the entry points leading into the sanctuary, two children’s Bibles in the single-story children’s area, a 100-year-old Bible in the prayer room, and two in the new Youth Center now under construction as part of Phase II. The design’s informal organizing principal is a subtle variation on a traditional cruciform church’s soaring central nave that draws the eye to the altar. According to Hopkins, a direct line can be drawn from the exterior cross and covered entry, through the interior Hub and sanctuary, and then directly to the plaque marking the location of the Bible embedded in the main platform.

“We Got to Go to Church!”

As part of pre-design, a list of guiding principles became the project’s own “bible.” These principles were gleaned from a series of visioning sessions with church leaders, staff and the congregation. Progressive AE led the sessions, and also took Brightmoor on a tour of various churches primarily in the Grand Rapids area.

Progressive AE attended Brightmoor services “to understand the DNA and the values of the church,” said Hopkins, “because even though we have designed quite a few churches, each church has a unique personality and a different body of needs. We wanted to create a building that works for the church and doesn’t just look nice. The process also creates a list of priorities and needs against which we could gauge the success of the project.”

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The seating curves around the platform, visually connecting opposite sides of the worship space and creating a sense of intimacy during services, despite the large size of this 2,137-seat sanctuary.

Worlds of Wow!, a Denton, Texas-based interior design firm, created a series of inventive and kidfriendly worship and play spaces, some serving pre-school children and others children up to the 5th grade. “We saw what our attendance was for the nine weeks leading up to the new expansion’s Dedication Sunday, and then for the following nine weeks after it opened,” said Kjos. “The attendance of our children in the elementary and younger age bracket is up 201 kids per week.

Kids are saying to their parents, ‘We got to go to church!’”

The resulting design of the 86,000-squarefoot expansion clearly meets the needs of this thriving church. The new sanctuary has more seating for church services and for Brightmoor’s Christmas and Easter productions known to attract as many as 10,000 people.

“They have these incredible productions,” said Hopkins, “but formerly they utilized the school for some of the support spaces. Now they have a green room and other back-of-house spaces.”

The new worship space incorporates stateof-the-art lighting, sound and multi-media systems. “Technology has changed drastically from 2000 to 2017,” said Kjos. “The lighting is now far more complex and visually attractive.

We have video LED screens for multi-media services, and the acoustics are phenomenal.”

As a result, the service is immersive and enveloping, and powerfully supports the message. “With screens in front and on the sides, the whole environment supports the pastor’s message,” said Van Houten. “It is worship as a holistic expression.”

In addition to a new nursery, the project included construction of an amazing new children’s area and a soon-to-be-completed Youth Center, both formerly housed in a barebones gymnasium. “We wanted to send a message that our children and teenagers are very important to us,” said Kjos. “Part of the reason for the expansion was we wanted a designated space to more effectively minister to children and teenagers.”

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Faithful Stewards The Auch Company proved to be careful stewards of Brightmoor’s resources. The company joined forces with Brightmoor, Progressive AE and several trade contractors to trim the budget by $6 million in schematic design while preserving the design intent. Of the hundreds of identified value opportunities, four ranked among the most significant in this $20 million dollar project.

The Youth Center: Originally, the new Youth Center, serving grades six through twelve, was going to be located in a walk-out level directly below the new children’s area.

Initially much debated, placing the Youth Center in the existing worship space proved to be not only cost effective, but also a better use of space.

Originally, the existing sanctuary was going to be re-purposed as the school auditorium, said Van Houten, but by converting it into the Youth Center, the space not only becomes a vibrant youth worship space and activities zone, but when needed, a school auditorium, as well. As only an auditorium, the space would have remained

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unused much of the time. “It is now being retrofitted into a student center where teenagers will have their own designated space,” said Kjos. “There will be gathering areas, a café, arcade games, Apple TV, and a place for their own Wednesday evening services.”

Girt-to-Girt Metal Panels: Exterior metal panels ring the drum-shaped upper reaches of the sanctuary to reduce the load on the building. The Auch Company, Progressive AE and the metal panel trade contractors worked together to switch to a more costeffective panel. “The metal panels span girt to girt, or steel member to steel member,” said Shumaker. “This system saved a tremendous amount of money, because it eliminates the backup layers of sheathing and cold-form metal framing.”

Progressive AE selected rolled versus straight steel for this upper drum to make the use of the girt-to-girt metal panel system possible. “That was part of the cost analysis,” said Hopkins. “Rolling the steel allowed us to maximize the metal panel attached directly to the steel and to create the drum shape. The drum form is not just

aesthetic. It’s tied to both the acoustics of the worship area and the geometry that reinforces the building’s whole concept.”

A Different Roof: Discussions with several of the roofing trade contractors during the bidding process led the project team to switch from a rubber roof on the Hub and children’s area to a more budget-friendly TPO roof with the same warranty, said Shumaker.

The sanctuary’s roof is a ballasted system installed to reduce outside noise from impacting worship services.

Steel Sleight of Hand: An alternate structural steel design was one of the major revisions responsible for trimming the budget.

“The team, including the architect, their inhouse structural engineers, the contractor and the steel manufacturer, went through three different iterations of the structural design, looking for opportunities to reduce the tonnage,” said Jonna.

Ultimately, the alternate design reduced the steel tonnage from 1,200 tons to 880 tons without sacrificing program space or the design intent. Inserting additional steel columns in the Hub reduced the depth and span, and consequently the steel tonnage, of

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B R I G H T M O O R the overhead trusses, all without curtailing the Hub’s sense of volume and uninterrupted space.

Progressive AE’s design alterations were as subtle as a magician’s sleight of hand. The columns are seamlessly integrated into this impressive gathering space. “Three or four columns were inserted subtly into the overall form of the space in such a way that the columns are not even noticeable,” said Hopkins. “In one instance, two columns flank a high-top table as part of the Hub’s varied seating arrangements.

“It is not just the seating arrangements, but also the steps in the ceiling and its incorporation with the mechanical system,” continued Hopkins. “It took the full integration of the structural steel and mechanical systems with the architecture to make it all work.”

The usage of the space was designed with equal efficiency and economy. The Hub’s open arrangement of programmed spaces, including the café, the check-in stations for the children’s area and the nursery, the entry to the worship space, the greeting area and the clusters of varied seating, consumes the entire footprint of this large gathering area without having any space dedicated strictly to circulation. “By having the Hub serve as both the program area and main circulation space, we didn’t have to include hallways to connect, for instance, the worship space and the children’s area,” Hopkins. “We were able to utilize much of the new square footage of space as pure program area.”

The Hub’s entire menu of spaces can also be viewed in one sweeping glance, making for an intuitive way-finding system. In addition, Progressive’s ingenious use of space actually tucks the café, the greeting desk and a series of other areas under the slope of the sanctuary’s stadium seating. Every square foot of space in the Hub has a purpose. For children, a small nook was actually turned into a type of Hobbit house, complete with a round port-hole window.

Children First The Auch Company launched construction from two directions, expanding a parking lot in the west, while building foundations for the children’s area in the east. “While the west lot and a west entrance were being constructed, we were able to establish the building pad and much of the foundation for the children’s area,” said Shumaker. “We could go full bore in the children’s area, because there weren’t any encumbrances.”

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The new children’s area houses a series of inventive, kid-friendly spaces, all clad in bold, primary colors.

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The glass-faced Hub, a light-filled gathering space with a coffee café and clusters of varied seating, is designed to promote connections between people.

What the area did have was a significant slope. Approximately 13 feet of fill was needed to bring this area up to an elevation of 100 feet. “We were able to stockpile and re-use almost all of the spoils from site utility excavation to establish the building pad in this area,” said Shumaker.

The Auch Company then began building the main body of the “arc,” namely the Hub and sanctuary. The new expansion rests on spread footings for the columns and trench footings as part of a perimeter foundation system, the last two feet having a formed top to accommodate the curtain wall. “We also have two- to three-foot-deep shallow piers for the interior columns,” said Schmidt.

Although the building is predominately steel, a 60-foot-high masonry shear wall on the west side, along the sanctuary’s back-ofhouse area, acts as a structural diaphragm to stiffen the steel structure. “A steel structure wants to move or sway back and forth, but masonry is very stiff,” said Hopkins. “The steel supports the roof and the exterior skin, but the steel is then tied to the curved masonry concrete block shear wall, which is what then stiffens the overall structure.”

Building the Arc Precision was mandatory in laying out foundations and structural steel, because the building’s two graduating arcs had to come together perfectly. “The layout was critical in order to make the building close and come together as designed,” said Shumaker. “If you are off by half a degree on this type of layout, the error may not show itself in the beginning, but as you continue it will become a major problem.”

Progressive AE’s structural engineers established the layout points in the design documents. The Bible, embedded in the concrete and located in the center of the sanctuary’s platform, is one of the layout points. “But there are many different working points that had to come together to make the new expansion close and connect to itself, to the existing building and to link the worship space to the rest of the facility,” said Hopkins.

Progressive AE created a BIM model, and the engineers used the model for the layout of the foundation system, back-checking it against the structural system. “The steel contractor then used Progressive’s model to finalize its shop drawings,” said Shumaker.

“Those drawings were also transferred over to the foundation contractor to establish its layout. The foundation contractor then backchecked to the design documents to make

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B R I G H T M O O R sure it was correct. The model was also passed to the mechanical and electrical trades for coordination and clash detection.”

The Auch Company marked eight different benchmark points for the trades. “Because each trade was responsible for their own layout, they each had their own independent engineers and surveyors,” said Shumaker.

“Those surveyors back-checked each other, and then The Auch Company hired a third party to come and check everyone’s work.”

At one point, three surveyors were used to triple check one small degree discrepancy.

“We were able to detect and take care of it before it even impacted the project,” said Shumaker. Given the complexity, the results are amazing. “It is a great feeling and very impressive that the team brought it together without any major issues,” said Schmidt.

The Auch Company’s proactive approach was pivotal in delivering this complex project.

If the building was an actual ark, potential leaks were identified and fixed early to make sure this ark would never even come close to taking on water. “A project can run into trouble if an issue is allowed to fester,” said Hopkins.

“The Auch Company was forward-thinking, and if they saw even a small potential hiccup,

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they would say, ‘We think we might have an issue, let’s figure out a solution.’”

A case in point was melding the curtain wall’s flat, segmented glass with the building’s radius systems. “The glass and framing is segmented, but the foundation was poured as a radius and then the steel eyebrow above the glass is rolled in a curved shape,” said Hopkins.

The potential “misfit” of these systems was first observed while planning the construction of the first-story children’s ministry area. “We contacted Progressive AE right away, even though we didn’t have to deal with this area for a month or two,” said Shumaker.

Minor adjustments to the detailing solved the issue. “By recognizing it early, we could be thoughtful with the solution that both met the requirements and minimized the cost,” said Hopkins. “We did not have the pressure of having to resolve it immediately, because we would have had 40 tradespeople waiting around to frame the glazing.”

Thanks to this experienced and talented team, this complex shape now adds much to the worship experience. “The building’s graduating arc maximizes views, creates an intimate space and produces high-quality

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acoustics in the worship space,” said Hopkins.

“The arc helps to establish the platform and the seating in the worship space, so the shape isn’t arbitrary.

It is all tied together conceptually and for reasons both acoustic and structural.”

Keeping the Church Doors Open Maintaining worship services throughout construction of the Hub and sanctuary involved building a fenced pathway through the construction site to the main entrance of the existing sanctuary. “We laid out the path to coincide with the openings for the new doors,” said Shumaker. “We would work in the path during the week, but we would make sure it was cleaned, barricaded and lit to ensure safe passage for Wednesday evening services. We always re-established the path for Sunday services.”

The church never had to shut its doors for a single service or activity. “We remained a very active, thriving church during the entire construction period,” said Kjos. “I never had to say in two years of construction, ‘We can’t do that because we are under construction.’

This is where Auch just shined. They always had the site prepared properly.”

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The congregation could also view construction progress. “Not only was the site pathway the best avenue to access the existing church facility during construction,” said Shumaker, “but it also gave the congregation a preview of the building as it was being constructed. The congregation could see the progression, and it kept the interest and excitement high.”

The Auch Company also phased construction of site infrastructure to accommodate the owner’s use of the site, and worked with county and city agencies on utilities, right-of-way work, inspections and certificates of occupancy.

Jumpstarting the Schedule The Auch Company also carved a temporary route into the emerging sanctuary to jumpstart the schedule. “We completed all the structural steel and then began erecting the precast stadia seating from the inside,” said Shumaker. “We left an opening in the side of the building to allow the semi-trucks carrying the precast planks to enter the building and offload.”

Amazingly, the stadia seating was actually installed during building enclosure. To make it

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happen, The Auch Company worked with Kerkstra Precast, Inc., Grandville, to establish an alternate rigging method for the crane used to hoist the precast. “The alternate rigging method shortened the crane’s lead, allowing Kerkstra to set all the precast inside the sanctuary with the trusses and the roof already installed above them,” said Shumaker. “A collateral advantage to installing the precast stadia during the enclosure was allowing the mechanical, electrical, plumbing and fire suppression contractors better access to install their duct, pipe and conduit prior to the stadia seating planks.”

Using this strategy, The Auch Company accelerated construction by approximately six weeks. “Installing the stadia seating during building enclosure was one of the main strategies that allowed us to maintain schedule,” said Shumaker.

Shelter and Welcome The Auch Company coordinated a host of different trade contractors to achieve a precision fit of the glass, metal and masonry cloaking this contemporary church. Exterior materials include both vertical and horizontal metal panels and

three different colors of brick, along with woodsimulating phenolic panels on the entrance canopy. For good measure, an EIFS soffit was added to the underside of the building’s pronounced, metal-panel clad overhang, or eyebrow. The overhang shades the glass curtain wall and also helps to screen the mechanical equipment. “It can be challenging when you are working with one material that has a tolerance of a quarter-inch in 10 feet, compared to another material that has a tolerance of an eighth-inch in 20 feet,” said Shumaker.

Design-wise, the building’s exterior presence embodies the church’s message of shelter and welcome. An entrance canopy, connecting the cross to the building’s main entry, provides physical shelter; the cross provides spiritual shelter; and the wide arc of glass curtain wall welcomes the lost, the saved and the stranger into the church.

The new canopy, clad in phenolic and metal panels, is certainly a welcome new element, because the building lacked a canopy prior to the expansion. “The Trespas phenolic panels is a high-performance material that provides a pop of color, adding life to the entrance and giving a

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B R I G H T M O O R wood appearance to the front canopy,” said Hopkins. “The same color is in a less expensive EIFS version on the eyebrow soffit and on the snap covers of the curtain wall. When the sun hits these areas, the color reads beautifully on the façade.”

Metal panels clad the sanctuary’s upper reaches, while banded masonry blankets the lower half of the building. The masonry’s terra cotta and light-colored bands create a visual connection to the church’s existing campus. “As part of our guiding principles, it was very important to us to achieve a graceful transition,” said Jonna.

The towering cross dominates the exterior.

The former sanctuary almost resembled a corporate office building, but the new cross coated with a Tnemec paint finish and hoisted into place courtesy of Allingham Crane, Southfield - unmistakably identifies the church’s Christian mission.

Heaven on Earth From design to project completion, this project would be heaven on earth for any contractor.

The design documents were thorough and clear and the owner’s payments were timely. “The drawings were the cleanest I have ever seen, and I have been doing this a long time,” said Schmidt.

Clear design documents aid the budget and produce fewer change orders and Requests for Information (RFI). At Brightmoor, the combined efforts of the design and construction team resulted in less than 110 RFI’s on this complex project. High-quality documents, well-written work scopes, responsive bidders, and a wellsequenced and managed project resulted in less than one percent construction contingency usage for non-owner revisions.

The owner was also a godsend for The Auch Company and its trade team. “People work hard in construction, and people want to get paid,” said Jonna. “We were literally ahead of schedule in terms of the timeliness of payments.

We had happy subcontractors who would do a little extra, because they knew that they were going to get paid in a timely fashion.”

For its part, The Auch Company worked proactively to resolve potential issues, delivered the project on time and on budget, and kept the church doors open throughout the project. The company’s proactive approach included site tours for the owner throughout the project. This strategy resolved any owner-driven modifications much earlier, more cost-effectively and without any impact on the schedule. “Hats off to the construction manager, and to Auch’s Frank Schmidt, who was always looking Visit us online at www.cammagazineonline.com

ahead,” said Jonna. “He was very good about telling us what changes were on a critical path, in providing an outside date for making a decision, and in creating a preliminary cost estimate for any modification.”

At the first suggestion of an owner modification, The Auch Company would prepare a cost estimate. If the owner wanted a hard number, the architect would issue a bulletin. “We had bulletins for pricing only, and then the decision was made if we were going to proceed into a construction change directive,” said Shumaker. “If so, the building committee already knew what the cost was going to be prior to the construction change issuance.”

The Auch Company conducted several tours of this model project with student groups and young professionals, essentially showcasing this complex and well-managed project for the next generation. The Auch Company even toured the site with new company job applicants, using the project to demonstrate the exciting opportunities available in the AEC industry in general and at The Auch Company in particular.

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As part of transmitting its own mission and vision to future generations, Brightmoor Christian Church placed a sealed time capsule in the Hub on Dedication Sunday held on February 26, 2017. “The capsule has videos of the groundbreaking and the cross-raising,” said Jonna. “The capsule also contains the Bible of our first pastor, Alonzo Bates, as well as another Bible and the names of the people who continuously read it from start to finish over the course of two weeks in our new sanctuary. The time capsule will be opened in 50 years as our way to give voice to the church’s vision and to speak to future generations.”

Today, the current generation fills this new worship space with its enthusiastic spirit. The members of Brightmoor Christian Church bring the new expansion’s well-designed and constructed spaces to life in the soul-filled music filling the sanctuary, the personal connections made over thousands of cups of coffee, the sound of children playing on a rock-climbing wall, and the occasional wail of an infant in the church’s nursery. “The people love every aspect of the building,” said Kjos. “It’s aweinspiring.”

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The exterior of the WCAA’s Michael Berry Administration Building consists of a metal panel wall system, with ribbon windows skirting the perimeter. The design complements that of the North Terminal next door.

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MICHAEL BERRY ADMINISTRATION BUILDING Arrives at Metro Airport, Departs from the Norm

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A Cultural Shift in Design The transition from the old space into a fresh, County Airport Authority’s (WCAA) new modern office has been dramatic for the Michael Berry Administration Building sits employees. “The Airport Authority was very from the North Terminal of Metro Airport, smart when they made the decision to move,” Romulus. That’s how much room Ghafari Hahn said. “They are doing a cultural shift Associates had to design to, and Roncelli, within their organization, so they reduced the Inc., had to construct, the new state-of-thenumber of offices to just a art, highly visible limited few. four-story steel“The team developed an framed structure on open workstation concept shallow foundations. and created a lot of variety Add that to the fact of areas for teaming, formal that the Detroit area’s interaction spaces, semiprimary airport never formal, and then more goes to sleep, never relaxing places where you closes, and you have can build team chemistry,” the story of WCAA’s he said. new home.

Calling it a Opened in August “communicating stair,” 2017, the new Hahn said that the open 85,636-square-foot stairwell that vertically links building offers a the upper floors is a key bright, contemporary component of the overall workplace to design concept. “You can employees who have interact with employees made do with offices throughout the building that in the cavernous, you normally wouldn’t if you abandoned L.C. were just dealing floor-bySmith terminal for floor. Creative areas in nine years. public spaces allow for a A bold reception area greets employees and visitors near the walkway bridge from the North Terminal to “That building, quick sit-down to have a the Berry, which serves as the main entrance on the second floor. Beyond, a large conference room which was built in five-minute discussion,” he features brightly patterned carpet and blue accents.

1958, ceased being a said. By reinforcing teamterminal when the North Terminal was building, the design demonstrates a more Terminal, and all the other facilities that are completed in 2008, so we’ve been using it as modern approach to office spaces. really critical are in adjacent locations.” an office building,” said Mark McPherson, Unlike the WCAA’s older location, the new The new $20.9-million Berry Administration project manager for Wayne County Airport building uses natural light to connect areas.

Building demonstrates sustainable design Authority. “It’s a huge building. There are In addition to the central stairway’s skylight, that complements the architecture of the offices up there that we live in, but it was ribbon windows around the perimeter of the adjacent North Terminal building, and inspires really far too large. It was not designed for that floors bring light in, even given the nose-tocontinued growth and prosperity in line with purpose.” nose proximity of the North Terminal. former Wayne County Road Commission Over the years a number of studies were “We even punched openings from the chairman Michael Berry’s vision for the Detroit done considering where the workforce of over office building into the terminal to try and get Metropolitan Airport.

200 could move to be most effective at daylight into spaces that are abutting it,” “The Berry” has 230 work stations – overseeing and operating Detroit Metropolitan Hahn said.

“That was one of the key things. primarily cubicles with a limited number of Airport, as well as Willow Run Airport near We’re trying not to have a certain hierarchy so hard-walled offices – with plenty of flexible Ypsilanti. Another old terminal, the Berry that everybody has a view to the natural spaces for conference, training and informal Terminal, was in the running for a while. daylight.” collaboration.

A skylight provides natural light “We did an assessment of the Berry and Employees use aisles around the blocks of over the central staircase and atrium that links some space planning,” said Scott Hahn, cubicles that allow communal sharing of the the second through the fourth floors. project director with Ghafari Associates windows along the perimeter of the floor The exterior of the four-story building architectural firm, Dearborn. “It was plans. Some closed-in offices and conference consists of a metal panel wall system, with determined that the cost benefit of renovating areas have full-height glass fronts, again to ribbon windows skirting the circumference. that versus building a new one just didn’t promote movement of light across the space.

The design complements that of the North make sense.”

Another aspect of the design was how to Terminal next door.

After a series of other evaluations and make a new building fit in with its older, very master plans, it was clear that the best close neighbor. “We had a site adjacent to a

Ten inches. That’s how far apart the Wayne

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location would be directly adjacent to the busy North Terminal, central to the WCAA’s mission.

“It’s really right in the heart of the airport,” McPherson said. It was an open site, near to a large parking structure employees would use. “We’re physically connected to the North

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building that’s been here for ten years. How do you design a new building so it doesn’t look like it was added on ten years later?”

Hahn said. “We borrowed similar materials that were utilized in the North Terminal to kind of blend, but the scaling is a little different, so it still has its own independence.”

In the interior design, smart choices of furniture and finishes promote durability, not opulence, while emphasizing comfort and practicality. Custom light fixtures add the right note of style.

The lower level offers employees a fitness center, including showers – a feature that was not available in the original offices.

Site Challenges The challenge of erecting the Berry right next to a bustling international airport, given all federal security regulations and safety concerns, without ever interrupting service to any part of the airport, was a phenomenal achievement led by the Sterling Heights and Detroit-based Roncelli team. “The airport never closes,” McPherson said.

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The site chosen for the new building, tucked against the North Terminal’s northeast end and adjacent to the terminal’s passenger drop-off area, presented a construction challenge beginning with demolition of old foundations, abandoned utilities, and other hidden structures that were not indicated on the “as-builts.”

“Treasures,” said John Johnson, Roncelli senior project manager. “We called them ‘treasures.’”

The footprint of the new building was so close to the terminal that the foundation pads had to be staggered to fit amid existing foundations. “We carefully placed the new pads in between the existing foundation system,” said Paul Swift, project manager with Roncelli, Inc. Since the Berry shares communications, power and other critical utilities with the rest of the airport, coordinating connections and transitions required extensive communications between the Roncelli team and Airport Operations.

“All of the building services tie into existing

services,” Johnson said. “Making those connections and extending those services had to be done without impacting the airport’s daily operation or their customers - the travelling public. That takes a vast amount of teamwork and understanding the design’s intent and the airport’s operations to ensure the work gets executed safely and without compromising security.”

“Once we broke ground, we had a number of challenges to face, working so close to a 24-hour facility,” Swift said. “We were rerouting existing utilities, including storm sewers, sanitary lines and communication links from the existing terminal. For example, there was a 16-inch water main running through our site. All of those utilities were active.”

Communication with all stakeholders was vital. “It takes a number of pre-construction meetings, not just with ourselves and our subcontractors, but also with the Airport Authority,” Swift said.

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Another obstacle to overcome concerned routing thousands of feet of piping for steamed and chilled water along the roof. Air Operations Area security regulations restrict any access or activity to the roof of an airport, including access to aprons, runways and open space without permission. An electronic photo-eye detects any movement in order to monitor roof access and security for the safety of the airport.

“All personnel who worked on that portion of the project had to go through the airport credentials review process,” McPherson said.

That also meant restrictions in getting the piping up to the secured roof area. Any hoisting or installation of the piping could not interfere the operation of any airport gates.

“The challenge was getting pipe to the roof, confirming that the piping supports as designed would work with the existing structure, and finding routes through the terminal to access the roof,” Swift said.

The focal point of the Berry is the dynamic steel stairway with skylight and glass railings that anchors an atrium shared by the three main floors. With elevators on one side, and kitchenettes with vending machines on the other, the atrium creates community spaces for employees to meet up and recharge.

Part of the solution lay in phasing the project appropriately and coordinating construction activities, including the tie-ins and cut-overs with active airport operations.

“There were sequenced shutdowns in order to reroute critical systems without affecting the terminal’s operations,” he said. “This was particularly critical where the two buildings intersect. This was all accomplished without any interruption to airport operations.”

As an example, “We had to demolish the parking lot, which created dust. At an airport, you can’t have dust, so we had to keep it wet.

We had to put filter fabric on the mechanical room louvers because those systems are constantly running and feeding the terminal,” Swift said.

The only time any portion of the terminal was blocked off was during installation of new windows that required portions of existing siding to be removed, and new structural support put in, along with some drywall rework. A temporary enclosure was erected Visit us online at www.cammagazineonline.com

on the inside of the terminal that limited foot traffic in that area without interrupting airport operations.

Making Connections Among the challenges related to utilities, there was an existing AT&T duct bank that services Southeast Michigan and the Federal Aviation Administration control tower that runs directly through the center of the Berry building. “We had to work around it carefully as we installed our foundations and underground systems,” Swift said.

“There are two elevators in the building that were supposed to be side-by-side,” Hahn said. “We had to design the elevators separated because that’s exactly where the AT&T duct bank is located. It was less expensive to make the elevators not side-byside than relocating the whole duct, which would have been a major task.” The space between the elevators has been turned into an attractive area for casual seating.

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“Coordinating the cranes with the FAA presented some challenges,” Hahn said. A solution was worked out to hoist the material up at two non-gate locations using a gantrystyle hoist and specially fabricated carts that would not damage the roof.

The permanent installation, just barely visible from the fourth-floor windows, runs out almost a thousand feet along the terminal roof.

Bridging the Gap Security is also paramount in controlling the connection between the Berry building and the North Terminal. Most employees enter their new workplace by entering the North Terminal near their parking garage, riding an escalator up and crossing the “bridge” or walkway into the second floor of the Berry, where there is a security reception desk.

“You walk through the door, through this bridge, and that’s physically the only connection point between these two buildings for security purposes,” Hahn said.

Like the employees, the public takes the same route across the bridge through the

Modern office design with low-walled cubicles offers a refreshing change from the hard-walled offices employees occupied in their old building, a cavernous and repurposed terminal. Aisles around the workstations and along the windows ensure that lighting and airport views are shared.

terminal, but bypasses the secured area of the terminal. “We’re trying to separate the public from the air field’s side,” McPherson said. “It’s a nice feature, and makes it convenient for the visitors to go between the Berry and the terminal.”

The proximity between the two buildings – as close as ten inches in places – presents an opportunity to compare the exterior tile, old and new. The blue color is a close match.

“Given nine years of weathering, we tried to make it look like the new tile is not an addon,” Swift said, “and more like it’s part of the whole facility.”

McPherson jokes that the two buildings are close enough that, “You can see what’s on the bistro’s menu” over in the North Terminal.

On the floors where the Berry is closest to the terminal, the windows are at a height of over six feet. That allows light to pass through the high windows of the terminal, but neither side can see much more than that.

“You can’t really look and be distracted, nor

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can people see you working, but you get the light effect,” Hahn said. “These windows are set just up above eye-line, and now they’re looking into the terminal.”

Of course, the airport’s lights are on for 24 hours. That area of the office building has the least natural light, but there are outside windows at each end which mitigate that.

Good Engineering Considering all of the challenges of security, utilities, and maneuvering close to the existing terminal, what’s remarkable is how wellplanned the design and construction were, resulting in few, if any, changes.

“Late changes are not uncommon on a job like this,” Hahn said. “A lot of design decisions were made 18 to 24 months ago.

The Airport Authority’s needs didn’t change in that timeframe. They were forward-thinking enough to understand what their needs would be. The key is that it wasn’t major changes. It was just the fine details to make it a better building for their use,” he said.

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to reduce operational costs and make it a better building for the users.”

This was accomplished with careful consideration of the budget. While a government body, the Wayne County Airport Authority receives no public tax funding and is self-sustaining.

“I give Mark and his team a lot of credit for minding the store, making sure we were working to the budget,” Hahn said. “We had multiple design options and kept going back to ‘What’s the budget, what’s the budget.’ We made those decisions early on in the design process. We had designs that would’ve made it a little jazzier, but that’s not the intent of the building. It’s to service the airport. It goes back to making smart decisions, but not being opulent.”

The preconstruction process was another factor in ensuring few change orders. “One of the biggest advantages to this team was everybody looking ahead in terms of what construction was coming up next in the work sequences, and getting out in front of it in terms of making sure we understood the details and understood the design,” McPherson said.

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Plenty of Room to Confer The finished product is a workplace that the Airport Authority can be proud of. For months, WCAA employees have watched the building grow and their excitement mounted as movein day approached. “When the skin went on they started asking when we’re moving in,” McPherson said.

The contrast between the ghost-town atmospheres of the L.C. Smith terminal, with its hard-walled, separated offices at the top, and the new Berry, with its dedication to open spaces and shared light, has been dramatic.

The atrium, with its skylight and central steel stairway and glass railings, is a magnet for informal gatherings. The second, third and fourth floors each have a kitchenette with vending machines. On the other side of the stairs, the furniture selection between the two elevators that were split to make room for the AT&T duct offers a natural spot for coworkers to meet up.

“The core of the space is kind of a Town Hall stacked vertically through the building,” Hahn said.

Built to LEEDTM (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) standards, the building culminates the efforts of the whole team to make the project a success. “For LEED, you have to have an owner or client that’s committed, and you have to have the construction and design team working together to achieve that,” Hahn said. “Each team member has a role to getting it certified.”

An advantage was that the Airport Authority determined very early that it wanted to go for LEED certification. “It’s very difficult to get LEED once you get too far downstream, so the building was designed with that in mind,” Hahn said. “We made smart choices, specifically in the mechanical systems, going to a more efficient system and tying into the existing central plan here. We chose LEED points that make a difference and not just to get a point. So, it’s good engineering; it’s good sustainable design methodology in the way we put the building together. We wanted

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Most of the floors have identification system similar layouts, featuring controls access. Swipe-in cubicles with 46-inch walls security is also installed for to allow light from the the hard-walled executive windows to flow over the offices on the fourth floor. entire workspace. The Throughout the building, aisles surrounding the the interior design favors cubicles make the window modular, movable furniture views accessible to to encourage collaboration everyone, while interior and coordination. The walls on the lower floors choices favor both semipeek into the terminal just formal and informal enough to share light. connections between coShades all around the workers. building windows block Perhaps the biggest out morning glare, filtering contrast between their old 95 percent of direct offices and the new building sunlight overall, and 97 lies in the predominance of percent in the conference The public and employees enter the Berry building via an enclosed walkway bridge from the airport’s conference rooms. “Despite rooms. living in that huge building, North Terminal. At some points, the distance between the two buildings is as close as ten inches.

Offices on the top floor we had only four active are high enough to look conference rooms over spacious enclosed training room with over the North Terminal roof and see planes there.

It was always a hassle trying to get computer workstations. That department’s taking off and landing. one,” McPherson said.

“I think we’ve got 17 need for privacy and security are met with The human resources department boasts a conference rooms in the new building, so hard-walled separations, while a swipe-in that’s a highlight for just about everybody.”

There are two large state-of-the-art conference rooms on the first floor that serve public meetings and bid meetings, for more than just the employees. Conference rooms have electronic message boards where information can be transferred to other locations. And, if needs change, some of the larger conference rooms can be split into offices.

“A lot of the conferencing spaces are glass so that you can see the activity inside,” Hahn said, “reinforcing the natural daylighting.” The informal spaces – officially known as collaboration areas – further the sense of sharing a dynamic work environment.

SALES RENTALS The feedback from the employees has been overwhelmingly positive. Considering all the challenges that went into the creation of DELIVERY ERECTIONS SCAFFOLDING the WCAA Michael Berry Administration SHORING TRASH CHUTES SWING STAGING Building, the transition to a modern, highly Since 1952 EXPERT DESIGN SCAFFOLD PLANKS functional and creative workplace has been AND FALL PROTECTION very smoother.

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Photos courtesy of cody Johnson, frank rewold and son, Inc.

An aerial view of the $15 million, 4,500-seat Jimmy John's Stadium located in the heart of Utica.

From Landfill to Luxury Ball Field: Utica ‘Gets a Good Piece of the Ball’ with

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ports fans lucky enough to attend a Utica Unicorns baseball game at Jimmy John’s Field in Utica are most likely greeted by owner Andrew Appleby, chairman and founder of General Sports and Entertainment (GSE) and Chairman of United Shore Professional Baseball League (USPBL), both of Rochester. Appleby is opportunely at every game - whether it’s the home team or the Birmingham-Bloomfield Beavers, the East Side Diamond Hoppers or Westside Wooly Mammoths.

Along with their hotdog or popcorn, fans are treated to a ‘plate appearance’ by Appleby. “I make it a point to greet fans as they’re walking in, and thank them for coming when they leave,” said Appleby, who declares he can do that because he lives 15 minutes from the 4,500-seat, family-friendly, $15 million stadium he helped bring to life. He is proud to attend all 75 games. “It’s quite novel that I’m in attendance for every second of every game. This ball park is near and dear to my heart, and I like being able to be an influence when it comes to the level of service we provide to the public. Besides, I’ve always wanted to build relationships with the fans.”

Appleby is known for being down-to-earth and calls himself a hands-on worker who aims for a home run every day. “We work hard every day. We treat it like it’s the World Series,” he laughs. The season runs Memorial Day through mid-September, with games operating Thursday through Sunday.

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By maintaining a daily presence at the stadium, which was constructed by an allstar team - consisting of Frank Rewold and Son, Inc., Rochester, and designed by the architectural firm Pendulum Studios from Kansas City, Missouri - Appleby believes he is making a positive influence on the staff, teams and community; and he’s always in favor of extra base hits in the form of new ideas and improvements.

“It’s been a fantastic experience since opening day, May 30, 2016. I’m impressed with the functionality of the stadium, and all 150 games so far have gone extremely well,” he said, adding, “We try to make it better every day. I would say it’s probably

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the nicest ball park in the whole country.”

Mike Gagnon, project executive, and Steven Haverstick, project superintendent, at Frank Rewold and Son, Inc. like hearing Appleby praise the stadium’s functionality.

“It was a continually evolving project right up to the end,” said Gagnon. “We worked under a tight timeframe and often worked seven days per week. We broke ground in July 2015, and knew construction needed to be complete for the first ball game on opening day less than a year later Memorial Day 2016.”

Haverstick agrees and adds, “It was common to stop work on any given day to figure out what to do tomorrow,” he said.

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“We had our boots on the ground every day and faced countless challenges. In depth and up-front coordination and planning had to be accomplished before anything could be built. But in the end the fans were lined up on opening day and continue to support this unique sports complex.”

As construction progressed, the owner was meticulously working to sell suites to potential ticket-holders. “We had to work around tours of 30 or more people,” he said. “Equipment needed to be tucked away and many safety measures and barricade fences were installed to keep guests safe.”

Get a 45-minute, $3 stadium tour of the technologically-advanced ball park. Tours are provided 10 a.m.-1 p.m.

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Unquestionably the biggest challenge Rewold faced was tackling the construction of a ball park stadium on top of a former solid waste landfill loaded with undocumented trash.

The challenge appealed to Frank Rewold and Son, Inc. The company’s four generations of leadership keep it a family-based business which preserves its traditional values by offering their clients its best asset – a relationship. Relationship-building is the true foundation of this nearly 100-year-old company. Until this project, the prestigious firm sporting 50 employees, had never built on a landfill before.

“There’s always a first time for everything. It was kind of ‘Field of Dreams-

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ish,’ said Cody Johnson, creative marketing specialist at Rewold. “The concept of ‘Let’s build it and they’ll come’ was a significant factor considered.”

According to statistics gathered from the Environmental Protection Agency there are approximately 3,000 active landfills in the United States - and 10,000 old, inactive landfills. One such old, unregulated landfill had a home in the heart of Utica’s business area.

Appleby, the former senior vice president of the Detroit Pistons and Palace Sports and Entertainment, had his eye on the 15 acres of landfill parcels as the future home for the Jimmy John’s field, his latest venture. “It wasn’t easy by any means,” said Appleby. “As it turns out, we learned nothing could be built there, but we could build above it. It required a lot more money to do it, but at the end of the day, I believe it was the perfect location - and I must say it turned out pretty well.”

Environmental contamination, geotechnical settlement discrepancies,

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decomposing waste material which generates hazardous methane gas, and soil pollution were just a few of the hurdles Rewold and SME had to contend with before construction could commence.

Rewold found themselves immediately collaborating about a Due Care Plan with experts from SME, a Plymouth-based design and engineering firm who provided civil engineering and soil testing at the site.

Gagnon explained how the Due Care Plan “specified how we were to work at the site.

Special ‘no smoking’ and ‘highly flammable’ signage was installed to keep and maintain a safe work area.”

Incidentally, the EPA, along with the City of Utica, Macomb County and the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ) helped secure $3 million in funds to handle environmental and constructability issues pertaining to the redevelopment of the landfill.

Some appropriated funds were designated in this way: $1 million for Clean Michigan Initiative (CMI); revolving loan and grant from USEPA in the amount of $700,000 and $800,000 MDEQ grant to remove 26,000 cubic yards of waste.

“The dozer dug up piles of old household trash and debris,” said Haverstick. There was approximately 15-30 feet of unconsolidated waste buried on both sides of the Clinton River. “Old glass, shoes, mattress springs, baby dolls, vinyl records, tires and newspapers were turned up.” He vividly recalls reading a 1958 sports article from a newspaper somehow left unspoiled in the dump.

“All of that rubbish stayed on-site,” said Haverstick. “Nothing could leave. It was graded and stockpiled on site. It was capped with new material and a whole intricate system of pipe piles were installed.

Since the soil was not stable enough to build on, these steel pipes allowed the stabilization needed.”

Continuing, he discussed how more than 350 steel, pipe piles, which were about eight to 12-inches in diameter, were installed 40-60 feet down through the depth of the waste into the deep, dense layer of clay.

“These pilings are what would support the structures we eventually built on,” Gagnon said. “The stadium lighting and the 80-foot LED scoreboard also would rest on the pipe piles.”

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However, since a baseball field must be level the project team needed to figure out achievable grading and foundational options. Without having full knowledge of what exactly was in the underlying debris, the safest option researched and selected by the project team included placing mechanically stabilized earth (MSE) walls which would retain all the stockpiled trash material.

In addition, the walls would produce scenic public walkways around the stadium.

“You can’t put a bulldozer out there on ground that sinks,” said Haverstick. “We had a mixture of lime dust and cement dust pumped into the earth to try to suck out the moisture.

This is what we call soil stabilization.”

Scorekeeping for safety is MDEQ’s main and only concern.

They were diligent about how direct contact or ingestion of exposed waste contaminates could pose a health risk to the public. To eliminate those risks, Haverstick explained how a geotextile fabric became a visual barrier. “The fabric barriers were specially designed clean soil covers. They served as a visual sign to everyone at the site that there was bad soil underneath.” Underneath the ballfield, right field and landscaped areas, are geo-fabric covers.

To ensure the interior and closed space inside the stadium didn’t generate hazardous methane gas, which can reduce oxygen and produce an asphyxiant, a methane mitigation system was installed.

Built below the building spaces is a depressurizing system to prevent the intrusion of any hazardous gas. “Every six months the proper testing agencies test the ports and make sure there is no trapped methane gases seeping into the building,” said Gagnon.

Collaborative efforts between the owner and construction project team paid off. “It was a wonderful experience working with the construction team behind the scenes,” said Appleby. “There were lots of obstacles but they built it in a record 10-month period.”

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Inviting, plush and modern high-end seating awaits guests in the popular Upper Concourse.

Two years before Appleby set out to build an independent league baseball stadium he set out to find a partner. “I wanted to partner with a sponsor who would purchase the naming rights of the ball park,” he said. His first contact with Jimmy John’s proved successful, like a double play. “Jimmy John’s took a chance on us and said yes. They agreed to sponsor the stadium two years before it was built.”

Jimmy John Liautaud founded Jimmy John’s in 1983 in Charleston, Illinois and with a savvy business plan built a franchise consisting of more than 2,500 locations in 46 states. Sports sponsorships are not foreign to Jimmy John’s, who honors a long-time partnership with NASCAR. Appleby is grateful to be on the radar of such a recognizable sponsor. He said Jimmy John’s sponsors other collegiate and professional sports teams such as the Detroit Red Wings and Detroit Tigers.

“This project is definitely a career highlight for me and it’s exciting to have a sports complex of this caliber to set the bar for what is to come next.” Applby hopes to build nine or 10 more similar sports complexes in the next five or six years.

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Guests at Jimmy John’s Field have a main concourse and upper level concourse to wander when visiting. Both levels include such vendors as a full-service patron bar, a craft beer brewing company, restaurants, snack shops and team merchandise. An elevated, grassy berm area offers a fun, pleasurable place to sit. However, to meet a more esteemed seating desire, there are 24 premium suites for serious fans or executive entertaining. The founder’s level suites are behind home plate on the third level; five dugout suites are located on the ground level directly behind home plate; and 12 modern private patio cabana-style suites sit on top of the Home and Away dugouts.

Serious baseball fan and nearby Utica resident, Jeff Zona, has seats in the upper concourse. “I’m what you might call a baseball freak! My seats are in ‘drink row’ - it’s the long top area of the upper concourse. The seating is high barstools with a countertop where you can place your food and drinks and look out at the ball game. It’s the perfect place to sit; there’s no congestion,” says Zona, who attends roughly 35 games per season with his 16-year-old son at the Jimmy John’s stadium.

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Suite-seating is ideal for entertaining corporate guests or for fans desiring a more intimate setting to watch the game.

Zona, who played ball in school and has been coaching his son’s baseball team for more than a decade says he has been to many ball parks in his lifetime. “This stadium is by far the best and nicest place I’ve ever had the pleasure of watching a ball game,” he said, adding, “I really like the layout of the park and how close you can actually get to the players and interact with them. In fact, my son and I have become friends with several players.”

Zona and his son were present on Opening Day in 2016. “The energy was amazing,” he recalls. “The stadium was packed and the crowds were enthusiastic. I remember looking at the faces of the players and they seemed in awe of how many fans showed up to watch them play. The whole experience was phenomenal. It was the best time we’ve had at a ball park.”

Since Zona lives close by he could watch the construction phases of the project as they happened. He took three tours of the stadium before it was built because of his keen interest in how things were progressing. However, he admits he was skeptical in the beginning.

“My line of work, ironically, is in the architectural and engineering industry, so I was quite interested in how they were going to make this happen,” Zona said, who served on the Utica Planning Commission at one time and pays attention to construction projects in his area. “I knew they planned to put a baseball field there and I was looking at the space and thought, ‘There’s no way they’re going to jam a baseball field in that space.’

But they did. And it is a definite success.”

Downtown rush hour traffic in Utica is a nightmare according to Zona, so he wondered how it would all work. “They obtained space on the north-east side of the Clinton River and made a big parking lot,” he explains. “Not once have I ever sat in traffic, whether going in or coming out of the stadium. There are several entrances and exits. It’s situated perfectly and honestly, everything was well thought-out and designed with precision.

They certainly addressed every item, and it all works.”

Appleby’s 30 years of experience in marketing and sports management shine through in the stadium’s community-centered focus. He and his team have created a complex which offers more than baseball. “I never know when an idea is going to come to me, and being in the sports and marketing profession allows me to be creative.”

His creativity is bold. There are opportunities for whiffle ball, disc golf, birthday parties, group outings and even weddings. An onsite children’s playground is a favorite of young stadium fans. In addition, special promotions and family-oriented events happen throughout the season such as German Heritage Night, Movie Night, youth baseball clinics, children’s reading programs, Paw Patrol events, fireworks and country music nights.

“I like talking to Andy Appleby. His vision and ideas are incredible,” said Zona, who is impressed with how Appleby and his staff are present at every game. “He’s always there shaking people’s hands and welcoming them “The Voice of The Construction Industry®”

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to the stadium. He treats everyone like family.

He’s got an energy about him that transcends to his staff. Everyone who works there seems to have passion for their job.”

The transformation from landfill to the successful social, economic, recreational and environmental development it is today provides Utica and the surrounding area an unparalleled investment. The project has brought more than 400 jobs to the area.

Zona’s teenage son got his first job at the ball park.

“Andy Appleby has a vision to keep things local and help increase jobs for the people in the Utica area,” said Zona. “They held a job fair at the Utica Library and my son was able to get his first job in operations.”

In addition to a surge of jobs for residents, the project has catapulted the concept of a traditional baseball stadium into a modern sports complex designed to meet the needs of contemporary, thrill-seeking individuals and families.

“It was definitely a fun, yet tough project,” said Gagnon. “We were presented with a unique set of challenges, but our approach and outlook always brought us back to the goal which was to create a beautiful structure and field from a landfill. I must admit it was quite fulfilling to accomplish this. I’ve been to several games and it is an impressive complex.”

Appleby agrees with Gagnon and believes this project will be the standard of future and similar ball park stadiums. “It’s been an overnight success,” he said. “Creating the leagues, inviting a mecca of local high school and college ball players to the stadium, and even more importantly, 500 some charities have leveraged the ball park in order to give back to the community. It’s the best of all worlds. We’re having a positive impact on families and it’s a catalyst for the City of Utica.”

Baseball fans like Zona are appreciative of Appleby and his vision to transform a landfill into a luxury baseball park. “He did something most people thought couldn’t happen,” said Zona. “His vision and project has enhanced the city of Utica tremendously. It has brought more visitors and guests to Utica who wouldn’t normally make a trip here. He has a master plan to build 10 or more stadiums of this magnitude, and I don’t doubt he’ll do it.”

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An unparalleled, social, economic, recreational and environmental investment – from landfill to family-friendly ball park.

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Genesee Transformed Career Institute Designing and Building the Future at GCI

By Mary Kremposky McArdle Associate Editor

Aglow at twilight, a new addition now occupies the site of a former outdoor courtyard, once nestled between the building’s north and south wings.

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or high school seniors, the future doesn’t come with a set of blueprints or even a simple pencil sketch. Graduates, walking on stage to receive their diplomas, may walk off without any clear future goals. As part of a national re-visioning of career and technical education, Genesee Intermediate School District (GISD) is on a mission to give high school students the training and tools necessary to successfully enter that brave new world beyond the school’s exit doors. At GISD’s newly re-invented Genesee Career Institute (GCI), high school students graduate with marketable skills, actual certifications and/or college credits – and it is all tuition-free.

G E N E S E E “It’s the hottest thing in the country right now,” said Theo Pappas, project executive, associate and senior planner, Stantec Architecture, Berkley.

Stantec is the architectural firm responsible for GCI’s recent renovation and addition. “Students can choose to further their education at a post-secondary school, but they are immediately employable and can directly enter the workforce after high school graduation,” said Pappas, who has developed a passion for and a national expertise in the planning and design of career and technical education facilities, including the design of a Career Technical Education Center for Saline County in Benton, Arkansas, among others.

Genesee Career Institute, Flint, has created a host of forward-thinking programs, including the Virtual Enterprises International Entrepreneur program that allows students to create and manage a virtual business in a wide variety of industries, ranging from product development, human resources, and production and distribution to accounting/finances, marketing and sales, and Web design.

GCI programs range from the health sciences and information technology to automotive manufacturing and welding, as well as architecture and construction. As construction manager of the $10.8 million dollar project, Barton Malow Company, Southfield, joined this 21st Century classroom as guest instructors, answering questions on the bidding process, leading construction management discussions and even supervising a group of GCI students in the forming and pouring of concrete flatwork for the bus drop-off areas.

Photos Courtesy of Justin MaConoChie, MaConoChie PhotograPhy

A Fusion of Building and Program GCI’s metamorphosis from a vocational skills program into a career incubator dovetails with the transformation of the building itself. Stantec and Barton Malow joined forces with GISD to convert a nondescript, single-story structure into this innovative bastion of career and technical education.

The new 8,700-square-foot addition built on the site of an outdoor courtyard nestled between the building’s north and south wings – contains a collaborative space called the Innovation Zone. The project team renovated 77,000 square feet of existing space in the 113,000-square-foot building as part of Phase I of Stantec’s fourVisit us online at www.cammagazineonline.com

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phase master plan. The Phase I renovation created a series of large, experiential learning spaces, including the Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) makerspace. Equipped with 3D printers, fume hoods and other technologies, the STEM makerspace is designed to help students embrace a workplace moving ever further into advanced manufacturing and robotics.

The project team relocated and revitalized the administration area, and gutted the entire south wing. This virtual blank slate resulted in a strategic reshuffling of spaces, clustering once widely scattered elements of the same program into one location, and placing each cluster in close proximity to different disciplines, all for the purpose of creating efficiency on the one hand, and a more collaborative, cross-pollination between disciplines on the other.

In addition, collaboration spaces, ranging from small break-out areas to the grand Innovation Zone, are sprinkled throughout the interior.

In the re-imagined south wing, the project team renovated and enlarged a space for the Visual Digital Communications (VISCOM) program called Creation Corner.

Equipped with state-of-the-art equipment, Creation Corner gives students the tools to design and print professional-level graphics and to imprint a company’s or an organization’s logo on hats, tee-shirts and coffee mugs.

A Small Business Administration grant recently brought eight different businesses to Creation Corner. The students designed, developed, and produced promotional materials for client companies using a variety of specialty printing equipment.

“Teams of two to three students did thumbnail sketches, final designs and held client meetings over a period of six to eight weeks,” said Visual Digital Communications Instructor Michael Crawford. “The team that brought this together, along with our own administration, has done wonders for students. This is probably one of the best places in the Midwest, if not in the country, for what we are doing.”

Said Pappas, “As a design team, we were excited because we had the chance to not only physically transform the building, but also to help them transform their entire image and program. This is not just a building upgrade. It is a fusion of a whole new idea. It’s all about transformation.”

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Designing and Building Success GCI is all about equipping high-school students with a 21st Century tool belt, and teaching a collaborative way of working in a team environment. At GCI, students can explore different fields through project-based learning, job shadowing and other forms of experiential learning. By attending GCI for several hours a day, junior and senior high school students can hone their skills, flex their entrepreneurial and technical muscles, and enter the workforce with already developed wings.

Both Barton Malow and Stantec have earned their wings through decades of dedicated work in the education sector. At GCI, Barton Malow joined the project in the programming phase and worked with GISD in selecting the architect.

According to Barton Malow Project Manager Eric Sifferman, Barton Malow crafted a four-phase construction plan calculated to keep GCI fully operational throughout the project; built a diversity of spaces, ranging from a Digital Media Arts production studio to a welding lab; and presented 30 to 40 value engineering ideas to make the project work within the tight budget.

“Barton Malow’s team was amazing to work with

GCI’s active learning classroom features group tables on wheels, whiteboards on the walls, and state-of-the-art instructional technology.

throughout the project,” said GISD Executive Director, Career Technical Education Denise Belt.

Stantec’s design turned an older career center into a facility with all the polish and professionalism of a well-designed corporate office. By introducing generous expanses of glass, GCI now has a light-filled, visually connected interior and a prominent presence along Torrey Road.

Both Stantec and Barton Malow have been invited back to work on Phase II of the master plan. “When we were preparing for Phase II, I said, ‘I want the same team back for the next phase,’” said Belt. “When previous students are coming to the new building for meetings, they are in shock. When our post-secondary partners first visited the facility, they couldn’t believe it. When business and industry comes to GCI, they are amazed at the transformation that has happened in this building.”

A Building Transformed Only two years ago, the existing building was a single-story, low-lying structure barely visible from Torrey Road. The entrance was not easily identifiable, and a dilapidated greenhouse occupied part of the broad apron of lawn fronting the road.

Today, take a drive down Torrey Road in Genesee County and a two-story, glass-wrapped building with a manicured plaza comes into view.

Aglow at night and broadcasting an inviting yellow-gold interior by day, the building’s new addition houses the Innovation Zone, a 64 CAM MAGAZINE OCTOBER 2017

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collaborative student think-tank, meeting ground and activities area capable of hosting anything from a robotics competition and Career Day to small group meetings and graduation day ceremonies.

“Because the building was so far from the road, we knew that the Innovation Zone had to be a multi-story space with greater height,” said Pappas. “We made the interior color palette and materials visible through the glass curtain wall, so now people can easily see the building from any direction.”

Once virtually invisible, the front entrance is now part of this glowing addition. “GCI invested in an easily identifiable entrance and a new landscaped and well-lit plaza, because it contributes to the spirit of the building,” said Pappas. “It doesn’t feel institutional; it looks like a professional workplace.”

Come inside and on the wall, GCI’s new brightly colored logo - Explore, Experience, Excel - energizes the administration’s new reception area that could be easily mistaken for a corporate lobby. The rest of the building is a well-planned, designed and constructed series of spaces that all began with an intense meeting of the minds between Stantec and GCI. “What a Creative Idea!”

Stantec did its homework at GCI, spending two months surveying and interviewing the staff of each department before programming, master planning the entire building and launching the design of Phase 1. Stantec’s collaboration with GCI resulted in that ultimate collaboration space – the Innovation Zone. “It shows the value of discussion,” said Belt. “We met with all of the school’s program staff. The health science program wanted an auditorium, because they didn’t have a large meeting space for the 400 students enrolled in the program. The STEM program required space for students to practice robotics, and administration needed more space for large-scale meetings.

“It was the value of all these combinations of space requirements that led Stantec to come back to us and say, ‘We have this great idea called the Innovation Zone that meets all of these needs,’” said Belt. “We thought, ‘What a creative idea!’”

The Innovation Zone is also a cost-effective idea, being flexible, adaptable and a multiple versus a single - and seldom used - space. “Instead of having an auditorium that is only used once in a while, we have this great space,” said Belt.

A series of moveable panels subdivide this high-volume, two-story space in dozens of different ways for a variety of purposes and group sizes. “The moveable, adjustable panels scale the space, and allow for the intimacy of a small group or the activities of an intermediate or large group,” said Pappas.

Floor-to-ceiling panels add color and vibrancy to the space, being twothirds yellow-gold for most of its length, and one-third whiteboard in its lower reaches. The yellow-gold hue is the color code for all of the building’s new collaboration spaces. The color emotionally warms the space, and just as orange tones are sometimes used in eateries to stimulate appetite, the yellow-gold creates a relaxed ambiance for positive communication.

The Innovation Zone’s polished concrete floors and wood-looking metal panel ceilings complete this inviting blanket of materials. In addition, the Innovation Zone’s large video screen and other technologies are integrated with both GCI’s and GISD’s systems.

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“I’ve been working on different types of collaboration spaces over the course of my career, and it really came to a culmination with the Innovation Zone,” said Pappas.

It’s a far cry from the former courtyard that was deeply inset between the two building wings.

Students had to walk through the outdoor courtyard in brutal winter temperatures to access the classrooms. Today, this attractive, highvolume space is ideal for diverse collaborative activities for groups large and small.

From Construction Zone to Innovation Zone For Barton Malow, building this seemingly square addition turned into a challenging geometry lesson. Nothing about the two existing wings matched. First, the site elevation dropped two feet, two inches from north to south.

“Picture the two different building wings as two peninsulas,” said Barton Malow Senior Superintendent Tom Fisher. “One was lower than the other, and one jutted further out. They were not parallel, either. The peninsulas pinched in slightly.”

In essence, both wings were slightly pigeontoed or turned in toward the other in what was supposed to be a square building. “Not everything was square, but we had to make sure it wasn’t noticeable,” said Fisher.

The Digital Media Arts production studio offers students hands-on experience in the areas of audio and video production, broadcasting, digital cinema (film), and emerging media. More than technology, the curriculum promotes public speaking abilities and both interpersonal and communication skills.

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“Essentially, the biggest concern was achieving a snug fit between the two wings of the building,” Fisher continued. “A tremendous amount of coordination was needed in the layout of the steel. It had to be exact, and this was achieved through the shop drawing process and surveying.”

The reason for the elevation drop was the original architect wanted to maintain the same roof height for the entire building, said Pappas.

Because the high-bay structure for the south wing’s automotive and welding program was higher than the north wing, the only way to even the roofline was to lower the south wing.

The insertion of a ramp and a few stairs remedied the elevation difference. The ramp and stairs are on the north, “because we wanted to keep the Innovation Zone on the same level as the STEM program in the south wing,” said Pappas. “STEM needs access to a single-level, flat space to roll out equipment. For that reason, we didn’t want a tiered auditorium floor, because we wanted to keep the Innovation Zone flexible.”

The addition is knitted into the existing building, and rests on “concrete spread footings and then a grouted solid masonry wall that is pinned and secured to the existing footings at every adjacent location,” said Fisher.

Structurally, the addition’s clear-span steel gives the Innovation Zone the unobstructed floor area so vital to its function. “We had to intersect and bridge with the existing building’s mansard roof that surrounded the addition,” added Pappas.

Exposed structural steel columns line the south edge of the Innovation Zone as a nod to the existing building’s pre-engineered modular structural steel system. “Our design team wanted to maintain the system’s integrity and preserve that module,” said Pappas. “I’ve never seen a system like this that utilizes a kit of parts, pre-engineered system on a bay structure. A key part of the design of the Innovation Zone was respecting that modular system.”

Much of the structural steel modular system included non-bearing walls. “This means once we cleaned out these non-bearing walls during demolition, we could rebuild and re-partition the whole building,” said Pappas. “Had the building been a traditional school with all masonry bearing walls, re-partitioning the spaces would have been much more difficult to achieve. The modular system was flexible, and allowed us to work within the framework of the existing building.”

The modular system had some limitations, such as requiring shoring to support new mechanical units and to bear the snow load drifting down from the two-story Innovation Zone.

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Designing Connectivity The modular structural system gave GCI and the project team carte blanche to re-sculpt and strategically reshuffle the interior. In the north wing, the administrative offices, once buried within the building interior, were re-located next to the main entrance. “This placement is far more welcoming,” said Pappas, “and it allows the main office a better way to monitor the facility.”

Stantec’s design carved out sizeable instructional rooms, labs and makerspaces using only the existing space, except for the Innovation Zone’s new addition. “Just by restructuring the layout of the building, clustering groups together and eliminating wasted space, they were able to create these large classrooms and other spaces,” said Belt. “All of these new classroom and collaborative learning spaces were created out of space that wasn’t being utilized efficiently.”

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Widely scattered programs were consolidated into a single location. “The information technology program was once distributed across three different locations,” said Belt. “For IT to collaborate and work together was difficult, because they weren’t even close to each other.”

The Visual Digital Communications (VISCOM) program wasn’t even in the building. To spark collaboration, VISCOM was brought into the fold, and the makerspaces for VISCOM and STEM are even located directly across the hallway. Engineering and multi-media, digital arts and graphic design students can collaborate in the making of models, drawings and replicas of various STEM ideas and inventions.

The clustering of different disciplines mirrors the workplace environment where people of different talents work as a team. “The underlying concept is to teach the student how to work as part of a team in a professional workplace,” said Pappas.

The Active Learning Lab is one of the building’s many collaboration spaces. The lab has the tell-tale yellow-gold color palette, along with wood booths, and a cushioned, contemporary couch almost spanning the length of the room. The colors, materials and seating create a comfortable and inviting room equipped with the seating arrangements and the technology optimal for group sharing of information. A selection of materials and finishes gives the interior a polished, professional ambiance.

In lieu of private offices, Stantec also created a collective space for teaching staff to hold meetings, have lunch, and gain access to office equipment.

This collective space is adjacent to a new space for academic consultants. “I wanted to build that collaborative relationship between the consultants and the teachers,” said Belt.

Staff meetings and student groups can even use this collective, multi-purpose room during peak classroom hours when teachers are at work in instructional spaces. “We wanted to create more connectivity with the design,” said Pappas, “so that the teachers felt more connected to the consultants, the students felt more connected to the teachers, and they all felt more connected to the administrators who are no longer hidden in the middle of the building. We reshuffled the whole layout of the building to accommodate that connectivity.”

Building at a Blistering Pace `The mechanical units arrived on the jobsite, despite a slight delay because of a traffic accident on Torrey Road. As another potential but averted glitch, because GCI is located near Bishop International Airport, Barton Malow had to gain the approval of the Federal Aviation Administration months in advance to crane the mechanical units to the rooftop at a specified height. “The FAA sent a representative to the jobsite to monitor the crane’s height,” said Sifferman.

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Creating a professional-level space for GCI student welders involved electrical and mechanical code upgrades, reconfiguring the row of welding booths, and bringing the program’s classroom inside the lab, along with rebuilding the east wall to increase the number of garage door openings.

Despite the construction boom and the crane’s boom, the units were installed in time for the beginning of the school year. Barton Malow set the mechanical units the third week of August. “School started a week-and-a-half later,” said Fisher.

The new mechanical units are a pivotal part of the project’s energy-efficiency improvements. Other measures include building enclosure alterations, ranging from replacing single-pane windows with insulated glass, adding insulation with proper U values, and installing custom fit insulated metal panels. The exterior makeover also involved reinsulating, repainting and replacing sections of the building’s mansard roof.

VE Tinkering in the Automotive Lab The administrative offices were completed in Phase I construction and the Innovation Zone in Phase II. Phase III involved a small area in the north wing, while Phase IV gutted and transformed the entire south wing. “Phase IV work in the automotive and welding lab was the most aggressive,” said Fisher.

The significant alterations in this area included reconfiguring the row of welding booths.

Demolishing and rebuilding the entire east wall created five rather than three garage door openings, and sections of the floor were demolished all the way down to the existing structure. “Because this is a professional-level space, work in the high-bay lab also included electrical and mechanical code upgrades,” said Pappas.

Removal of an old paint booth, used for storage,

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carved out space to reconfigure and increase the size of the welding lab, and to bring the program’s classroom inside the lab, making it easier for the instructor to monitor student lab activities at all times.

One of Barton Malow’s value engineering ideas included a new approach to the construction of a two-hour fire-rated wall directly abutting the high-bay lab, a space whose activities created potential fire hazards. “If the fire-rated wall was paired with the existing construction, the existing steel would have required a lot of extra framing and wrapping of beams to achieve that two-hour rating,” said Sifferman. “A fire-rated wall goes straight up to the roof deck.”

Barton Malow met with the mechanical contractor prior to construction and came to a mutual agreement to shrink the ductwork in the hallway eight inches. “They were able to change their ductwork sizes, allowing us to slide the wall into the corridor eight more inches,” said Sifferman. “We didn’t have all of that extra framing and work to do to get around the existing construction. The hallway is eight inches smaller, but nobody would notice it unless you told them, and we saved tens of thousands of dollars on framing that wall doing it this way.”

Having entered the project early, Barton Malow could more easily address such constructability issues and control the budget.

“Bringing constructability to the table early in the process saves time and money,” said Rewers. “If we identify issues ahead of time and give that information to the architect, they can integrate it into the actual construction documents. It’s all about controllability.”

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Keeping the School Doors Open Barton Malow’s early involvement in controlling the estimate, the budget and constructability is all part of the company’s collaborative way of working. Barton Malow met with GCI every Tuesday at 8:30 am to also coordinate the shifting series of temporary walls and circulation routes, along with egress and fire-safety measures, needed to keep the school operational throughout construction. “The coordination was amazing,” said Belt. “Strong lines of communication between Barton Malow and GCI made it work.”

Having a retired state fire marshal on Barton Malow’s staff eased the process significantly.

Retired fire marshal, David Sass, helped to coordinate placement of temporary walls and access routes from the fire safety perspective, said Rewers. Working closely with Sass and GCI, plans and alternate plans could be more swiftly discussed and approved.

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“This project was tough to coordinate from the perspective of existing conditions, fire safety, student safety, scheduling and coordinating material dropoffs,” said Pappas. “Barton Malow did amazing work.”

Barton Malow’s intricate phasing and emphasis on collaboration kept the school doors open. “There was no way this could have been done without Barton Malow’s phasing and its dedication to keeping the lines of communication open with Denise and her staff,” said Pappas. “I can’t think of a better team that was more capable, because of their experience in phased school projects.”

Collaborating on the Jobsite Barton Malow has embraced a collaborative way of working. The firm even has its own amazing collaboration space in its Southfield headquarters called the Hub. As part of its collaborative approach, Barton Malow draws on the collective expertise of its entire company in the management of individual projects.

“It’s not Tom Fisher alone on an island trying to make this job work,” said Rewers. “It is all of us at Barton Malow working together and making sure that we are doing what is in the best interest of the project. We can delve into the company-wide expertise at Barton

Malow in the education arena, talk with others who have done similar projects and disseminate that information amongst the project team.”

The collaborative model ripples across all of Barton Malow’s jobsites. “On every jobsite, project engineers, managers and superintendents all sit down and discuss the project,” said Rewers.

“Everyone knows what is going on with a project. It truly takes a team. If it only took individual effort, that person would be the ‘Michael Jordan’ of construction.”

At GCI, collaboration extended to the community in the form of engaging the participation of local Genesee County subcontractors. In fact, three or four trade contractors were even within walking distance of the project, and about eight to 12 GCI alumni actually worked on the project in the trades. “There is a greater sense of pride when people are working in their very own community,” said Rewers.

A New Day at GCI Opened in October 2016, GCI’s revitalized building has dramatically transformed the student experience.

“The professional environment makes students feel like they are ready to go into the workplace,” said Pappas.

Generous expanses of glass make for a transparent,

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collaborative and connected interior. The interior glazing offers views to the outside and a window into the world of almost every program.

The administrative lobby has an easy sightline into the Innovation Zone. Walk down the corridors and one can easily see into the active learning classrooms, the labs and the makerspaces.

A glass-wrapped, outdoor courtyard directly behind the Innovation Zone draws in natural light and offers an outdoor oasis within the interior. “It is accessible from both sides of the building,” said Pappas. “It can be used for any type of event or as surge space for an event in the Innovation Zone.”

A ramped corridor between the courtyard and Innovation Zone offers a basic but desperately needed function: easy indoor access between the north and south wings. “There was never a link between the two sides before,” said Pappas.

“Students had to walk all the way around the building or go outside and come back into the building.”

Most importantly, GISD students have a training ground for their own future. Welding booths, a television studio and other experiential learning spaces are the “classrooms” in this career and technical education institute. In GCI’s active learning classrooms, traditional schoolrooms have given way to group tables on wheels, whiteboards on the walls and an instructor who circulates among student groups rather than stands at a lectern.

GCI students stay tuned. In fall 2017, GCI is implementing a new program aligned with its postsecondary partners. “Our students can add a 13th year to their schedule, and then they can leave GCI with an associate degree at little to no cost to the student,” said Belt.

Stantec and Barton Malow are already on the brink of launching Phase II of the master plan. Phase II calls for renovation of the culinary arts program, including the kitchen, the Weekdays Restaurant and a conference center. At some point in the future, Phase III calls for revamping the Kemp Wing housing health sciences, and Phase IV will involve expanding the automotive program to the east, creating more spaces for manufacturing and robotics.

“There is a sense of pride in being able to offer this facility and program to students across Genesee County,” said GISD Associate Superintendent Communications and Development Steve Tunnicliff.

“When you start seeing all the collaboration spaces and the purpose behind these beautiful spaces, it becomes all the more encouraging. I think every school district would want to be able to offer these types of spaces and give these types of opportunities to their students.”

Good luck to the class of 2017 and beyond.

These graduates now have a wealth of welldesigned and constructed programs and spaces from which to create their own future, thanks to GISD, GCI and the professional expertise of Stantec Architecture and the Barton Malow Company.

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COUNTRY CLUB OF DETROIT R e n o v a t i o n I n f u s e s A t h l e t i c W i n g M o d e r n E n e r g y W h i l e H o n o r i n g i t s

w i t h P a s t

What used to be a casual side door into the athletic wing of the Country Club of Detroit has been transformed into an elegant, convenient entry off the parking lot. The brick work perfectly matches the original exterior brick of the rest of the club, while the style of the whole renovated wing effortlessly honors the Tudor Revival architecture.

By Marilyn

S. Jones-Wilson

Photo Credit: Brett Mountain and Chris Lark of Lark PhotograPhy

With an eye toward preserving its heritage and structural beauty, the Country Club of Detroit recently transformed its athletic wing into fresh, dynamic spaces for members to enjoy. Since its opening December 2016, the renovated wing offers six lanes of state-of-the-art bowling and a two-level fitness center, as well as updated men’s locker room, children’s daycare room, elevator and a convenient side entrance.

The entrance, originally an unremarkable side door, is now a stately covered entry boasting brickwork and masonry details that seamlessly match the building’s original exterior. From there, members pass into a posh history corridor with cabinets displaying memorabilia from decades past.

Incorporated in 1897, the nonprofit private club and its golf courses have a proud history, twice hosting the U.S. Amateur – in 1915, when Robert A. Gardner became the youngest winner at 19, holding that record for 65 years until Tiger Woods won his first at 18, and in 1954, when Arnold Palmer began his career by winning his first U.S. Golf Association title.

The club’s distinguished Grosse Pointe Farms estate was designed in 1927 by Smith, Hinchman & Grylls, known today as SmithGroupJJR, in the Tudor Revival style. The challenge posed by this project was to remove the swimming pool structure from the 1930s and create a lower level by excavating down five feet below the existing footings without disturbing the structural integrity and beauty of the historical building.

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“When the clubhouse opened, the wing was actually a natatorium, so there was an interior pool,” said Craig Cutler, general manager of the Country Club of Detroit.

The pool was closed in the 1930s because of cost concerns during the Depression, as well as concerns about water-borne polio.

The club erected four lanes of bowling above the pool and expanded it later to six.

“One goal was preservation of the facility, so our work was very specific to the clubhouse,” said John Skok, associate at McIntosh Poris, Birmingham, the project’s architectural firm.

“We had to be very respectful of that.

Nobody wanted to see the plaster or brick façade crack. Any cracks would be seen as a tense moment, so throughout there’s really a clear focus on preservation – a lot of legacy here that we wanted to maintain,” he said.

The Clubhouse as Artwork While preservation was critical, the main impetus behind the $6 million, 15,170square-foot renovation was to meet the expanding needs of the club’s members, become the premier country club of Michigan, and attract younger people year-round. While golf and other outdoor sports predominate in the summer months, bowling and fitness extend the club’s viability throughout the winter months.

“We wanted a fitness center and there was a lot of back and forth with the membership on where this should be located,” Cutler said. “We are very fortunate that we have a large footprint here, with three quarters of the old polo field intact down the hill, which would have made a great location and been a lot less expensive.

“But the end goal was always to drive the membership into the club,” he said.

“The club is our artwork. We knew it was going to be a premium to get at this space, but once we decided, it was key that we had the partners to help us get there.”

Unlike previous, less extensive upgrades to the club, dealing with the clubhouse meant being sensitive to its historic beauty while preserving its structural integrity.

“This was really going to be a very skillspecific project, both for the architecture engineering and construction,” Cutler said.

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In building the project team, the club’s request for proposals had to be narrowly directed toward firms that could handle the challenge. “We wanted people who had history working in historic buildings,” he said. “That was very important to us.”

The renovation almost tripled the original space, creating a lower level for the new bowling center, a vaulted area to house bowling equipment, the fitness center and yoga room on the first level, and a spinning cycle room on a glassfronted mezzanine that overlooks the workout machines below.

“Our efforts were really focused on bowling and fitness, and on a different way to enter the club because of the casual nature of those functions,” Skok said. “The real focus was how could we make something that was an underutilized area really vibrant and take on a life of its own.”

McIntosh Poris Associates began design work early in 2015, keeping the needs of the members – including future members – foremost. “We worked through a good amount of preliminary design concepts to realize the vision of what we wanted to accomplish,” Skok said.

Even before they were brought on, members had been polled as to their priorities and expectations for the renovation. “There was a lot of caretaking,” Skok said. “Because this was going to be turned over to them, it was a very personal space.”

In addition to having breakout sessions with members, the project team kept the club involved in every step of design and construction progress by sharing 3D modeling using Revit® rendering software. “We were going back to the membership monthly to make sure there was a communication line for them to voice concerns and ask questions,” Skok said.

Shoring Up and Digging Down Through the planning, it quickly became clear that the complexity of the renovation would require a great deal of expertise to excavate inside the club without endangering the building above. The project needed to preserve the first floor level and the existing entrance. The challenge was to dig deep enough to

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provide a ceiling high enough to accommodate the bowling alley for the new lower level.

“We quickly identified that we needed a level of expertise on how to achieve a workable height. We really had to push the basement level down,” Skok said.

“That took a lot of expertise that McCarthy and Smith brought to the table.”

“When we were brought on board, the concept was to remove the pool and excavate down below existing foundations to create the lower level bowling center,” said Eileen McCarthy, vice president at McCarthy and Smith, Inc., Farmington Hills. “The methodology to accomplish this was undefined. The actual depth required was also in flux due to the minimum ceiling requirements for a competitive bowling center, and the members’ desire to increase the height for a more desirable space,” she said. The final design required underpinning five feet below the existing foundations.

Early on, the team considered chemical treatment of the soil to stabilize it, but the extreme variation of soil conditions on the site made it uncertain whether the chemical grouting would work. Given the number-one priority of safeguarding the integrity of the existing structure, that uncertainty was unacceptable, and other options needed to be explored. “The conventional method of underpinning by small segments is time-consuming and very risky, so that was not an option,” McCarthy said.

To determine the best method, McCarthy & Smith reached out to contractors that had expertise in complex underpinning projects. This resulted in a design-assist approach with a team of contractors that had the expertise as well as great working relationships with each other, with McCarthy & Smith, and with McIntosh Poris’ design team.

“There was a lot of synergy between the contractors,” McCarthy said. “It was Amalio Corporation for the concrete, Eagle Excavating for the earthwork, and Hardman Construction for the pile work.

Collectively with the design consultants, we came up with a methodology to use mini piles to go in and support the original structure in its entirety, prior to the actual underpinning of the existing foundations.”

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A gallery area just inside the new entry leads into the fitness area, and devotes glass cases to memorabilia from the club’s distinguished history. The plaster columns and arched windows into the fitness space preserve the colonnade that originally framed the natatorium in the 1940s.

The mini pile design was completed through collaboration between G2 Consulting Group, the geotechnical engineer, and Desai Nasr, the structural engineer. Desai Nasr calculated the overall load of the existing wing that needed to be supported and located the mini piles, and G2 provided the soil pressure needed to accommodate that load. In addition to structural design, G2 and Desai Nasr also provided design for the shoring which allowed construction equipment access while simultaneously keeping the main entrance of the club open for members.

A type of deep foundation, pilings are vertical columns driven deep into the ground to transfer the building’s weight load to a deeper level than would be possible with a more shallow foundation. A mini pile generally has a diameter of between 100 and 600mm and can extend to depths of over 50 meters.

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“It’s a very efficient methodology to actually go through and do all the mini piles as opposed to the time-consuming way of hop-skipping around,” McCarthy said. “Once we had those mini piles in, we could excavate completely underneath the foundations and walk underneath them, and the existing structure was completely stable.”

They did 25-foot segments of underpinning at a time, going around the three elevations of the building. Not only was it more efficient – it was also the safest way to do the work. “The safety factor and the preservation of the existing structure and beautiful masonry – these were paramount,” McCarthy said.

The mini piles – about 129 of them – had to be carefully monitored as to how they were bearing the weight. “We had a hundredth-of-an-inch register on one,” Skok said. During the entire process, the building moved just 1/32 of an inch.

The underpinning was particularly crucial beneath the existing arcade line of plaster columns, a beautiful architectural

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element of the space that had to be protected. This work had to be performed with more conventional underpinning due to the lack of machine access inside the building necessary for driving micro piles.

“There was temporary shoring and support beams to leap-frog from one column over to the others,” McCarthy said. It was a long process, about five weeks in total, to make sure nothing was disrupted. “The sequencing was all developed by the engineers and executed by the contractors. They did a wonderful job.”

“That was a very big moment for the design team,” Skok said. “A big sigh of relief to know that, okay, it’s stable.”

“It was a tremendous collaboration and effort on everybody’s part to come up with the methodology we all felt confident in,” McCarthy said. “It really saved the day.”

Ultimately, there was some rehab work required on the plaster itself, but the original detailing on the columns and

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around each arch was preserved throughout the demolition.

“The rest of the work was competitively bid to a select list of high quality contractors,” McCarthy said. “Our carpentry contractor had the capacity to do all the components inclusive of the plaster work. Our millwork contractor was phenomenal, matching the club’s details and stain color seamlessly.”

Ship in a Bottle With the weight of the building securely supported, the team could begin to assess the overall space – how much work it would take to remove the pool, how to get the equipment in there, and how to create room to work.

“When you went down below the bowling area, you were in the basement walking around the pool, a very tight space,” Poris said. “It was interesting figuring things out, where’s the entry, where does the elevator go, and connecting everything, making sure the levels line up. It was a big puzzle.”

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The challenge of taking out the pool and digging down was made smoother given the preparation done by the expert contractors. “We had to figure out a methodology of going in and taking material out of the building,” McCarthy said.

“There were logistics in terms of building a ramp and creating an opening in the wall, all while not disrupting the club’s operations and activities.

“The pool itself and the structure for the pool was massive,” she said. “Built in the 1920s, they didn’t short on any concrete.

The pool itself was pristine. It was Pewabic tile throughout. You could have filled that up with water.”

With no disrepair or chipping of the tile evident, it hurt to demolish something that seemed so perfect. “It tugged at our heartstrings,” Cutler said.

The team explored whether it would be possible to save the tile, made by the iconic Detroit pottery design studio in the early 1900s. “We had Pewabic come out and give an opinion,” Cutler said. “Their opinion was that the tile itself wasn’t significant. It was the installation that was significant.”

Excavating the old pool in the club’s athletic wing exposed the high vaulted ceiling that now allows a glass-fronted mezzanine for spin classes. A yoga room lies behind the main floor of the fitness center, which is lit by natural light through the arched Tudor windows and chandelier above.

Some of the tiles were saved, such as those found around the wing’s original white columns. “We dug out what we could, but nothing came out easily.

Things came out in chunks,” he said.

Another issue early on involved hitting water underground. “We had to address some dewatering during the process of completing the construction,” McCarthy said. In addition to waterproofing in that corner, as a backup they installed an interior drainage field, a sump and an ejector pump. But throughout a very wet spring, the problem has not recurred.

“The high-end finish and the predominance of wood in the lower level made moisture control an absolute must, so every precaution was employed, including leaving an access panel in the affected corner so that the club’s facility staff could continue to monitor that the waterproofing system continues to work,” McCarthy said.

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“Once the level was dug out and you’re six feet below, you’ve got this giant vaulted space,” Poris said. “Then you had this big equipment in there. I loved showing photos of that to people and ask them, how did we get that in there? It was like the little ship in the bottle. There was a hole at the end that we had dug to bring things in. It was fascinating.”

Working within a contained space meant that setting the structural support for the new first floor required ingenuity.

“There were some pretty large steel members that had to be installed,” said Matt Zitterman, project manager with McCarthy & Smith. “In a normal project, you’d have a big crane out there setting the steel. In this case you’re working inside a building. We were really constrained.

“The contractors had to get creative and we had to get smaller machines in there that were able to do it,” he said. “In “The Voice of The Construction Industry®”

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some cases we had to use beams that were cut in half and then welded together once we got them in place.”

No Small Details With the pool out and the lower level space excavated, the renovation proceeded on several tracks. First, the fixtures, trim and flooring of the men’s locker room, or “wet area,” were significantly upgraded. Secondly, the casual entrance was finished into an arched entry area, bricked to match the rest of the building’s exterior, and opening into a polished hallway that highlights moments in the club’s history.

Another focus was on the interior hallways connecting the wing to the rest of the club, which also commemorate the club’s history through framed photography on the walls. A barber shop was changed into a childcare room.

All these elements were sequenced as the lower level bowling and first floor fitness areas were still being finalized.

“We were running several activities in parallel,” Skok said. “A lot of credit goes to McCarthy and Smith to keep the site organized and everybody moving.”

Throughout all the moving pieces, respect for history and cohesive design predominated, both in attention to detail and overall context. “There were no small details,” Cutler said.

“Basically the existing clubhouse was the inspiration for everything that we did,” said Ross Hoekstra, McIntosh Poris designer. Selection of materials and details was instrumental in establishing connectivity between the various areas of the club, old and new.

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“The scope of our interior design came all the way down to the shower curtains and the horned accessories on the countertops in the men’s locker room,” he said. “There’s not a door or a door handle that is brand new – everything has a precedent or is a riff on something that existed in the club, whether that’s plaster detailing, wood trim, stain color or carpeting. All of those things pre-exist in other small places around the club, and seamlessly blend in.”

For example, the custom-designed carpets and wall coverings make use of the club’s logo as a repeated element.

“When we focused on those types of interior finish details, we wanted to create unique patterns, whether that’s in the carpet or some of the wall coverings,” Skok said.

“There was a lot of thought about the logo, and a lot of care taken in other places to give them a unique look, but still within the level of design fitting within the nature of the building,” he said.

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Even though the clubhouse in nominally Tudor Revival in style, the building’s architecture and interior design is very much representative of the Arts and Crafts movement that peaked in 1920.

Both styles feature simple forms and traditional craftsmanship reminiscent of English country houses.

The priority placed on custom details meant allowing subcontractors the space to take charge of their installations. A club logo in the custom patterned carpet was planned for where the new history corridor met the corridor coming from the club just outside the fitness center’s entrance.

“We had a phasing plan on how the carpet would be place to coordinate with the other work,” McCarthy said. “But when we presented it to the flooring contractor, the phasing had to be completely revised in order to assure that the location of the logo and how the carpet pattern flowed from there was absolutely perfect.

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“That was the priority. They’re not going to stand behind it unless we let them do it their way, the right way,” she said. “We had to step back and say, ‘We’ll work around you.’”

Attention to detail and coordination also shows in the selection of furniture for the entry, and the changes in the carpet designs to signal transition into a new space. “With those types of selections where we knew we were going to be placing new things, it just fits. It’s comfortable,” Hoekstra said. “There was a lot of trust in our decisions, beyond just the typical scope. Those details were really thought through to pull the space together.”

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Due to the significant level of detail work, it was important to allow enough time to complete the addition, despite the amount of construction going on around it, in order to finish it in time. “We had a very small space, but a significant amount of detail involved in the masonry and the roofing,” McCarthy said. “It was nip and tuck at the end, getting that entry completed for the turnover of the space.”

“I think most people wouldn’t know that was an addition to the club,” Cutler said. “That’s some of the most interesting brickwork of the whole club in that area adjacent to the men’s locker room. Matching the brick was very well done.”

A landscaped walkway with planters now leads directly to the new entry from the parking lot. The canopied entry opens into a warm, welcoming space with chairs and display cases.

An Entry into History Nowhere was the juncture between old and new more critical than in the addition of a finished formal entrance directly into the athletic wing. The one architectural addition to the building, the new entrance replaced a utilitarian entry that was there before.

“There was a little shed roof and just a swinging door there,” Cutler said. “There was no vapor barrier, nothing. It was just a way to access bowling, but it wasn’t air-conditioned and it would be hot as all get-out in the summer.”

To avoid disrupting the ornate brickwork on the club’s exterior wall, the new entry was inserted into one of the arched window openings. “We were careful not to cover up any of the exterior brickwork on the outside, so basically it slots right into the archway,” Skok said.

“Where we added that is almost like a triangular outdoor space,” Poris said. “Putting something into that space, where you can see the relationship to the two wings, with all of these details, was really tricky as far as how close it is to other elements. That was something we really studied a lot. Different roofs, different pitches, is it modern, is it Mini piles supported the clubhouse above while the vintage matching? It’s on a smaller scale pool was removed and a basement level was excavated five but it really works in relation to feet below the existing footings. what’s around it. It occupies the outdoor space nicely.”

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“You didn’t want to come in and feel like you were in the back corridor at the tail end of the club,” Hoekstra said. “The interior design layering on that specific space, the width and height of it and the furniture, provided an opportunity to create a curated history, with pieces to tell different stories in a museum-like atmosphere.”

One of the display cases is dedicated to golf memorabilia, including a 90 percent accurate replica of Arnold Palmer’s 1954 U.S. Amateur trophy.

Another case highlights all the club’s sports, and a third marks social history, such as the musical acts that performed there – from Nat King Cole, Glenn Miller and Tommy Dorsey, to Dizzy Gillespie and the Beach Boys.

Just as in the interior hallway connecting he wing to the rest of the club, the selection of photography and artifacts

A main floor fitness level was constructed above, preserving the colonnade and arched windows of the original structure.

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invite the membership to participate in those stories are told. The displays can be rotated and updated as desired, especially as new items are discovered.

“We’re just starting to scratch the surface,” Cutler said. “People walk through and see that we have made it a priority to tell our story. They find things and it’s intuitive to bring it to us, whether on loan or as a gift back to the club.”

In October 1925, the club’s two-yearold Albert Kahn facility was lost in a fire, along with much of their documented history. “We’ve ended up with more of our pre-fire history and some turn-of-thecentury trophies coming back in, good stuff,” Cutler said.

A Tudor Bowling Alley Clearly members valued bowling as a winter activity in the club, but the previous bowling alley, located on the first floor above the covered pool, had dated décor and a drop ceiling. “Almost half of the members used bowling on an annual basis, whether they were in leagues or used it for parties and other social gatherings,” Skok said.

“It was not a showpiece of the club at the time.”

“We were really challenged from a design-side to make sure it didn’t come off as a basement,” Hoekstra said. “We tried to address it in a way that would be appropriate to the club and wouldn’t feel like you were really stepping down into a lower level.

“When you walk down there or look at the final photographs, you don’t realize that it’s underground and that far buried,” Hoekstra said.

Large enough, and high enough, for six regulation lanes, the lower level could be mistaken for an above-ground party space, especially due to the illusion of arched windows along the side wall.

“The windows that we demolished out of the first floor, we brought into the lower level,” Zitterman said.

“We created false windows to

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make the room less like a basement.”

Set with antique-mirrored glass, the steel frames looked so good after the old paint was removed that the team decided to preserve the weathered look by glazing them instead of repainting.

Along with restaurant-style booths along the side wall, the room offers plenty of seating for watching the action, including tables topped with thick polished wood salvaged from the previous bowling alleys.

“The wood was three inches thick great old maple and pine,” Poris said. “We kept some of that and reused it for table tops and some of the benches. That’s a nice surprise when you see those next to the new bowling alleys.”

Behind the main marble desk, an oldtime scoring blackboard reused from the original space augments the modern-day scoreboards with a timeless authenticity.

Another marble bar is available where drinks could be served, along with ample space for refreshments, making the room desirable for wedding receptions and holiday party rentals.

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In a side niche, elegant wooden lockers for street shoes and a bench for changing them were quickly reserved by the regulars.

Finding space for the six ball-return/pin-setting machines required, literally, pushing the boundary of the building. “We kept trying to push it underneath the building, but that became even more complex,” McCarthy said. “We needed to go in a different direction.”

Rather than extend the footprint toward the dining area of the club, the team decided to extend the lower level behind the alleys and tuck the machines in a vaulted room that lies hidden under the outside lawn. “There’s a foot or so of earth over the top of the vault, so it’s completely unseen by the members,” McCarthy said.

Pin-setters can be a big noise-maker.

The originally planned placement would have put the machines right underneath the yoga room. The change proved significant.

“Where the pins are cracking is actually underground,” Skok said, “which helps dampen the sound from transmitting through the rest of the club.” Additional dampening is achieved with a masking wall and acoustic treatment.

The machines’ placement also ensures every possible amount of space can be devoted to the party areas. Overall, the bowling alley comfortably fits 80 people.

“It was very important that every space look and feel like our 1927 Tudor clubhouse,” Cutler said. “Now, there aren’t a lot of Tudor bowling alleys to benchmark, but we wanted everything to feel like CCD, and that’s a high level of finish; a high mark we certainly think was achieved.”

A Modern Restoration Just as there are no Tudor bowling alleys, creating a Tudor exercise room might have been equally challenging, but the club’s fitness room has the major advantage of grand architecture.

Even though filled with treadmills and weight machines, the room has undeniable drama and appeal.

“It is a modern space,” Cutler said.

“There’s going to be workout equipment, so you get a bit less clubby in this room, but there’s still historic touches reminiscent of the clubhouse.”

A beautiful arched ceiling soars above the equipment below. A chandelier, customized to match lanterns used in the club’s main corridor, and circular ceiling grilles draw the eye upward. Common to public spaces like theaters in the 1920s, the ornate grilles served to ventilate the natatorium by letting the humidity rise with the heat. No longer functional, they add a period touch.

The wing originally had no air conditioning, and the only heat was through radiators at the windows. Peter Basso Associates, Troy, designed the mechanical systems to all be hidden above the original plaster ceiling, hiding new heating and air conditioning units

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and ducts that had previously never existed in the space, but are now essential for any modern exercise facility.

The plaster colonnade, so carefully preserved when the space was gutted, frame one wall, alongside large arched windows that bring natural light into the workout area. Original Pewabic tile was preserved at the bases of the columns.

A glass-walled mezzanine level overlooks the main fitness area below, and affords a great view of the spectacular ceiling. Currently stocked with machines for spinning classes, the room can be utilized for CrossFit or any other desired activity. Lighting can be adjusted or dimmed to take full advantage of the daylight coming in from the main room below.

Directly behind the main room, a more private exercise room is perfect for yoga or dance classes. Flexibility ensures the areas will be useful no matter the fitness trend.

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As in the rest of renovation, attention to detail connects the modern amenities to the club’s inimitable style.

For example, the “orange peel” texture of the original plaster was carefully recreated in the new spaces. It added time to the schedule because the orange peel is sprayed onto the dry wall before painting.

“We wanted something that fit in that didn’t look overly modern, overly finished,” Skok said. “We really wanted to use what the clubhouse was giving us and build off of that.”

Given the club’s 700 local members, the fitness center enjoys vigorous use by the membership -- 3,000 visits a month, or about a hundred per day – without feeling crowded. “This has been a great space,” Cutler said. “Every time you get to be in this space, whether you’re working out or not, you’re in a beautiful space.”

The fitness center more than any other part of the project unveils and

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unmasks the space as it was meant to be, before the pool was covered over to add bowling lanes, before windows were covered up in the back. For many years, a drop ceiling hid the graceful lines of the ceiling.

“Only one or two members alive had ever seen the ceiling uncovered,” Cutler said. “Only one remembered the pool.

It was a long time ago. When the club opened in 1927, I can just imagine what that tile looked like when there was water in the pool, and the sun was coming in – the colors it must have cast,” he said. “It was one impressive space, and it’s an impressive space again.”

“Today this space is more like the natatorium was,” Hoekstra said.

“There’s some of the old Pewabic tile there, the ceiling’s there, the plaster, the ceiling grilles are there. The windows are opened up again. It actually feels more historical now than when we started.”

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The lower level of the renovated wing was created by digging deep into the foundation of the club. A professional bowling alley features plenty of party space, including wood tables made from the club’s original alleys. The arched “windows” along one wall were preserved from the level above, their mullions stripped, glazed, and set with mirrored glass.

Raising the Bar The goal of the project, to offer a yearround facility to the CCD membership, has been more than realized by a renovation that brings modern amenities into a setting that honors the past.

“We’re not just competing as a golf course,” Cutler said. “We’re not just competing as a fitness facility. We’re competing for everyone’s time and importance in their life. The more that our members do here, the harder we are to resist.”

Reinforcing the importance of the clubhouse as a place to spend time has resulted in an increase in year-round activity at the club. “When you're in the more expensive part of the market, our offering has to be that much better than anyone else's, and I think we achieved that,” he said.

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The response from the members has been overwhelmingly positive. “They moved right in. They knew exactly how to use the space, how to get from here to there. It fit in just right,” Cutler said.

He mentioned the quality of finish, the attention to detail, the head room in the lower level and the volume of space on the first floor as features that extended the merits of the clubhouse while preserving its historic integrity.

“Everything flows through the club just beautifully,” he said. “These spaces are now connected in a way that they haven't been since the 1930s. We’re aware that we’re a very demanding and difficult client to work with, but we picked the right partners to work with.

Everyone’s equally proud of the finished product.”

“You helped us raise the bar,” Poris said.

“Without exception, we had an ‘A’ team,” McCarthy said. “For the size of the project, the dollar value cost of it, there was an intensity that is not normally given, that speaks to the collaboration throughout the way.”

All in all, a unique and authentic environment was literally unearthed, resulting in a place where old and new unite with style.

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Mike Jackson Executive Secretary-Treasurer

Bart Nickerson President

Michigan Regionnal Council of

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An aerial photo of the M1 Concourse site development, looking South.

M1 Concourse Revs Up Car Excitement By

Lisa Briggs

Before the impressive $60 million M1 Concourse complex was constructed - which includes a 1.5-mile performance track featuring 10 turns and a 1/3-mile straightaway, and showcases more than 250 climate-controlled, luxury “car condos” all situated on an 87-acre site - it was simply a dream in Brad Oleshansky’s head.

Oleshansky, founder and CEO of one of the most innovative construction projects in the Metro Detroit area, which draws thousands of car fans to its downtown Pontiac location on Woodward Avenue and South Boulevard, isn’t done dreaming, either.

“It’s definitely been fun seeing all of our hard work come to life,” Oleshansky said, referring to the multi-phase venture he has worked on since 2013. “It’s definitely my passion,” he smiles, “But it’s more like a ‘seven days per week’ kind of project.”

His enthusiasm, along with determination and effort, is paying off.

A few years ago, the financial, legal and marketing entrepreneur traded in his career as a corporate lawyer and CEO of Big Communications, to dabble in what he calls a late life ‘passion project.’

“I wanted to tie my passion and love for cars into my next venture,” said Oleshansky, who worked on and tinkered with cars as a kid with his dad. He didn’t doubt his own car fantasyland idea – but others certainly did.

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Photos Courtesy of M1 ConCourse

Viewing an active track paving operation showing the use of a hopper system.

“I was up against a lot of naysayers in the beginning,” said Oleshansky, who admits he didn’t know much about real estate transactions or the construction industry, but knew no obstacle would deter him from expanding his lifelong fascination with cars and motorsports. Oleshansky used his savvy executive and leadership know-how as he set about to calculate risks, study real estate markets, zoning ordinances, and entertainment and recreational trends. “I researched theme parks, race tracks, automobile attractions and amusement centers to help define what I was ultimately going to do.” The doubters were abundant.

“People told me I’d never get it approved,” he said. “I also heard there was no suitable location for it, the zoning was wrong and nobody would invest.” All of that was mostly true, but it didn’t discourage him. “It motivated me more,” he laughs. “And I’ve since heard back from some of those people who told me they were wrong.”

When he got wind of an 80+ acre parcel of land in the city of Pontiac up for sale by RACER Trust, the group created in 2009 to sell bankrupt General Motors property, his Visit us online at www.cammagazineonline.com

optimism soared. The property, formerly owned by General Motors which housed an assembly plant in 1909, and later through the years a GM manufacturing center and finally a truck validation facility, looked to be the textbook spot for his endeavor.

“The historical Pontiac area and its connection and heritage to automobiles created the ideal destination for car buffs and enthusiasts, corporate heads and the public to gather and converse about their favorite subject – cars,” said Oleshansky. His instincts told him this parcel blends together two important elements – size and location – needed to create his dream.

“Even though most race track venues are in rural areas, there was something about the idea of putting this project in the middle of a city so close to the birthplace of the automotive industry – and better yet, near the famous Woodward Dream Cruise,” said Oleshansky. However, convincing others required a little more than just greasing the wheels.

The banks and financial world turned Oleshansky down when he pitched his idea and asked for a loan to finance his project.

“The Federal Government turned me down,” he said, “I knew I’d have to find other financing resources.”

So, he built a $20,000 “dollhouse” model of the vision of the “car country club” he carried around in his head. The miniature version of the M1 Concourse featured a race track surrounded by industrial metal buildings containing customizable car storage units to be sold to interested individuals. It also included restaurants and retail shops.

“I dragged my giant model all over,” he recalls. “I took it and presented it at museums, car shows, dealerships, art fairs, basically anywhere I could get people to pay attention. In less than six months I pre-sold the first 80 car garages.”

Fondly, it was those first 80 people, with cash in hand, who provided hope for his dream. Before construction of Phase I began, 80 serious car enthusiasts fronted $15 million in capital, while Oleshansky and one other investor ponied-up the remaining $5 million to get the project in gear.

Next, and most importantly, he set out to contract with the best contenders in the construction industry.

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He straight forwardly credits his M1 project team, which consists of Oleshansky himself; Jeff Hamilton, project director; Mike Tobis, senior project manager, and Rich Gorski, project manager engineer, of George W. Auch Construction Company, Pontiac (general contractors); Ken Van Tine of inForm Studio, Northville, (architectural/mechanical/electrical); John Thompson of Professional Engineering Associates (PEA), Troy (civil); Jeff Lanier and Laurel Johnson of Soil & Materials Engineers (SME), Plymouth, (environmental/geotechnical); and a dozen or so other key personnel, who remarkably completed Phase I and II under budget and on time.

“We kept our heads down, knocked out any barriers and challenges we faced and made it happen,” said Oleshansky. M1 Concourse is currently revving up to develop and construct Phase III and IV. Getting Phase I and II of the prestigious M1 Concourse under budget and on time was not easy, and required skillful effort and cooperation. As development of Phase III and IV begins to take shape, the hope for similar results is high.

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“We’ve still got more to unveil for auto fans in Phase III and IV – possibilities such as a walking village style of retail shops, vendors, restaurants, maybe some thrill rides, a skating rink, go-kart track and other car-related attractions are yet to come,” said Mike Tobis, senior project manager at George W. Auch Company, the construction firm which brought Oleshansky’s vision to life and built it.

There also is discussion about transplanting ‘mini dealerships’ into the automobile village. “The idea is for high-end car dealers to exhibit one or two cars in a small storefront and then potential customers would be redirected to the dealership,” explained Tobis.

Auch Construction is part of, and collaborates with, other key members of the M1 project team, which Oleshansky personally selected to work on the M1 Concourse project.

“I chose Auch Construction because they believed in my vision,” said Oleshansky.

“They’ve worked on historic and complex sites and this project necessitated a lot of site work development, since it was basically concrete and weeds.”

All the men, women and companies who previously or currently work on M1 Concourse believe in Oleshansky. If any reservations about the man or his dream existed, they were quickly dispelled after meeting him.

“Brad has an amazing way of interacting with people,” said Tobis. “It’s quite interesting to watch. He is bringing a whole community together based on one common interest – cars.” Fortunately, Auch Construction, located within walking distance of the M1 Concourse project in Pontiac, knew partnering with Oleshansky would be advantageous, as well as layered with intricate construction conditions.

“This was a one-time kind of project for our company,” said Tobis. “There certainly were many challenges at the site, but it was exciting to be a part of a prominent construction project which elevates Pontiac as a destination for car enthusiasts, and boosts its recreational, social and economic growth.”

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This is an aerial photo of the M1 Concourse site development in the early site demolition process.

The M1 project team Oleshansky built is like a family. Egos and self-centeredness do not exist. They have a multitude of talent and experience to draw from and they listen to one another. Oleshansky injects his leadership style which promotes a sense of collaboration, spirit and high energy.

Designer and architect Ken Van Tine is impressed with the team’s harmonious behavior. “Everyone talks things through,” he said. “There are no ‘dumb ideas’; we listen to all opinions presented. We find resolutions for each issue that comes up.”

An assortment of issues kept the team on its toes, but John Thompson of Professional Engineering Associates, Inc. expertly dealt with a large chunk of the site plan development before anything was built.

“Before the pretty buildings and the performance track was built, we worked on all the underground matters related to utilities, pipes, water and sewer lines and storm management drains,” said Thompson, who faced environmental limitations requiring intense studies of the topographical and existing underground conditions.

“The infrastructure on this vacated factory building dated back 100 years,” said Visit us online at www.cammagazineonline.com

Thompson. “We had to find what historic information we could and blindly go out and open man holes to see what we were dealing with. We connected the dots and salvaged what pipes we could, and brought in new ones where they were needed.”

Professional Engineering Associates, Inc., and the M1 project team considered the best way to integrate the old substructure with the new. “We knew it was going to be desirable to integrate the existing concrete and any working underground utilities into the new site,” said Thompson. “We took a proactive approach and analyzed every detail to provide a cost-saving, yet sustainable solution.”

Part of the sustainable solution included bringing an onsite, temporary concrete crushing facility to the site. It proved to be a keen decision by the M1 project team and saved $1 million in the overall budget.

“Re-using the concrete from the abandoned parking lot and old foundations allowed the project to stockpile 120,000 tons of crushed concrete to be used as the base layer of roads, building pad materials and general fill for the site,” said Gorski, project manager at Auch.

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Underground storage tanks and other hazardous materials found in the preconstruction phase were identified by Soil and Materials Engineers who set forth special handling instructions and disposal methods.

Auch and the entire M1 project team met regularly regarding the resolution and removal of hazardous conditions. The team saved another $250,000, by their explicit manner in handling soil contaminants, which was then reinvested in the site when it came time to construct its 2.5-acre skid pad.

Since the epicenter of the project is the performance track, it was essential to examine how and who would create it. “It was extremely important to have a well-reputable company install and work on the track paving portion of the project,” said Gorski. “This type and quality of track was different than typical road paving operations. It required complex and stringent procedures, and that’s why we chose Ajax Paving Industries Inc.” NASCAR speedways and automotive companies rely on Ajax Paving Industries, located in Troy, and its special paving equipment to pave their high-standard,

Aerial photo showing a close up of the onsite concrete crushing plant in action.

smooth race tracks. Auch, Ajax and the entire M1 project team coordinated and prepared for the vital task at hand. “The entire paving operation took one week,” said Gorski. “It was important to avoid joints and have a seamless track area.”

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To begin, 21AA limestone was imported and used as an 8” base for the asphalt pavement under the track. The onsite concrete previously stockpiled on the site was utilized for the base in the pit area and in all other paved areas.

Highly technical and GPS-guided equipment matched the exact grade required for the track. M1 project members conducted field tests and their concentrated regulation and supervision safeguarded the placement of two layers of the delicate asphalt mixture for the 30-foot-wide track. A base course and wearing course were placed in 15-foot-wide lanes with staggered joints between layers for structural firmness.

Gorski explained rather than having trucks invade the paving space, a singular hoppersystem continuously fed asphalt to the paving machine which successfully removed any joints between the asphalt.

Oleshansky is always present when his team of construction authorities meet.

They’ve faithfully met weekly since the groundbreaking of M1 Concourse in June 2015, and continue to meet to discuss ongoing work and the development of Phase III and IV. Dwindling businesses and lack of attractions along Woodward Avenue in that particular neighborhood have been revitalized since M1 Concourse settled there. “No one really came here before,” said Tobis, “This project has brought traffic to the area and it has sparked an interest; it’s becoming the gateway to the City of Pontiac. Local businesses, such as Motor City Burger, are making a comeback, and new businesses, like Slows Bar BQ, are discovering new clients in the neighborhood.”

Rick Gorski agrees. “The theme and goal “The Voice of The Construction Industry®”

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A completed Building 6.

to keep an industrial yet modern, sleek look is fitting, considering the site was once a General Motors assembly plant,” said Gorski.

There is no other car-themed venue like it in Michigan and the performance track is not a typical oval or figure-eight track either, its distinctive shape and design are all part of the appeal to its investors and visitors.

M1 Concourse offers an unforgettable and favorable experience for its owners and clientele.

For example, on any given day, diehard car fanatics, casual car buffs, or average armchair race spectators can discover a variety of auto-related entertainment happening at the admired facility.

Events such as “Cruise the Concourse,” “Cars under the Stars,” “Cars and Coffee,” “Open

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Track Days” and “Test and Tune” attract car connoisseurs of every age and background.

It’s exactly what Oleshansky envisioned and more. “The car condos are the main part of the business,” he said.

He knows this best, and, in fact, they’re the heart of M1 Concourse. Oleshansky created the opportunity for other car lovers like himself to have a concrete piece of his dream.

Undoubtedly, the upscale, custom private garages, all designed with six-foot glass facing the track, take the lead in this race.

Garage space, ranging from 600 - 2,500 square feet is sold as a “white box,” and can be converted into any style, theme or motif desired by its owner. The interior design and style of each garage is as unique as its owner - whether its muscle cars, sports cars or antique cars – the car garage represents its owner’s tastes.

“There are basic, middle of the road and high-end finishes,” said Van Tine. Owners are domestic and international car fans who design their car garage space to include office space, flat screen televisions, fireplaces, bathrooms, bars, lofts, built-in book shelves,

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furniture, unique lighting, car memorabilia… the creative list is endless.

Owners of the most recent car garage buildings constructed have the perk of rooftop seating. “The rooftop terrace garages sold fast,” said Van Tine. “As the project evolves we try and take into consideration the desires and wishes of garage owners. We try to make it as flexible as possible for owners to have exactly what they want. They’ve been able to see the original garages in Phase I and now they’re expressing upgraded amenities they desire.”

For example, more outside decks, freestanding mezzanines, balconies and other personal conveniences are incorporated into the car storage units.

So far, there are 180 M1 Concourse car condo owners, and more lining up to become part of the M1 Concourse car family when future phases are built and will accommodate up to 250 owners. Car condo owners encompass a wide variety of people, make up a group of car lovers who get to conveniently store, test drive and ‘toot their own horns’ when it comes to their cars. Along for the ride, too, is the public – they’re invited to attend and participate in car shows, auto races, swap meets, concerts,

Buildings 9 & 10 stand completed with a center drive between both buildings.

product demonstrations and other specialty events. A 26,000-square-foot banquet center will soon be available to rent for private or corporate parties, and there is commercial space to be leased.

“I’m amazed at how quickly all of this took off,” said Tobis. “Brad understands the car enthusiast best. He understands marketing, and he knows how to partner with people to get results.”

Getting results is what Brad Oleshansky certainly does best.

“There’s something at M1 Concourse for everyone,” he said. “Community members, corporate clients and the public can find car entertainment of every kind here.”

Oleshansky also brilliantly relies on the construction experts who’ve guided him so far. “They listened to my crazy ideas,” he laughs. “And they made it all happen.”

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The skybox, housing a control room, conference areas and full-service office space, accommodates key production personnel, allowing them to see and easily access the entire plant floor.

Brembo’s First North American Foundry: A Plant for Connoisseurs of the Industrial Arts

By Mary

Kremposky McArdle Associate Editor

Humanity invented that kinetic wonder:

the wheel. Brembo has re-invented its counterforce: the brake. As a world leader in braking systems, the Italian manufacturer produces aluminum calipers, carbon ceramic discs and other high-performance components for Porsche, Ferrari and Cadillac, along with a broader range of vehicles. Brembo has brought its drive for innovation to predominately rural Calhoun County near Homer, Michigan. Along with existing facilities, the 80-acre site now hosts Brembo’s first cast iron foundry in North America.

Founded in Bergamo, Italy in 1961, this global company has transformed both the brake and the disc brake foundry. Brembo’s foundry east of Homer defies the “hot, dark and dirty” stereotype of its predecessors, said Daniel M. Sandberg, President and CEO, Brembo North America, Inc., Plymouth.

Located in Michigan’s rolling farm country, the foundry exterior is a pristine white expanse of insulated metal panels. The luster of Brembo red completes the building’s metal panel shell and wraps around an 80-foot-tall sand tower used for the processing of foundry sand. The facility’s regenerative thermal oxidizer (RTO) reduces emissions, erasing the stereotype of a foundry dominated by tall smokestacks spewing plumes of black soot.

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On the interior, skylights brighten the well-ordered plant, extensive dust collection systems keep the facility clean, and specialty cast metal tiles - each embossed with the Brembo “b” and all perfectly aligned - form the heat-resistant flooring next to the electricpowered induction melt furnaces. In the corporate lobby, the pattern of slotted light fixtures in the ceiling is a play on the stylish, precision slits in a Brembo disc brake.

This recently built facility does fulfill one stereotype: It showcases the Italian penchant for artisanship.

The melding together of the functional and the beautiful is the heart and soul of this Mediterranean country’s cultural values. “Italians in general are industrial artists,” said Sandberg. The Brembo difference is based on the materials used and a design flair that turns a brake into what Sandberg calls “jewelry for your car.”

To build this jewel of a facility, Brembo enlisted the services of The Christman Company, Detroit; NSA Architects, Engineers, Planners, Farmington Hills; and Foundry Solutions & Design, LLC, (FS&D) a leading source of foundry process engineering and process integration based in Alpharetta, Georgia.

NSA’s direct client was FS&D. “Brembo wanted a better connection between the building’s design and construction and the process lines and equipment portion of the project,” said NSA Vice President Architectural Services Michael Serdiuk, AIA. Together, Brembo and the project team created this 215,000-square-foot cast iron foundry, along with 85,000 square feet of warehouse, office, labs and support areas.

Total investment was $100 million dollars.

The three major areas of this steel-framed structure – foundry, warehouse and office – have varying roof heights and long clear spans, as well as clean, crisp lines and Brembo’s signature red as an accent color.

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The foundry exterior is a pristine white expanse of insulated metal panels. The luster of Brembo red completes the building’s metal panel shell and wraps around an 80-foot-tall sand tower used for the processing of foundry sand.

Craft: The Industrial Arts on Display From building to brake, a sense of craft permeates this global company. Like contemporary alchemists, Brembo’s proprietary metallurgy turns materials into high-performance brake components and systems. In fact, one of the reasons for building the Homer foundry was to give Brembo a higher level of control over its methods and materials. “We have proprietary technology and metallurgy that we use in some of our discs, or rotors,” said Sandberg.

“We wanted to make sure that we keep it proprietary, so we built our own foundry to basically melt our own private blend, if you will, of metal.”

NSA and Christman share Brembo’s sense of craftsmanship. Christman’s Industrial and Power Division self-performed the complex concrete work, forming and pouring a series of tunnels, vaults and steps to closely hold the process conveyors, pouring lines and other process equipment. “Some of the concrete structures that had to be formed to support the equipment were pieces of artwork,” said Serdiuk. “They were that complicated.”

The heavy concrete foundations and the foundry’s integral walls, slabs and platforms support both the melting and pouring furnaces. “The heart of the foundry lies within the expansive melt shop where scrap metal, drawn from the scrap bins by a magnet, is deposited in precise quantities into the melt furnaces,” said Serdiuk.

As a 30-year veteran of industrial architecture for a firm with an extensive industrial portfolio, Serdiuk led the NSA design team in navigating the intricacies of designing a facility formed of such a tight weave of building and machinery. The project recently earned a 2017 Engineering Society of Detroit (ESD) Construction & Design Award for its efforts.

Speed: Building a Lean Machine NSA and Christman also share Brembo’s commitment to lean principles. “We designed the facility based on the principles of lean, or smart, manufacturing,” said Sandberg. “One of the reasons we hired NSA and Christman is that both companies practice the same lean principles. That is how we were able to build the foundry as fast as we did.”

NSA and Christman delivered the project in 14 months, an amazing feat considering the tight tolerances between the concrete and process equipment; coordinating equipment and building drawings; and managing both the construction workforce and a multinational mix of process equipment installation contractors. “We also coordinated delivery of equipment that came to the jobsite in over 2,000 different shipping containers from Poland, Italy, Germany and China,” said Christman Project Executive Troy Moulton.

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Rapid construction was imperative to keep pace with accelerating U.S. demand for Brembo brakes. “We were growing so fast that we were concerned that we might have a supply shortage for our castings,” said Sandberg. “There has been consolidation in the iron foundry business in the United States.

“We now obtain about half of our rotors from our own foundries, and we have some very close partners from whom we buy the rest of our castings,” Sandberg added. “Obviously, we want to continue to develop a great relationship with our partners, but at the same time, we still wanted to have the protection of having some vertical integration (in-house control) in our supply chain.”

Today, the Homer foundry produces 80,000 tons of castings annually. The tonnage equates to the production of over 12 to 16 million rotors a year, or 50,000 rotors a day, said Sandberg.

As the largest rotor manufacturer in the world, Brembo produces 60 million rotors annually in plants across the globe.

The plant’s production is as efficient as its construction. “Unlike other foundries, we only

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cast discs, or rotors, at this foundry,” said Sandberg. “Because it was made to only build discs, it is extremely efficient and extremely cost-effective.”

The speed of production is in perfect alignment with Brembo’s roots and continued dominance in the racing world. “Many of the innovations in our brake systems come out of high-performance racing, and many of these improvements have moved down into the cars people drive every day,” said Sandberg.

“We have a very strong presence in just about every racing series in the world, whether it is NASCAR, Formula One, MotoGP or even SkiDoo racing.”

Brembo’s performance division supplies its signature red calipers and light-weight disc brakes to the racing world. The Homer plant is part of Brembo’s disc division, the other three being the brake system, motor bike and aftermarket divisions.

Michigan Roots Brembo has had a strong presence in Homer for 20 years. The company purchased the Automotive Brake Components division of

Hayes Lemmerz in 2007, converting it into a 440,000-square-foot machining plant for discs and drums for the original equipment market, as well as a caliper and cornermodule assembly facility.

Having its own machining plant as its nextdoor neighbor reduces both transportation costs and truck emissions. If this site had not been selected, “it would take an estimated 3,600 trucks to move 80,000 tons of rotors,” said Brembo Brake Disc Business Unit Foundry Launch Manager Roberto Brognoli.

Having the foundry and machining plant in the same “backyard” also promotes recycling.

The machining process generates a large amount of heavy metal chips, and “those chips are immediately taken back to the foundry and melted,” said Sandberg. “We recycle a high amount of chips, which would not necessarily be the case if the foundry were located miles away from the machining plant.”

Brembo also selected the site based on the area’s skilled workforce and State of Michigan support. “This is a great community,” said Sandberg. “The area has many engineers,

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A Brembo associate conducts a chemistry and temperature check of melted metal in the company’s first cast iron foundry in North America.

and many people familiar with manufacturing.”

Brembo also selected NSA and Christman based on their strong industrial experience.

“We needed companies knowledgeable about industrial practices in the United States,” said Sandberg. “We are an Italian company that has built buildings all over the world, but this was really our first Greenfield facility, if you will, that we were building from the ground up in North America.”

The European Design Tour As part of the early design process launched in fall 2014, NSA toured Brembo facilities in Poland, Italy and the Czech Republic.

Wanting to maintain its corporate standard, Brembo patterned the Homer plant after the one in Dabrowa Gornicza, Poland. “The trip to Ostrava-Hrabova, Czech Republic was to view Brembo’s recently constructed lobby,” said Serdiuk.

The stunning lobby in Homer takes its cue from the Czech facility, both lobbies being formed in the shape of the Brembo “b” and both rooftops imprinted with the Brembo logo. Because the lobby is the gateway to the entire complex, the entry is designed to showcase Brembo’s design flair. A sleek and shining curved fascia, red accents and lobby skylights introduce staff, visitors and clients to the new North American home of this global enterprise.

At Brembo’s Homer facility, “there are a total of 25 skylights in the office and foundry,” said Christman Senior Project Manager Nate Visit us online at www.cammagazineonline.com

Hubert. “The skylights provide Brembo’s workforce with beneficial natural light that is linked to improved workplace performance in safety and quality, along with increased morale.”

Brembo also opted for LED light fixtures, and an exterior lighting design that minimizes light reflectance into the night sky to help preserve clear views of the starry heavens.

Adding to the facility’s sustainable systems, the administration building uses solar hot water heating; the foundry is equipped with best-available pollution control technology, including the RTO system for emissions control. “Brembo spent a lot of resources on pollution control devices and a dust collection system on the process side,” said Serdiuk.

“The foundry uses electricity to melt the steel, whereas many of the old foundries had gas furnaces to melt the steel.” Added Brognoli, “We also have very high-efficiency machinery, some with inverters that allow us to operate the machinery at modulated rather than maximum speeds.”

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were going to purchase the cast iron tiles that make up 18,000 square feet of heat-resistant flooring around the furnaces,” said Hubert.

“We carried a substantial amount of money in our budget for the tiles. Brembo brought up the idea of manufacturing the tiles themselves in one of their other foundries. By selfperforming the tile work, it resulted in significant costs savings.”

Other value engineering ideas included switching from a metallic dry shake hardener for the concrete to liquid-applied SlabArmor, said Hubert. The fact that Christman selfperformed the concrete work accelerated the pace of production. “Since we were selfperforming and since we are experts in concrete, we were able to look at the drawings and find efficiencies or better ways to do the work,” said Hubert.

Another cost-saving strategy marked the launch of construction in April 2015. The foundry’s footprint was approximately 15 feet below Brembo’s existing machining plant.

“The use of on-site materials to build the building pad and to provide backfill was a significant value engineering item,” said Hubert.

Brainstorming at Brembo Prior to actual construction, the entire project team met for eight weeks of value analysis and brainstorming in Brembo North America’s Plymouth office before beginning to build one of the few new cast iron foundries in the United States. “We had countless meetings in Brembo’s main office before we actually mobilized on the site,” said Moulton.

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Excavating an on-site pit served a dual purpose: It provided fill material to bridge the difference in grades and served as a retention pond for the site’s storm water, said Serdiuk.

Plus, having the foundry and the machining plant at the same grade boosts the foundry’s energy and operational efficiency. “Each rotor weighs 20 to 30 lbs., and they are moved in baskets of 250,” said Sandberg. “Moving tons of material up and down ramps is not only inefficient but it also wastes energy.”

Soil-wise, unrelenting, monsoon-like rains sweeping the region triggered the need to actually import some soil. “It seems as though the moment Christman put a shovel in the ground, it began to rain,” said Serdiuk. “It was like Noah building the ark. No sooner had they turned and dried the soils, then it began to rain heavily again. At some point, some of the soil had to be imported, because the site soil could not be dried out.”

Concrete Typography A line of concrete trucks stretched along Van Wert Road east of Homer was one of the first tell-tale signs of construction. The trucks were

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In the corporate lobby, the pattern of slotted light fixtures in the ceiling is a play on the stylish, precision slits in a Brembo disc brake.

delivering the concrete for the sand tower’s almost four-foot-thick concrete foundation.

“Christman placed this massive slab in one continuous pour lasting about 20 hours,” said Serdiuk. The sand tower pour was only one piece of the foundry’s heavy industrial concrete foundations that are part intricate shapes and part massive slabs.

The intricate: The variations in elevation, along with the tunnels, the vaults and the steps, created a concrete “typography” as diverse in profile as a city skyline. The foundry’s heavy equipment had to have multiple support points or ‘legs’ that rested in concrete pockets. “The concrete had to be basically carved around the equipment bases, so this involved forming a lot of different steps and elevations of concrete to be able to support all of this equipment,” said Serdiuk.

“Christman actually poured a lean concrete sub-base under a lot of the equipment to make it easier to form the necessary structures.”

As another intricate operation, Christman poured a series of side-by-side tunnels for the foundry’s molding line. “That molding line is shaped somewhat like an oval,” said

Sandberg. “The parts are moving in one direction in one tunnel before dropping down below the floor and returning in another tunnel.”

Serdiuk commented, “The foundations in this building were probably the most intricate that I have ever been involved with in a project. Some areas had just a concrete platform, and others had steel beams embedded in concrete, making for very complex foundation equipment support drawings.”

The massive: Christman poured massive concrete slabs in the north end of the foundry that houses the melt furnaces, the melt deck platform and large bins of scrap metal. “The mat foundation under the bins is 38 inches thick,” said Hubert. The foundry’s predominately mat foundations varied between 18 inches to two-and-a-half-feetthick, added Serdiuk.

In total, Christman poured “23,000 to 24,000 cubic yards of concrete, much of it below grade,” said Moulton. “It was a very heavy industrial foundation package, but that is what our self-perform group specializes in, so it fit us very well.”

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The concrete also fit the process equipment very well. The foundry is a machine, said Sandberg, and the building is part of this machine rather than just a mere box enclosing the equipment.

An 80-Foot-Tall Vertical Sandbox Building a foundry doesn’t follow the typical construction sequence. The sand tower and other heavy machinery had to be installed before installation of the roof and the building’s structural frame.

For the sand tower, Christman coordinated its work with the equipment installation contractors who were essentially constructing a building within a building. “Christman built the base, and our installers began constructing the sand system, which is basically a steel structure with pieces of equipment inside of it,” said Sandberg.

Specialty concrete also supports the sand tower equipment. “Some of the process equipment in that area sits in complicated concrete structures, shaped almost like cradle,” said Serdiuk. “One of these poured concrete structures supports a large, trapezoidal conical-shaped piece of equipment for the sand tower. The tolerances were very tight; the equipment had to just slide into and rest perfectly within the concrete cradle.”

The project team’s “to-do list” not only involved pouring a concrete maze and supporting a “vertical sandbox,” but also included constructing support areas for compressors, electrical gear and maintenance; installing structural platforms and mezzanines, along with the associated ladders and stairs for access; and building a large, glass-wrapped skybox overlooking this grand enterprise.

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about getting it done quickly, and in the right order.”

The equipment was pre-ordered and on its way. “As these various pieces of equipment were coming in month after month, week after week, they had to make sure construction and equipment arrivals were in order and on time, because another piece of equipment was coming that had to be placed in the building at the right time,” said Sandberg.

“Every day was a deadline.”

Five project stakeholders – the owner, external contractors, construction manager, architect and engineering consultants - met six days a week for the entire 14-month schedule to coordinate upcoming activities, just-in-time deliveries and critical path scheduling.

During the bidding process, Brembo had already established “five major milestone dates that correlated with machinery delivery,” said Moulton. “These milestones were pre-contracted. It was actually part of the bidding process.”

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Finishing the sand tower was one significant milestone, because sand tower completion paved the way for roof installation.

Other milestone dates included the first melt date for the firing of the furnaces, and the first pour date slated for April 28, 2016. “These dates were clearly defined steps in the bid documents that had to be taken in a certain order to make it all happen,” said Moulton.

Equipment installation and building construction began simultaneously to meet the aggressive schedule and rigid sequencing. “We had agreements with the local government that they could start installing equipment prior to the whole building being enclosed,” said Serdiuk.

“Christman focused on making sure foundations were in place in certain areas of the building. Temporary walls and enclosures were built to segregate those areas from the unfinished ones. This helped with installing the equipment immediately in order to make the end date.” As an additional challenge, in the industrial sector, the need to synchronize equipment installation drawings and the building’s own design drawings inherently generates a certain level of revisions.

“Every Day was a Deadline” The complexity of the work was one part of the story; the aggressive schedule was another. Christman nimbly managed a peak labor force of 300 people and a constant stream of equipment deliveries from around the world. “We had to meld the construction together with the equipment that they had already ordered from all over the world,” said Moulton. “As these shipping containers came in, we had to be ready to have them installed in the specified location.”

Sandberg adds, “It was a sequenced construction. The equipment had to be installed in a certain order, so they had to install certain foundations to make way for the placement of that equipment. It was all Visit us online at www.cammagazineonline.com

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A Global Village on the Jobsite Christman managed the schedule, site logistics and the safety practices of this multinational workforce. “Some workers from different countries were not as familiar with lock-out/tag-out and other safety standards that we perhaps take for granted,” said Sandberg.

Christman held daily safety huddles in the morning, mounting speakers to the exterior of the jobsite trailer and using a microphone to address the group, sometimes with the aid of a translator.

Safety information was communicated directly to the workers on the jobsite rather than flowing down through each company’s management staff. “It is a great example of a success story,” said Moulton. “It was challenging, but we didn’t have many people that didn’t understand these practices once we repeated it day after day to set the tone for a true safety culture.”

Christman also had a full-time, on-site safety manager, developed a projectspecific safety program and required daily

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Red accents and a sleek and shining curved fascia introduce staff, visitors and clients to Brembo’s new North American home.

jobsite hazard analysis forms, as well as providing guidance and on-site training for personnel unfamiliar with U.S. work practices and MIOSHA standards. In addition, MIOSHA was on the jobsite as

part of its alliance program with general contractors.

Christman and NSA managed a host of different languages, cultural values, technical standards and even different standard steel shapes. “Some of the steel shapes and sizes that they were asking for from other countries are not readily available in this country,” said Serdiuk. “For example, steel rails had to be embedded in the concrete for the equipment to ride on in some cases. The rail specified was a European rail, but if we bought the European rail it would be a special order, long-lead item. There was a great deal of back-and-forth discussion on what substitutions were acceptable or what they could live with that was slightly different.”

Even converting from metric to English units compounded the degree of difficulty.

“The rounding errors alone had to be considered,” said Serdiuk.

A New North American Home Brembo’s standard design practices for its global facilities differed slightly from its American counterpart. Brainstorming and discussions between project stakeholders led to solutions that not only altered some of Brembo’s pre-conceived standards, but also resulted in cost efficiencies.

According to Serdiuk, the building was originally designed with a hot water heating system, but because natural gas is less expensive than in Europe, switching to a direct-fired gas heating system, coupled with direct expansion cooling, yielded significant savings.

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Brembo plants typically have masonry walls for the first 16 feet of the lower exterior wall. NSA replaced the precast concrete wall panels with insulated metal panel siding. “It is a much lighter structure overall,” said Serdiuk. “The siding is also less expensive than precast panels, and it helped the schedule, because precast concrete is typically a longer lead item.”

NSA also lightened the structure by redesigning the structural steel framing system. “By adding a row of steel columns in the warehouse and in the foundry, we reduced the clear span and the size of the steel. Rotating the framing system also altered some of the roof slopes and saved steel costs, as did changing the type of bar joists.”

Another cost-effective revision was designing less contingency load on the roof. “We can’t hang anything from the steel due to the presence of the bridge cranes in the foundry,” said Serdiuk.

“Without a hanging load, there is no purpose in having a contingency load on the roof. The building is always going to be a foundry. We were able to convince them to forego some of those requirements.”

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failure mode analysis discussions,” said Serdiuk.

NSA designed redundancies in the water system to cool the furnaces. “We had to drill more than one well, and have more than one well pump,” said Serdiuk. “The wells are connected to the backup generator, and they are also diesel-powered. There are multiple levels of protection, including a large oversized water tank on site for fire protection water.

There is a system of valves in the plant allowing personnel to direct the water from that onsite tank to the furnace.”

Robust Infrastructure NSA designed new infrastructure to service the foundry, including a large septic field to serve as a sanitary sewer system, along with new power and water service.

Consumers Energy installed an industrial substation due north of the site. “The existing facility had a source of power, but there was a voltage difference between the existing facility and what the new foundry furnaces needed,” explained Serdiuk.

Two transformers now serve the foundry’s furnaces. In the event of a power outage, a complicated switching scenario is set into motion to ensure an orderly shutdown of the furnaces. “An agreement with Consumers Energy also is in place to bring a temporary transformer to the site on wheels,” added Serdiuk.

NSA also designed an emergency backup generator system. “We also have on-site storage of diesel fuel,” said Serdiuk.

“There is actually a port on the building where they can hook up a tanker to keep the generator running.”

These redundancies were warranted because an extended power failure could cause expensive damage to the pouring furnace. “It was all part of very complicated Visit us online at www.cammagazineonline.com

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The Skybox: A Grand View of Production The foundry was completed in July 2016; its assortment of molding, casting and forming lines, melt furnaces and support equipment all primed for production. Visitors and Brembo production personnel have a grand view of the workings of this contemporary foundry from the interior of a grand, glasswrapped skybox. Rather than a mere viewing area, the skybox houses a control room, conference areas and full-service office space for plant production staff.

“One of my goals was to get engineering, maintenance and production staff out of the office and into the plant,” said Sandberg.

“How do you do that effectively without the space being just another office? The answer was the skybox, a space we had on a smaller scale in Poland. This skybox can accommodate key production people and allow them to see and easily access the entire plant floor.”

Today, Brembo’s new foundry and administrative office near Homer takes its place among the global company’s constellation of manufacturing facilities.

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Brembo will have a 100,000-ton production capacity plant in Escobedo, Mexico, and other facilities in Mapello, Italy, as well as in Brazil and China. “We also have three other foundries under construction in China, Poland and Mexico,” added Sandberg.

The Best of Craftsmanship Brembo’s end product is on full display in its new corporate lobby, the office space being the last area constructed. The silver shine of well-crafted Brembo rotors catches the light from the elliptical skylight or from the array of slotted light fixtures patterned after the precision-cut slits of a Brembo rotor. The office area also features an open, airy and well-windowed cafeteria and multipurpose “town center” for the Brembo team.

As Christman was finishing the office, Brembo was starting to test the foundry equipment. “Early testing of the furnaces was to make sure the melt temperatures for the different metal blends was just right,” said Serdiuk. “During the melt process, they would take a ladle and scoop a bit of the molten metal out to test it and to make sure

that they had the right chemistry and the exact formulation.”

Like master chefs cooking food for epicureans, the foundry offers a glimpse into the mindset responsible for producing Brembo’s high-performance calipers, disc brakes, radial pistons and other braking components and systems. “Our radial pistons, which are vented pistons, if you will, can absorb heat better than a solid piston,” said Sandberg.

The best of brakes are engineered and manufactured for optimal heat dissipation.

As the best of project teams, NSA and The Christman Company proved they could take the heat of producing this contemporary foundry on an aggressive schedule and with a multinational mix of process equipment installation firms from around the world.

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and Elegance to Brush Park Living

Cantilevered balconies overlook a stainless steel swimming pool on the second story terrace. Like the hot tub beside it, the pool is open year-round. A green space beyond, with over-sized orange sunflower pots, and a complete outdoor kitchen and snack area, fill out the socialization possibilities at The Scott.

The Scott Brings

By Marilyn

S. Jones-Wilson

Built along the Detroit QlIne rail on Woodward Avenue, the scott slices out an urban residential sanctuary in the midst of resurging Brush Park. the five-story development captures the best of its central location – accessible to downtown, midtown and Wayne state university – by bringing contemporary flair to the historic district. featuring luxury apartments, first-class amenities, and concierge service, the scott brings a new level of sophistication to Detroit living, while linking its residents with an active, growing city community. At 330,000 square feet, including 15,000 of street-front retail space, the project is co-developed by Broder & sachse real estate and Woodborn Partners. sachse Construction, Detroit, was the construction manager, and neumann/smith, southfield, was chosen as the architect from conceptual drawings through to construction administration. neumann/smith did all the interior design as well, and grissim Metz Andriese Associates, northville, contributed landscape design. located at 3150 Woodward Avenue at erskine, the $63-million development began with a lot owned by the venerable King David grand lodge, an African American fraternity and civic center that had been part of the Brush Park neighborhood for 40 years. the Brush Park historical district – part of midtown Detroit – is known for its elegant Victorian mansions being preserved and renovated since the area’s revival began in the 1990s. the district’s transition from an area in decline to one ripe for new projects and new tenants is one of Detroit’s most exciting comeback stories.

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Community Involvement Committed to the neighborhood, the fraternity was looking to expand. “they didn’t want to leave, they wanted to be part of it,” said richard Broder, Ceo of Broder & sachse real estate. “they had something of value, which was the developable land. they wanted a good neighbor, a responsible development next door, and they were looking for funds so they could do what they needed to do to renovate their building,” Broder said.

When Woodborn Partners - Clifford Brown and Christopher early - first became aware of the land, it was vacant, having had little activity over the last 40 years, and being used as a parking lot. several attempts at development had fallen through, but the potential to create a viable new space was there.

“After several years of feedback from the community, we knew they wanted parking on the site but hidden from public view,” Brown said. “the proximity to Comerica Park and ford field meant that people visiting the games would often park where they wanted and leave trash everywhere. “the feedback for our team was to bring density but in a responsible manner,” he said. “We worked for roughly three to four years getting the deal to a place which would make sense for a larger partner to come in and assist in completing the project. Broder & sachse have been A private rooftop terrace allows residents views of downtown and the nearby Little Caesars Arena currently fantastic partners who transformed the under construction. Centrally located in Midtown, Brush Park is a resurging neighborhood near the medical initial idea into something transformative. district and Eastern Market. they have included us at every turn, made since the property opened up December 1, 2016, the owners are meeting us feel welcome, and accepted us as part of the team.” and exceeding their projected leasing of 199 units. the retail space has Because the district poses somewhat of a blank slate for leased to a medical practice, a bakery, a bistro and bar, and a financial developers, Broder & sachse saw a niche for the kind of institution, with another space yet to be spoken for. project that they had observed in other major cities.

“We’re exceeding suburban rents, so we’re very proud of that,” Broder “We knew the type of product we wanted and also knew said. “that’s not just what we were able to achieve. It says a lot about that it didn’t exist in Detroit,” Broder said. “We went on a what’s going on in the city.” road trip – Atlanta, new york, Columbus, Chicago – and learned what was working and not working for this type of Curated Moments community in those cities.”

Within sight of the new Detroit red Wings hockey arena currently under “the product we produced here is not necessarily construction, the scott features a second-floor terrace with an outdoor unusual elsewhere in the country, but it’s very unusual kitchen, stainless steel swimming pool and year-round hot tub. the terrace here,” he said. “If you would call us pioneers, we were opens off an expansive party room, complete with a fireplace, tV, tabletop pioneers. We were pretty sure we were going to discover shuffleboard and pool table, free coffee service and snack bar. the right inspiration over the mountains, and behold, it was Adjacent to the common room, residents enjoy a complete fitness center in fact there.” with cutting edge exercise machines. smart apartments boast cantilevered the niche was premium urban housing, with ample balconies with city or terrace views, quartz countertops, porcelain-tiled amenities, a high level of personalized service, premium floors, glass showers and in-unit washers and dryers. construction, and a vivid sense of community. “We knew there’s a stylish sixth-floor rooftop gathering area, business-friendly what the market would accept and respond to. We set conference room and a contemplative reading room, in addition to an about trying to figure out how to deliver it,” Broder said.

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outdoor dog park, dog salon, bike storage and repair areas. two decks of secure parking, with 326 spaces, are selfcontained, camouflaged from the street. “the community didn’t want to see a big parking garage in the middle of their neighborhood,” Brown said. “the innovative solutions that we were able to provide are really cool. you wouldn’t know there was a parking deck here.” the collective result is a premier address nestled within a vibrant, historic community. “every moment is curated,” said todd sachse, vice president & cofounder of Broder & sachse real estate. “every time you turn the corner, if you’ve never been here before, we want there to be a ‘wow’ moment.

“When you walk in the front door, there’s going to be a ‘wow’ moment. When you come up the elevator, there’s your ‘wow’ moment. then you go up to the roof deck, and it’s a ‘wow.’ every moment needed to be that,” he said. from dry cleaning pick-up and delivery, to an automated package service, the

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amenities extend to meeting tailored needs of the residents. “on the operation side, it’s about the service, the staff, the concierge treatment… it’s like you’re living in a fivestar boutique hotel,” sachse said.

In addition to private parties, residents are invited to social events that involve the community, as well.

A lifestyle curator ensures a full The Scott’s front entrance presents a distinct yellow face on Erskine Avenue at calendar of social Woodward. Light-colored metal panels are accented by colors that pay homage to events every other the brick details of Brush Park’s historic Victorian mansions. week, with special events sprinkled throughout. “I would say “events that we program as property just about weekly there is something going managers are not just engaging people on for our residents,” Broder said. who live here, but also the greater community,” sachse said. “We’ll bring in local businesses to partner with our events. Whether it be a product or a wine store, they’ll come in and do wine tasting with our residents or other types of events.

“We may buy tiger tickets, start in the lounge and have some cocktails, cheese and crackers, and then we walk to the game together,” he said. “All of our communal amenities are free. nothing is charged, even the refrigerator, stocked with soda and snacks. It’s all free.”

“We like our events to be ‘exclusively inclusive,’ to coin a phrase, which means we want residents to bring friends when it’s appropriate,” Broder said. “they bring friends who experience what we’re doing here, and maybe they have friends. We encourage lots of participation.” the scott’s lobby displays rotating artwork from local artists, who are introduced and celebrated periodically.

“We regularly have events for local artists where the residents can meet them, and that offers us the opportunity to support the artists,” Brown said.

“We’ve made a very large investment in artwork for our properties,” Broder said. “our goal is to build a collection of local art in our properties accessible to our residents so they can see what’s going on “The Voice of The Construction Industry®”

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in the world, who’s doing good things in our community. there’s art in various and sundry hidden places, including the restrooms. It’s all curated or commissioned from Detroit artists,” he said.

“In the first floor lobby, we usually have two events centered around the exhibit: one, a reception with the artist to come and talk about his or her art and the installation, and another one outside at their studio or a local establishment,” Broder said.

“It’s a busy place,” sachse said, “with

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the last-minute change in plan was quickly incorporated – separating the new building from the existing building only affected one eighth of the whole plan, and the intersecting space in question was converted into parking.

But the uncertainty did cause some trepidation on the construction site. “We were out in the field, and it was like, dig to this line and stop,” said lou goldhaber, sachse Construction project manager of the scott at Brush Park. the crew was told, “Don’t go any farther than that line,” because the plan was still up in the air.

plenty to do.”

An Eleventh Hour Deal Change the biggest challenges of the scott’s design and construction were related to a compressed 17-month schedule and last-minute changes in how the building would relate to the King David grand lodge next door. the original plan was that the lodge would retain ownership of the site, the new building would incorporate the existing lodge, and no money would be exchanged. “the deal was an exchange,” sachse said. “We will build you a building to agreed-upon specifications at no cost, in exchange for you giving us the land. At the eleventh hour, after the building was pretty much designed, they just felt they wanted to have their own four walls,” he said. “We switched everything. that was certainly a big challenge on the development side but it had a significant impact on the plan.”

“We had what I’ll call a productive partnership with the buyer and seller, and it still happened, which is important,” Broder said. “It became an outright purchase.”

“We started construction before we owned the land,” sachse said, “and we also started construction five months before we even closed on the construction model.”

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Add to that the urgency to complete the project by nov. 30, 2016, in order to qualify for the Michigan Brownfield tax Credits Program, an incentive to utilize environmentally challenged sites. the Brownfield credit, no longer available, had a 10-year expiration, and in late 2016, the clock was running down.

“We had to begin construction in order to finish in time or lose the credit,” Broder said. the credit was targeted for mitigating minor environmental issues, for example, substituting clean fill for soil on the site that required a Class II landfill. the environmental issues they found on the site were relatively mild – rubble from old foundations, old steam tunnels, and three underground fuel tanks from a gas station that used to be on the site.”

“We did approximately 25 test digs of the site prior to starting construction, and never hit anything,” goldhaber said. “then we started construction and ran into three massive fuel tanks – there was literally an 18-wheeler size fuel tank in the middle of the property.” two of the tanks were filled, but with the help of the Department of environmental Quality and the society of Manufacturing engineers, the problem was handled quickly, in days instead of weeks. “We were able to work with sMe and through the DeQ to get it permitted really quickly, or it would’ve impacted the schedule,” goldhaber said.

Despite the tight timeframe and late adjustments, the job was completed ahead of schedule. “We received our legal form of occupancy on nov. 28, 2016, with a couple of days to spare,” goldhaber said. By December 1, residents were moving in.

With time as a constant challenge, it was important to have a team that understood the time constraints. “you couldn’t have achieved this without that,” goldhaber said.

Time-Sensitive Adjustments the scott’s exterior design incorporates light-colored masonry and precast concrete panels to brighten the façade while picking up accent color from the surrounding brick buildings. “the blend in the colors takes away from the massiveness of the building,” said Bob Mclean, neumann/smith project manager. the panels break up the expanse of the structure into smaller visual pieces, reducing the building to a more relatable presence. “Just the subtle breaks in the surfaces was successful in breaking the scale down to something more in line with scale of the adjacent buildings,” he said. elements of the façade intentionally reflect the character of the Victorian mansions the district is known for. “We’re picking up on some of this historic brick around here,” Mclean said. the scott’s cornice details were inspired by cornices prevalent on erskine and other nearby streets. “We weren’t flashing it everywhere. We were just paying homage to it.” the lighter tones, pale metal railings

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Dramatic lighting and shelving anchor one wall of an expansive common lounge that features a fireplace, natural wood tables, coffee service, snack bar, pool table, fully stocked refrigerator, and shuffleboard for residents’ use.

Curated get-togethers offer opportunities to bring friends and enjoy the community on a regular basis.

and use of glass combine to create a cleanly industrial effect. “one of the best features about this building, despite how massive it is,” goldhaber said, “is there’s an incredible amount of natural light.” the precise type of siding, an insulated metal panel, had to be switched up between design and actual construction, due to the tightness of the schedule. the original type of panels were to be prefabricated off site, but they couldn’t be produced to exact size in advance because the building was still going up and variances couldn’t be foreseen. “the panels that are here now are all field-cut,” sachse said. “they’d come out in large sections and everything was cut and fabricated on site.” the result is a different look than originally designed, requiring more trim Visit us online at www.cammagazineonline.com

than the planned interlocking panels.

Installation continued right up until the end of construction. “sometimes situations develop where if your circumstances were different, you would make different decisions. you do what you have to do in order to achieve your ultimate goals,” sachse said. exterior lighting is restrained to reduce the nighttime glare on the surroundings.

“I have an affinity for not destroying the rest of the neighborhood with a lot of light pollution,” Mclean said. “We’ve gone through great lengths to provide first of all a safe environment and have something that’s aesthetically pleasing, but most of the lighting is geared downward and is not offensive to the eye whether you’re five feet away or 50 feet away.”

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Beside the QLINE Railway the building’s footprint is almost exactly the size of the 2.4-acre site except for the front side, which is set back about five feet from Woodward – originally to accommodate restaurant outdoor seating, but ultimately left open to leave space for the M1 QlIne rail hardware. Working amid the constraints of the concurrent construction of the M1 rail system along Woodward required constant adjustments and coordination with the City of Detroit. Challenges ranged from traffic congestion, because of closed streets, to utility lines running directly across the site, including a highvoltage electrical line through the center of the site where foundation walls had to go.

“We built around the line, over it, building underground parking around it,” said Jim Jehle, senior project manager with sachse Construction. scheduled to come out in early 2016, the line was not decommissioned until a month before construction completed. “We had this thing suspended. It was protected and painted orange.”

With erskine and Watson streets shut down, and John r heavily trafficked because of the Woodward construction, “We were pinned in to this very tight site that was split in half by the utility line,” goldhaber said. utility lines weren’t where they were supposed to be. “We were tying in our sanitary and storm lines from the building,” he said, “and going off some of these Detroit plans, 50-75 years old, only to find that things were not where they were drawn. “they were ten feet that way or this way, and we were trying to coordinate pitch and elevation for some of these things, between all these city manholes and steam lines,” goldhaber said. A 330-ton crane had to be carefully maneuvered to the site with its arm extended horizontally to get it underneath power lines. “the crane took up the whole road from erskine to Woodward to John r,” he said. “It was just a miracle that everything came together on time.”

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Shared Commitment given the logistical issues, meeting the deadline required phasing the job to allow various trades to work simultaneously on different sections. “you would think that with a job this large, you’d have as much space as you could possibly imagine,” goldhaber said, “but we really utilized every single square inch of this place to sequence out and schedule the various parts of construction that were happening at the same time, which was somewhat unique.”

“We divided the building up into quarters, so that we could do framing on one quarter while doing foundations on another,” Jehle said. “We had a hard date at the end that we had to meet, so we were in partnership with trades to make sure that the people who came on understood the schedule and had the capacity to meet it. otherwise we wouldn’t be successful.”

Coordinating ongoing inspections with the City of Detroit required a close

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working relationship. “With the amount of inspections that we had to get and how frequently we needed to get them, Bob and I would talk 20 times a day sometimes just to work through it, keep that speed and hit that date, because no matter what challenges we had, that date was never going to move,” goldhaber said.

“If you think about the scale of the project and how many units there are, and building it in quarters, we would say to the inspectors, we’re ready with these eight units. Can you come out?” he said. they might be looking at various phases of construction, some units rough, some finished, but the inspectors came out reliably. “the City of Detroit was highly invested in our success from the very beginning, and they made that commitment to the project very well known,” goldhaber said. “they were very responsive, and we came up with some innovative ways to work through the inspection process of a

project this large. We had this master blueprint of their approval process as we went through. We kept a binder where every unit had its own inspection sheet. It was pretty groundbreaking for a project like this.” the willingness of the city inspectors to come at night or on weekends, whenever they were needed, was intrinsic to finishing on time. “It would not have happened if not for their absolute cooperation,” sachse said. “they went above and beyond in order to achieve it. It’s probably the only group that you could say, if they had not been totally cooperative, we would’ve failed. If a plumber’s failing you, you get another plumber, but if the city’s failing you, I can’t call a different city.” that relationship existed because of trust on both sides. “We were adamant about not wasting their time in any way, shape or form throughout the process,” goldhaber said. “If they had come out and we weren’t ready for them, we’d be getting off on the wrong foot. It’s all trust.”

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“you have to be very agile,” goldhaber said. “you needed to find the right trade partners to do this project, who had the right mentality, who are willing to go in the trenches with you, willing to work those late hours, the weekends, whatever it took.

“Collectively as a team we were able to work through some pretty challenging hurdles in the project and still hit the date, which is a testament to everyone that was there,” he said.

“Being the guy who worked on the site the longest, from my perspective, the level of pride that the trade base had in the work was amazing. to see their faces at the end of the project, I think they were really proud that this is in Detroit,” he said. two days before the deadline, the team received their temporary Certificate of occupancy. “Jim picked it up and we made him photograph it in case he didn’t make it back to the site,” goldhaber said, with a smile.

“It was like one enormous family, all pushing toward the same goal. At the end of the day, when we had our meeting and I walked in with the tCo, they all cheered.”

A cozy reading room in warm tones provides a contemplative retreat for residents. A conference room with teleconferencing connections is also available upon request.

A Collaborative Success the attitude of collaboration and trust was vital, not only with the city but throughout the team. “often we see people come in with a sense of entitlement, of ‘you’ve got to do this for me,’” Brown said. “It truly is both sides in terms of the people on our team coming in with a sense of humility and pride, to say, we’re trying to find a solution together.” “every day, there were just so many issues that came up, and the mentality was, we are collectively going to solve this,” sachse said. “We’ve been doing this for 25 years, and I must say this was one of the most collaborative, issue-solving projects we’ve ever seen. “every project has issues. It’s really about how they are approached, what are the attitudes of the participants, and across the board, from the trade partners to all the engineers and consultants, architects, project managers and supervisors, it was uniquely cooperative,” he said. “It was a great team.”

Brown agreed. “Broder & sachse have exceeded all expectations on every front.

Because there have been no egos in the room on either side, we were able to accomplish much more than we could have if we hadn’t listened to each other,” he said.

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Bridging Science and Engineering Lawrence Tech’s Taubman Complex Creates a Hard-Working Space for Students and Faculty to Grow

Photos Courtesy of NiC Lehoux ArChiteCturAL PhotogrAPhy

By

Marilyn S. Jones-Wilson

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The Taubman Complex at Lawrence Tech University, Southfield, enfolds around the one-of-a-kind black orb that contains the building’s center staircase. The complex, the center for the university’s STEM programs, links the science and engineering buildings as it connects their academic disciplines.

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s a university synonymous with science and technology, Lawrence Technological University has continued to expand on its academic strengths, culminating in the striking and hard-working A. Alfred Taubman Complex, which literally bridges the Science and Engineering buildings on its Southfield campus.

Dominated by an eye-catching, other-worldly, black, egg-like orb – camouflage for the main stairwell of the building – the Taubman Engineering, Architecture, and Life Science Complex houses faculty offices, labs and flexible classroom spaces. It’s also home to the Marburger STEM Center, which offers programs in science, technology, engineering and mathematics that coordinate with industry partners.

Completed in August 2016, the $16.9 million Taubman Complex is named for its principal donor, A. Alfred Taubman, the businessman, investor and philanthropist who made lasting contributions to the university and the Detroit area, generally.

Building a Bridge The university’s expansion of academic programs that overlap science and engineering disciplines, such as biomedicine and robotics, presented an opportunity to add 36,700 square feet of space for students that would be both practical and innovative Designed by Thom Mayne of Morphosis Architects in Culver City, California, with Albert Kahn Associates, Detroit, as the principal architect, the Taubman Complex emphasizes simplicity, flow and connectivity – such as connections between academic disciplines, and between students and faculty, while supporting future growth in programs yet to be devised.

The robotic program is centered on the first floor, where the university can host activities related to the popular Robofest, a competition that attracts students from 5th to 12th grades to design, construct and program their own robots. University students learn in a large flex space in which the room’s dimensions can be adjusted to accommodate two KUKA industrial robots, anchored into the floor.

Among the science and engineering labs on the second floor, a biomedical lab has been tucked discreetly around a corner. Here prototype mechanical limbs can be tested with cadaver parts kept frozen in subzero freezers.

Another workspace is customized for studying how a human being moves – running, walking, jumping – on force plates and captured by stop-motion cameras and software to study the impacts and stresses that artificial limbs and joints must endure.

All in all, the building triumphs over “the way we used to do things” in favor of openness, flexibility and functionality. “Meeting the needs of a fairly new program that was just starting to blossom, the demand was there,” said Joseph Veryser, university architect. Cutting-edge academic programs involving both the College of Engineering and the College of Arts and Sciences needed a central home rather than spread through two different buildings, Veryser said.

In addition to linking science with engineering, the building links students and faculty by offering strategic and collaborative spaces, where academic hierarchy is less important than an environment where students can ask questions, share ideas, and receive hands-on instruction from their mentors.

“The design of the building is all about creating a better educational experience for our students,” said Dr. Maria Vaz, LTU Provost and vice president of academic affairs. “Learning by doing, engaging in project and research at the course level are our goals.

“There are no traditional classrooms in the building,” she said. “The building design supports active collaborative learning, project-based learning, and entrepreneurial-minded learning.”

“Beyond just creating rooms for teaching, one of the primary goals as we moved forward was common space,” Veryser said. “That gets into how to teach. It is creating all the open spaces in addition to classrooms so that students have a chance to congregate and share. Sometimes they learn more talking among themselves than only sitting in a classroom listening.”

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A New Paradigm for Design But innovation is not always adopted uniformly. Although open common space was a part of the program from the very beginning, the architect’s solution initially received some mixed reviews internally, Veryser said. While the aesthetic was very well received, some of the open area and the two-story area were questioned. There was the belief that placing more traditional classrooms into planned open spaces would be the most efficient or effective use of the building.

“It was difficult for people to accept as we put forth solutions,” he said. “They look at assigned space as a percentage of the gross,” or in other words, they looked at the square footage of classrooms vs. the total area of the building, and asked, why was it so small?

“First of all, we’re talking about people, students and faculty, most of whom deal daily with quantification and seeking out of efficiencies. Looking at the renderings, the first question was, why do we need a twostory space? Why can’t we fill in those floors

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and have some more labs or classrooms?

The answer was aesthetics. It was a part of the design. The part that makes you want to be there or simply enjoy being there,” he said.

Of course, filling in a two-story space means building another floor, another ceiling, installing more mechanical, electrical and structural elements, all of which increase cost. “If I fill that in, we can’t afford to build the same size building,” Veryser said. “You want a solution that’s a balance between demand for space and design. That is what we have provided.”

Designer Thom Mayne defended the need for connectivity and open spaces, reflective of what many universities are doing these days. “There had to be a little bit of a change in thinking. We had to help people view it from a different perspective,” he said.

“In business today, people are used to having common area to share and exchange ideas, rather than sitting in work stations and cubicles. It fosters collaborative behavior – that ‘all of us’ are smarter than each of us.”

Making Connections By involving faculty in the design process early on, spaces could be tailored to their needs, while keeping their offices accessible to the students, close to the learning spaces, instead of isolated and intimidating.

“We get embedded with preconceived notions,” Veryser said, “and one of them was that faculty has to be remote and separated from the students. They should come to us and make an appointment.”

The wisdom of integrating faculty and students spatially became apparent as staff realized they would still have some privacy, while placement of the faculty’s offices near to the labs they manage promoted a sense of ownership among the instructors.

“The labs were customized for the faculty members during the planning process,” said Michael Giovanni, senior project designer and director of architectural design at Kahn Associates.

“They knew that, ‘Hey, my office is going to be there, this is the lab I’m going to be running.’ That lets them know the students better and be closer to them, so it was very important to the university.”

The interior features glass walls facing the corridor and high windows allowing daylight to spill across spaces. Initially faculty members were concerned that losing solid walls in favor of glass ones would take away their ability to project presentations on the walls or write on white boards, as well as eliminate storage space.

“As you look across the way, you see large expanses of glass to the floor,” Veryser said.

“Look how much you can see, right into the labs. But the faculty said, ‘I really need that wall space for white board, for projection, I need that wall space for storage.’”

Rolling cabinets along the outside walls meet storage needs. The glass walls facing walls the corridor allow for visibility and shared natural light.

“This space is really wonderful because you walk along this corridor that’s open to that two-story space,” Giovanni said. “The levels are connected. It gives you a bigger vision so when you can look into these labs on the right, and with the open space on the left, there is connectivity reinforced in the building’s design.”

A side benefit to the visible work spaces is that students passing by can be energized by what they see. “A student comes out of high school, 17 or 18 years old, picking out what they’re going to do the rest of their life,” “The Voice of The Construction Industry®”

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The building’s interior style reflects a high-tech, utilitarian aesthetic. The stairway inside the black orb is lit by a circular skylight at the top.

Veryser said. “Wouldn’t it be nice to have them walk through a building and see something that excites them?

“They get a chance to think about something else, other than a pre-programmed idea of what they thought they wanted to do.

It opens their minds a little bit to be exposed to other things,” he said.

Smart Tradeoffs Moving away from traditional box classrooms to the open, visible spaces – without breaking the budget – required prioritization and strategic tradeoffs.

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“This is a refined, unfinished building,” said Richard Whedon, Kahn senior project manager, “as opposed to a typical education building that everyone thinks of when they think of school, one with no glass windows on the interior, finished ceilings and two-by-fourfoot light fixtures. This is school but it’s different.”

Whedon pointed out that, even though glass walls may be more expensive than solid walls, prioritizing them over, say, drop ceilings offsets the cost. “It’s a matter of trade-offs to influence the design impact,” he said.

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This was a key part of the Morphosis philosophy. “Delete a ceiling, you might gain a full height door. Delete a floor finish, you might get fancier lights,” Whedon said. For example, the polished concrete floors look a bit like terrazzo without the expense, and acoustic panels to absorb sound make the open ceilings work.

The interior design supports functional, collaborative spaces for students to gather informally. “The color pallet is very neutral,” said Christine Trupiano, Kahn director of interior design. “We have neutral seating with accent color, and a bit of warmth brought in with some wood pieces, too.

“Durability is a big factor with furniture,” she said. “All of the horizontal seating surfaces are a heavy-graded vinyl, so if coffee spills on it, it’s easily cleaned.”

Portable writing boards can be used in open areas as well as in conferences rooms.

“We let the students use them, move them into classrooms when needed, and then we don’t have to worry about storing them. Just push them into the common space for

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students and make sure you have the right markers out there,” Veryser said.

Materials and finishes had to be practical and durable enough to make maintenance easy for campus facilities staff, whose needs might otherwise be overlooked. “We talked about the clients that we’re serving internally,” Veryser said. “They are the ones who have to maintain and operate the building.”

That means sweating the details. “What’s the right material for a base, can I buff the floor and will it scuff? What will it look like a year from now? So you get issues that come up throughout the design that have to meet the intent and be practical in focus from more than just day one.

“It has to be maintainable at an affordable cost, ongoing, because if you have to buy the service to maintain it right or constantly replace it or repair it, that’s called tuition,” he said.

Sustainable Systems The Taubman Complex was designed to meet LEED (Leadership in Energy & Environmental

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Multi-level views over areas where students learn and congregate won out over traditional classroom design that values density over transparency and light. Airy gathering spaces encourage collaboration between students and faculty.

Design) Silver level standards, which are met by utilizing the best HVAC technology for heat recovery and retention. A dedicated outdoor air system forms the heart of the building’s energy savings.

Bringing in outdoor air for ventilation, the DOAS ensures indoor air quality and high efficiency. A heat wheel captures warmth from the air as it passes through and transmits as much of that energy as possible back into the building before the air is exhausted.

“We've got 42 heat pumps, which gives you a lot of zone control,” Veryser said. “In addition to energy control, you get more individualized comfort. The building management system provides direct digital control” that is both centralized and customizable.

“You could bring all the technology in the world to the table, but you still need people who are able to assess when a problem occurs, who know what to do, and how to correct it. It’s the electronic environment of today that makes a lot of things doable. That doesn’t mean you should do it. So we have to strike a balance.”

Lawrence Tech has received innovation credits under LEED in the past, such as being an early adopter of geothermal heating and cooling systems. Another recent innovation is using an underground cistern for grounds irrigation. But the key to the sustainability of “The Voice of The Construction Industry®”

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this project has been combining many of already established sustainable technologies.

“We did an accumulation of things that were done before, and we’ve done a lot of them,” Veryser said.

A High-Tech Beacon The most strikingly new sustainable element is the use of thin scrim panels on the east and west windows to filter and diffuse the lighting throughout the building, while creating an eye-catching backlit glow on the exterior at night.

Made of ethylene tetrafluoroethylene (ETFE), a fluorine-based plastic, the mesh screens control glare and temperature. The highly durable material is able to weather direct heat in the summer and high winds in the winter. “It’s an amazing material when you look at it,” Whedon said. “It’s very thin, but you can’t rip it by hand. You literally have to cut it, and once you cut it, it won’t tear.”

“What’s really cool about the scrim system is the quality of natural light coming in,” said Giovanni. “That’s knocking off the heat gain, so you don’t have direct sunlight coming in.”

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Even when the scrim is lit at night, the light doesn’t dump glare into the room. “It just stays along that scrim, diffusing the light,” said Brian Donovan, assistant project manager at DeMaria and the project’s construction manager.

“It’s a beacon,” Veryser said. “You couldn’t have done that before, lighting it up like that, but LED allows you to do it because you have very low energy consumption and a lot of light output.”

While the scrim is part of the building’s energy strategy, the beauty is derived as a result of studies done on exactly where to place the lighting, at what angles to avoid “hot spots” and create a diaphanous glow.

“It gives the building a really high-tech look,” Giovanni said. “Since it’s a technology facility, I think it lends itself to that,” he said.

“At night, it’s absolutely beautiful.”

Paying for the Unexpected Any construction project can run into unforeseen challenges that the budget has to meet. During a fire suppression test, the hydrant serving the new building showed extremely low water pressure. Expecting a

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bad valve, the team dug up the pipe, but instead found that the old eight-inch pipe had mineral accumulation on the inside that reduced the flow rate to less than half of normal.

“You’ve got buildings that were built in the mid-1950s,” Veryser said. “The water line was brought into campus from Ten Mile Road. The minerals accumulate over time and are hard to the touch.”

The team had to run 800 feet of a new water line to get proper pressure for fire safety in the building. “That cost had to be absorbed,” Whedon said. “It was never anticipated.”

Running the new line was slightly more expensive than it would have been to replace the old line, but the repair would have meant a massive dig across the campus, a major inconvenience for at least three months. The new line took a shorter route.

“We were fortunate,” Veryser said, “because a lot of it was done with our contingency in the budget. We had hoped to spend that on some additional equipment to furnish the labs. We had to rob Peter to pay Paul. That’s how we made it affordable.”

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Working Together The expertise and collaborative efforts of the whole team were instrumental in the project’s success. “I think that’s one of the main challenges,” Giovanni said.

“You’ve got to have a good selection of subcontractors working for you.” One example was getting the polished concrete floors just right.

“We actually had a meeting where we went over all that just to make sure whether there was anything that reacted within the mix design to the polishing compound. It was brought out that one mix design had too much slag in it, which was a LEED element, but the compound would have caused corrosion,” he said.

Splitting the design work between Morphosis and Kahn Associates was another critical factor. Since Morphosis is based in California and Kahn was onsite, they had to work together to make adjustments. “The devil’s in the details,” Donovan said. “The ceilings look custom, but they’re modular, and Kahn did a good job of figuring that out. It

Laboratories and classrooms have high windows that allow light while glass walls facing the interior corridors invite curious students to see what’s happening as they pass by. Movable storage cabinets and white boards for instructors’ needs make up for the loss of solid walls, and acoustic panels eliminate the need for closed-in ceilings.

made my life a little easier so I could focus on things like the lighting of the scrim.”

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Because the Taubman Complex connects two existing buildings, materials had to be matched just right.

“We had to flex a little design muscle,” Giovanni said. “[Morphosis] was remote, and we were always here, just down the street, so we got the opportunity to do things and make some contributions. It’s amazing how many trips I made, at least a dozen times, about the brick and mortar, working with the manufacturer to get the mix just right."

“It’s an experienced team,” Veryser said. “A lot of the problems that you have on a job are things that you’ve encountered before, so you’re trying to avoid them. A lot of things try to fit between two points, and no one wants to fabricate until they can get out and measure – in other words, field verify.

You can’t proceed until you field verify.

You find ways to adapt the details so we have flexibility and keep the project moving. It’s a matter of negotiating those differences without delaying the job,” he said.

Building the Eggplant The most dramatic feature of the complex’s façade is the black orb, which hovers weightlessly above a fountain pool and hides the interior’s main stairway. “It was interesting going to the City of Southfield for approval,” Giovanni said, “because they wanted to “The Voice of The Construction Industry®”

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“It was tough to explain,” Veryser added. “It would have been a hard push without the cooperation of the city and the buy-in to some of the concepts.”

The support of the city for the entire project reflected the overall design and quality level, Giovanni said, as well as its pride in Lawrence Tech generally. “The orb is a complement to that and a focal point on the campus. It’s another way of connecting the spaces. You look across the campus and it creates a little bit of mystery – that there’s something special happening in the building. It’s STEM, it’s the bioengineering. It makes a statement,” he said.

Like the rest of the project, the orb came together with a lot of collaboration between Morphosis and the rest of the team. “Morphosis had this vision all the way to the final product,” Donovan said.

“I don’t think we would have been able to accomplish it if there wasn’t a computer model. It was just very complex.”

Coordinating the 3D modeling done

by Morphosis with the hands-on execution in the field reminded Veryser of the challenge of teaching engineering and architecture students that a pipe or a duct in the real world is more substantial than just a line on a drawing.

“The drawings today are not like they were,” he said. “Once upon time, you got double-line drawings of a pipe. Now you get a single-line representation, with a couple of numbers on the side. You lose sight of the fact that those dimensions are real, they take up space, and you have to account for them.”

Due to its size, the orb came to the site in pieces, carefully shipped from the manufacturer. “The largest issue was all the coordination around that area, because you have a build-up of architectural columns off the building on either side of that stair,” Donovan said.

“Then you have metal panels coming in at very close proximity to each other.

“But we worked out the issues with Kahn and the team, figured out good solutions, and we were able to actually put it together,” he said.

The towering orb, or egg, is unique.

“It’s not symmetrical,” Whedon said. “If you look at it, it looks like an eggplant, almost identical. It’s not Fiberglas, it’s not metal, it’s not plastic.”

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So…what is it?

The actual material is a proprietary composite, a carbon fiber that underwent rigorous testing to meet fire regulations. The manufacturer also makes boat hulls, if that’s any clue.

The stairway inside the orb is lit by a round skylight above, which is mirrored by the gateway, a courtyard canopy beside the complex with a circular sky opening of its own. The gateway serves a necessary purpose – it provides accessibility for fire trucks to move into the “quad,” or center of campus – but also attracts students relaxing or studying outside.

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The orb seems to levitate just above the water feature at the front of the building. Students gravitate to the exterior stairway to meet and study. The Taubman Center faces the center of the Lawrence Tech campus.

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Connection to the Future Thom Mayne originally conceived the Taubman complex as a bridge, simple and dynamic, acting as a “glue” to hold the campus together and creating room for future growth.

“In the master planning, you have a connection,” Giovanni said. “From the conceptual standpoint, I always thought this was pretty cool about the building.

It was envisioned as leaping across the ravine out to the quad. You’ve got this bridge, open to students 24-7, moving them across the ravine. They’re climbing up the stairs, moving upwards, toward the two-story flex space at the heart of the building that stands for adaptability and collaboration,” he said.

Dr. Vaz praises the building for the opportunities it brings to students, faculty and the university as a whole.

“The result completely met our expectations,” she said. “From the architectural point of view, the building is beautiful aesthetically and gives a great statement of what Lawrence Tech is all about.”

Joe Veryser has fielded many comments from students, a few of whom measure spaces in square footage instead of light, flow and connectivity.

“One student commented that the cost of the orb enclosing the stair, and the open spaces, could have been used for housing more classrooms and labs.

What he missed, and what I shared with him, was that a building is more than simply housing classrooms and labs. It is a space where students and faculty learn from one another in a more convenient environment. We need places to congregate, to share and to relax. The orb is a signature. It could have been built differently. We could have omitted the pond, and we could have had a rectangular building made out of block walls. We didn’t.

“Which building – the one we built or the one with plain block walls – would be better for creative thinking and learning?” he asked the student… “I rest my case.”

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Brightmoor Christian Church Addition, Novi Owner: Brightmoor Christian Church, Novi Architect: Progressive AE, Grand Rapids Contractor: George W. Auch Company, Pontiac • Acoustical Treatments – Integrated Interiors, Warren • Asphalt and Site Concrete – T & M Asphalt, Inc., Milford • Audio: Thunder Audio, Livonia • Blinds – The Sheer Shop, Inc., Shelby Township • Demolition – Adams General Contracting, West Bloomfield • Drywall/Framing – Ann Arbor Ceiling & Partition, Ann Arbor • Electrical – Centerline Electric, Centerline • Elevator – Thyssen Krupp Elevator Co., Livonia • Fire Suppression – Professional Sprinkler, Wixom • Flatwork – Albanelli Cement Contractors, Livonia • Flooring – Airea, Inc., Farmington Hills • Flooring – Imperial Floor Covering, Inc., Walled Lake • Foundations – Gemelli Concrete, LLC/North Channel, Romeo • Frames, Doors and Hardware – Rayhaven Equipment, Southfield • Glass and Glazing – Edwards Glass Co., Livonia • Glass Fabricator – Thompson IG • Hard Tile – Empire tile & Marble Co., Inc., Eastpointe • HVAC Sheetmetal – Ventcon, Inc., Allen Park • IT/VOIP – Xpert Technologies, Inc., Sterling Heights • Landscaping – J.W. Christmas & Associates, Milford • Masonry – Rosati Masonry Contractors, Rochester Hills • Mechanical – De-Cal, Inc., Warren • Media: Mankin Media, Franklin, Tennessee • Metal and Phenolic panels – CL Rieckhoff, Taylor • Millwork and Finish Carpentry – National Specialty Contractors LLC, Ypsilanti • Office Furnishings – Office Furniture Solutions, Inc., Commerce Township • Overhead Doors – KVM Door Systems, Inc., Clinton Township • Painting/WC – Detroit Spectrum Painters, Inc., Warren • Plumbing – Bill James, Inc., Madison Heights • Polished Concrete – Rotunda Marble & Restoration, Dearborn • Precast Concrete – Kerkstra Precast, Grandville • Roofing and Sheetmetal – Schena Roofing and Sheetmetal, Chesterfield • Sanctuary Seating – Seating Concepts, San Diego, CA • Security Systems – D/A Central, Inc., Oak Park • Sitework/Utilities – Site Development, Inc., Madison Heights

WCAA Michael Berry Administration Wayne County Airport Authority, Romulus Architect: Ghafari Associates, LLC, Dearborn Construction Manager: Roncelli, Inc., Sterling Heights Engineers: Ghafari Associates, LLC, Dearborn Owner:

• Building Management – Siemens Industry, Inc., Plymouth Township • Coiling Doors – KVM Door System, Clinton Township • Concrete – B & B Concrete Placement, Inc., Romulus • Earthwork – Blue Ribbon Contracting, Belleville • Electrical – Hatzel & Buehler, Livonia • Elevators – Otis Elevator, Farmington Hills • Fall Protection – Roof Top Anchor, Inc., Heber City, UT • Field Engineering, Layout – PEA, Inc., Troy • Finish Carpentry – Trend Carpentry, Lincoln Park • Fireproofing – Saylor, Inc., Ottawa Lake • Fire Suppression – Elite Fire Safety, Southfield • Flooring – Continental Interiors, Inc., Troy • Furnishings – Creative Windows, Ann Arbor • Glass & Glazing – Modern Mirror and Glass, Roseville • Interiors – Acoustic Ceiling and Partition, Ann Arbor • Joint Sealants – RAM Construction, Livonia • Manufactured Wall Panels – Forms & Surfaces, Pittsburgh, PA • Masonry – Leidel & Hart Mason Contractors, Livonia • Mechanical HVAC – Forced Air Systems – Sheetmetal, Sterling Heights • Mechanical Piping & Plumbing – De-Cal, Inc., Warren • Metal Doors & Frames – Gamalski Building Specialties, Inc., Auburn Hills • Metal Siding – C.L. Riekhoff Company, Inc., Taylor • Painting – Detroit Spectrum Painters, Warren • Paving – Nagle Paving, Novi • Roofing – Quality Roofing, Whitmore Lake • Selective Demolition – Comet Contracting, Warren • Shelving – Shelving, Inc., Auburn Hills • Structural Steel – Casadei Structural Steel, Inc., Sterling Heights • Telecom, Data & Security – Compass Technology Solutions, Mt. Clemens CAM MAGAZINE OCTOBER 2017

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S U B C O N T R A C T O R S

• Temporary Fencing – Future Fence Company, Warren • Tile – Boston Tile & Terrazzo Company, Detroit • Toilet Accessories – Building Accessories Corporation, West Bloomfield • Wall Finishes – Integrated Interiors, Warren

Jimmy John’s Field Owner: Architect: Contractor:

Jimmy John's Stadium/ Andrew Appleby Pendulum Studios, Kansas City, Missouri Frank Rewold and Son, Inc., Rochester

• Acoustical Ceilings - Huron Acoustic Tile Co., Clinton Twp. • Asphalt - Asphalt Specialist Inc., Pontiac • Awnings - Marygrove Awnings, Livonia • Baseball Field - Midwest Landscape Group, Inc., Novi • Baseball Specialties - Carter Crompton Site, Clio

• Carpentry - Mid-Michigan Carpentry, Inc., Washington • Concrete Flatwork - Albanelli Cement Contractors, Livonia • Doors and Hardware - Tanner Supply Co., Inc., Temperance • Drilled Caissons - Rohrscheib Sons Caissons, Inc., New Hudson • Earthwork and Foundations - Simone Contracting, Sterling Heights • Electrical - Advantage Electric & Controls, Shelby Twp. • Elevator - Thyssen Krupp Elevator, Livonia • Epoxy Floors - Cipriano Coating Technology, Sterling Heights • Fencing - Reliable Fence Company, Clinton Twp. • Fire Extinguishers - Architectural Building Components, Ferndale • Fireproofing - Reichenbach Co., William, Lansing • Fire Protection - Detroit Automatic Sprinkler, Warren • Flagpoles - Rocket Enterprise, Inc., Warren • Flooring - Ideal Floor Covering, Inc., Rochester • Floor Tile - East Side Tile & Marble, Inc., Harrison Twp. • Gas Mitigation - S&H Waterproofing & Construction, Piedmont, AL • Glass and Glazing - Rochester Hills Contract Glazing, Rochester Hills

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Glass Fabricator – Thompson IG HVAC - L. J. Rolls Refrigeration Co., Fenton Lumber - Home Depot, U.S.A., Inc., Utica Masonry - Sherman Masonry, Inc., Romeo Metal and Membrane Roofing - Esko Roofing & Sheet Metal, Inc., Shelby Twp. Millwork - Troy Millwork, Inc., Rochester Hills Overhead Doors - Overhead Door West, Waterford Painting - Duross Painting, Warren Pipe Piles - E.C. Korneffel Co., Trenton Plumbing - Contrast Mechanical, Macomb Twp. Precast Concrete - International Precast Solution, River Rouge Retaining Walls - Superior Scape, Inc., Shelby Twp. Site Utilities - Shelby Underground, Inc., Shelby Twp. Stadium Lighting - Musco Sports Lighting, LLC, Oskaloosa, IA Structural Steel - Casadei Steel, Inc., Sterling Heights Toilet Partitions - R.E. Leggette Co., Dearborn Waterproofing and Joint Sealants - DC Byers Co., Detroit

Genesee Career Institute Genesee Intermediate School District, Flint Architect: Stantec Architecture, Berkley Contractor: Barton Malow Company, Southfield Landscape Architect and Civil Engineer: VIRIDIS Design Group, Kalamazoo Owner:

• Casework – Farnell Contracting, Fenton • Commercial Glass and Glazing (Entrances and Glazing) – Calvin & Company, Flint • Electrical – Great Lakes Power & Lighting, Casco • Flooring & Tile – Shock Brothers Floor Covering, Inc., Warren • General Trades – E&L Construction, Inc., Lake Orion • Masonry – Tollis Development, Inc., Richmond • Mechanical Phase 1 – Contrast Mechanical, Inc., Macomb • Mechanical Phase 2 – Goyette Mechanical, Inc., Flint • Painting – Niles Construction, Flint • Roofing – Esko Roofing, Shelby Township • Site Work – Fessler & Bowman, Flushing • Structural Steel – Nelson Iron Works, Detroit

734.654.9800 122 CAM MAGAZINE OCTOBER 2017

“The Voice of The Construction Industry®”

S U B C O N T R A C T O R S

• Surveying – Summit Surveying, Inc., Allendale • Surveying – Wolverine Engineers & Surveyors, Mason • Temporary Fencing – Justice Fence Company, Battle Creek • Waterproofing – Industrial Services, Ann Arbor • Water Wells – Sebastian & Sons Well Drilling, Inc., Springport

Brembo North America Foundry, Homer Brembo North America, Inc., Plymouth Architects/Engineers: NSA Architects, Engineers, Planners, Farmington Hills Process Integration: Foundry Solutions & Design, LLC, Alpharetta, Georgia Contractor: The Christman Company, Detroit Civil Engineer: Professional Engineering Associates, Troy Owner:

• Access Flooring – Richmond Interior Systems, Grand Rapids • Aggregate Piers – Hayward Baker, Inc., Roselle, IL • Asphalt – Michigan Paving & Materials, Jackson • Concrete – Christman Constructors, Inc., Lansing • Doors, Frames and Hardware – Rayhaven Group, Inc., Livonia • Drywall and Interiors – Ritsema & Associates, Kalamazoo • Earthwork – Lounsbury Excavating, Inc., Paw Paw • Electrical Systems – Brint Electric, Sylvania, OH • Elevators – Schindler Elevator Corporation, Livonia • Epoxy Floors – Tri-State Industrial Floors, Toledo, OH • Fire Protection – Brigade Fire Protection, Belmont • General Trades – Christman Constructors, Inc., Lansing • Glass Fabricator – Thompson IG • Glass Glazing and Aluminum Entrances – Traverse City Glass Company, Traverse City • Hard Tile – Battle Creek Tile, Battle Creek • Landscaping – Royal Lawn & Landscape, Holt • Louvers, Fixed Skylights, Fire Extinguisher Cabinets, Floor Mats (Supply) – Architectural Building Components, Ferndale • Masonry – TL Masonry, Ionia • Materials Testing – Soils and Materials Engineers, Inc., Kalamazoo • Metal Siding – Eagle Enterprises, Eagle • Operable Skylights – Duo-Guard Industries, Inc., Canton • Overhead and Sectional Doors – Overhead Door of Battle Creek, Battle Creek • Painting – H & H Painting, Kalamazoo • Plumbing, Sheet Metal, HVAC, Controls – Allied Mechanical Services, Kalamazoo • Pre-Engineered Metal Buildings – Wolverine Steel Erectors, Inc., Dexter • Roofing – Advanced Roofing, Inc., Westland • Site Concrete – Albanelli Cement Contractors, Inc., Livonia • Specialty Function doors and Dock Equipment – Applied Handling, Inc., Byron Center • Structural Steel – Steel Supply Engineering, Grand Rapids Visit us online at www.cammagazineonline.com

Country Club of Detroit Country Club of Detroit, Grosse Pointe Farms Architect: McIntosh Poris Associates, Birmingham Construction Manager: McCarthy & Smith, Inc., Farmington Hills Mechanical, Electrical & Plumbing Engineers: Peter Basso Associates, Inc., Troy Structural Engineers: Desai/Nasr, West Bloomfield Township Geotechnical Engineers: G2 Consulting Group, Troy Owner:

• Acoustic Design - Soundscape Engineering, Plymouth • Aluminum & Glazing – Aalcor Inc., Detroit • Concrete – CI Contracting, Inc., Brighton • Cut/Cap Electrical – Summit Electric, Troy • Cut/Cap Plumbing & HVAC – Mills Mechanical, Ortonville • Drywall & Spray Insulation – Grunwell Cashero, Detroit • Drywall, Ceiling & Windows – Integrity Interiors, Lansing • Electrical – Douglas Electric, Wyandotte • Electrical – O’Donnell Electric, Whitmore Lake • Elevators – A4 Access, Rochester Hills • Excavation & Structural Demo – Eagle Excavation, Inc., Flint • Fire Protection – Cardinal Fire Protection, Royal Oak • Fitness Equipment & Consulting – Fitness Things, Plymouth • Flooring – Conventional Carpet, Sterling Heights • Foundations & Flatwork – Amalio Corporation, Sterling Heights • HVAC – Quality Aire Systems, Plymouth • Lighting Design - Peter Basso Associates, Inc., Troy • Masonry – Silverado Construction, Warren • Millwork & Glazing – Ferrante Manufacturing Company, Detroit • Millwork – MOD Interiors, Ira Township • Paint & Wall Covering – G&T Commercial Coating, Redford CAM MAGAZINE OCTOBER 2017

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S U B C O N T R A C T O R S

• Pile Foundations – Hardman Construction, Ludington • Plumbing & HVAC – Mills Mechanical, Ortonville • Roofing – Royal Roofing Company, Lake Orion • Selective Demotion – Blue Star, Inc., Warren • Steel – Morkin & Sowards Inc., Wayne • Steel & Roof Rail – Utica Steel, Chesterfield • Stone & Tile – Wolverine Stone, Warren • Waterproofing & Caulking – RAM Construction, Livonia

M1 Concourse

• Asphalt Pavement - Ajax Paving Industries, Troy • Carpentry and Drywall Partitions - Ann Arbor Ceiling & Partition, Ypsilanti • Concrete Flatwork - Albanelli Cement Contractors, Livonia • Concrete Foundations - Gemelli Concrete, LLC, Romeo • Electrical - Metro Electric, Romeo • Fire Suppression - Professional Sprinkler, Inc., Wixom • Guard Rails and Fencing - Riteway Fence Company, Sterling Heights • Landscaping - WH Canon Company, Romulus • Masonry - Navetta Mason Contractors, Novi • Mechanical - Great Lakes Mechanical Corp., Dearborn • Overhead Sectional Doors - Overhead Door of Whitmore Lake, Whitmore Lake • Painting - Accurate Painting Company, Warren • Plumbing - USA Plumbing, Co., Ray Township • Pre-Engineered Metal Buildings - Engineered Buildings Inc., Livonia • Rammed Aggregate Piers - Geopier Foundation Company, Saline • Site Demolition, Earthwork and Utilities Angelo lafrate Construction Co., Warren

Owner: M1 Concourse/ Brad Oleshansky Architect: InForm Studio, Northville, MI Contractor: George W. Auch Construction Company, Pontiac

Your Legal Team in Michigan Sullivan, Ward, Asher & Patton has stood for strength, experience, dedication and teamwork for more than six decades. We provide comprehensive construction, business, transactional, and litigation services to the business community. As a client of our law firm, you will work with a team of lawyers whose experience and knowledge are especially suited to your specific legal and industry needs. You will be an integral part of that team because you know your business better than anyone else.

KEVIN J. GLEESON Construction Law Practice Group Leader > \Ê } iià JÃÜ>««V°V ÊUÊÜÜÜ°ÃÜ>««V°V SOUTHFIELD MICHIGAN

GRAND RAPIDS MICHIGAN

248.746.0700

616.459.9040

124 CAM MAGAZINE OCTOBER 2017

The Scott at Brush Park Broder & Sachse Real Estate, Birmingham, and Woodborn Partners LLC, Southfield Architect: Neumann/Smith Architecture, Southfield Construction Manager: Sachse Construction, Detroit Engineers: MEP: Bezdek Associates, Mason Independent MEP Consultant: Strategic Energy Solutions (SES) Engineering, Berkley Developers:

• Apartment Cabinets – Ryan Cabinetry, Clawson • Apartment Windows – Pullum Window Corporation, Detroit • Appliances – Witbeck Home Appliance Mart, West Bloomfield • Balconies – Midwest Stairs and Iron, Milwaukee, WI • Carpentry, Finish – Morrey’s Contracting LLC, Detroit • Caulking – RAM Construction Services, Detroit • Ceramic – Wolverine Stone Company, Warren • Concrete – B&B Concrete Placement, Inc., Rochester Hills • Concrete Underlayment – Kent Companies, Redford • Earth Retention System – E.C. Korneffel Co., Trenton • Electrical – GSI Electrical Service, Inc., Sterling Heights • Elevator – Otis Elevator Company, Farmington Hills • Excavation – Blaze Contracting, Inc., Detroit • Fire Protection – TSFP Holdings, Inc., Plymouth • Floor Covering – Wilkins Floorcovering, Inc., Livonia • Foundations – Tooles Contracting Group LLC, Detroit • Glass & Glazing – Modern Mirror & Glass, Roseville • Glass Fabricator – Thompson IG • HVAC – The Air King Heating & Cooling, LLC, Redford • HVAC – Ecker Mechanical, Burton • Insulated Metal Siding – Blair Companies, Altoona, PA • Labor – Labor Ready, Detroit • Lightcrete – Kent Companies, Redford • Lumber – N.A. Mans Lumber & Millwork, Canton • Masonry – Leidal & Hart Mason Contractors, Inc., Livonia • Materials Testing – SME, Plymouth • Millwork – CAJ Creative Contractors LLC, Detroit • Painting – Rickman Enterprise Group, LLC, Detroit “The Voice of The Construction Industry®”

S U B C O N T R A C T O R S

• Precast Panels – Kerkstra Precast, Inc., Grandville • Roofing – Butcher & Butcher Construction Company, Inc., Rochester Hills • SS Pool – B&B Pools, Livonia • Stone – PMP Marble & Granite, Troy • Storefront and Specialty Glazing – Modern Mirror & Glass Co., Roseville • Structural Steel – Ross Structural Steel, Inc., Detroit • Tile – Artisan Tile, Brighton • Trash Chute – Kasl Enterprises Inc., Belleville

Lawrence Technological University Taubman Complex Lawrence Technological University, Southfield Architect of Record: Albert Kahn Associates, Inc., Detroit Designer: Morphosis, Culver City, CA General Contractor: DeMaria Building Company, Inc., Detroit Engineers: Albert Kahn Associates, Inc., Detroit Owner:

• Mechanical System – Conti Corporation, Sterling Heights • Membrane Roofing – J.D. Candler Roofing Company, Livonia • Metal Fabrications – Future Fabrication, Warren • Ornamental Metal – Couturier Iron Craft, Inc., Comstock Park • Painting – L&R Painting Contractors LLC, Rochester • Partitions – Gardiner C. Voss, Inc., Bloomfield Hills • Pavers – Albanelli Cement Contractors, Livonia • Paving & Surfacing – Nale Paving Company, Novi • Resilient Flooring – Turner-Brooks, Inc., Madison Heights • Selective Demolition – DSP Contractors, Novi • Special Flooring (Polished Concrete) – N.C. Cement Contractors, Shelby Township • Structural Steel – Casadei Structural Steel, Sterling Heights • Surveying & Layout – Landwise, Inc., Dearborn • Temporary Fencing – Shamrock Fence Company, Inc., Southgate • Toilet Compartments – Progressive Plumbing Supply, Warren • Unit Masonry – Rosati Mason Contractors, Rochester Hills • Water Main – Eagle Excavators, Inc., Flint • Waterproofing – D.C. Byers Company, Detroit • Waterproofing – Quality Maintenance Contractor, Muskegon

• Wheelchair Lifts – Acton Rental & Sales, Ferndale • Window Treatment – Drapery Service by Earnest, Inkster

• Building Insulation – Stony Creek Services, Inc., Westland • Ceramic Tile – Musante Tile, Inc., Macomb • Coiling Doors & Grilles – KVM Door Systems, Clinton Township • Concrete Foundations – DSP Constructors, Novi • Concrete Floor Slabs – Amalio Construction, Sterling Heights • Concrete Paving – Albanelli Cement Contractors, Livonia • Controls – Siemens Industry, Inc., Plymouth • Electrical – Conti Corporation, Sterling Heights • Elevators – Kone, Inc., Livonia • Excavation – Adamo Demolition, Detroit • Exterior Wall Assemblies – Architectural Composites, LLC, Summerville, SC • Final Clean-up – PROImage Facility Services,Inc., Redford • Finish Carpentry – Brunt Associates, Wixom • Folding Doors & Grilles – Won-Door Corporation, Salt Lake City, UT • Framed Fabric Façade – Structurflex LLC, Kansas City, MO • Glass Fabricator – Thompson IG • Glass, Glazing and Skylights – Curtis Glass Company, Troy • Gypsum Board Assemblies – Pontiac Celling & Partition, Pontiac • Irrigation System – Marc Dutton Irrigation, Inc., Waterford • Laboratory Equipment – Detroit Technical Equipment Co., Auburn Hills • Landscaping – Donato Landscape, Shelby Township • Lath & Plaster – Saylor’s Inc., Ottawa Lake • Lockers – International Building Product, Livonia • Manufactured Wall Panels – Custom Architectural Sheetmetal Specialists, Inc., Detroit

Visit us online at www.cammagazineonline.com

CAM MAGAZINE OCTOBER 2017

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Ace Cutting Equipment ...............................43

Homrich.....................................................122

Albanelli Cement Contractors......................58

IBEW Local 252 .........................................120

Albaugh Masonry ........................................94

J.J. Barney Construction .............................25

Allingham Corporation.................................76

J.J. Curran Crane Co.................................104

Aluminum Supply Co ...................................65

Jackson Associates.....................................69

Ann Arbor Ceiling & Partition Co. ................89

Jeffers Crane ...............................................19

Aoun & Company ........................................23

Kem-Tec ......................................................50

Arc/Dunn Blue .............................................51

Lawrence Technological University............112

Architectural Building Components .............71

Lee Industrial Contracting .............................4

B & B Concrete..........................................105

Lee Xtreme ..................................................47

Barton Malow ..............................................64

MIOSHA ....................................................116

Blevins Sanborn Jezdmir Zack PLLC ..........88

MacAllister Rentals/Michigan CAT.............IBC

Bricklayers & Allied Craftworkers Union Local #2 ............................................81

Madison Heights Glass................................35

Bristol Steel .................................................52

Michielutti Brothers .....................................32

Butcher & Butcher .....................................106

Michigan Construction Protection Agency .....................................113

CAM Administrative Services ........................3 CAM Affinity...............................................119 CAM Comp..................................................99

Michael J Dul & Associates, Inc...................87

Michigan Regional Council of Carpenters (MRCC) .................................83

CAM Membership......................................115

Navetta Masonry .........................................86

CAM Newsroom ..........................................66

Neumann Smith Architecture.....................108

CAM Magazine Advertising ......................117

Next Generation Services Group, Inc ..........68

CAM Tradeshow ..........................................90

North American Dismantling Corp .............118

C.A.S.S. Sheet Metal ...................................67

Oakand Insurance .....................................100

CEI Group, LLC ...........................................33

Oakland Metal Sales, Inc .............................74

C.F.C.U ..........................................................7

Operating Engineers Local 324 .....................9

Casadei Steel ..............................................34

Optare Services ...........................................96

Cipriano Coating Technology ......................61

PPG Paints ..................................................29

Cochrane Supply & Engineering ................123

Pace, Inc. (Honda Engines) .........................91

Concrete Moisture Control ..........................12

Peter Basso Associates...............................59

Connelly Crane Rental Corp. .......................97

R.L. Deppmann ...........................................16

Curtis Glass Co. ........................................113

R.S. Dale Co., LLC ....................................101

DJ Conley ....................................................44

Raymond Excavating...................................79

D & R Earthmoving ......................................98

Roncelli, Inc.................................................53

Detroit Ceramic Tile Contractors Assoc. (DCTCA)...........................................78

SANI-VAC Service, Inc ................................13

Detroit Spectrum Painters ...........................41

Scaffolding, Inc............................................54

DiHydro Services .........................................27

Schiffer Mason Contractors.........................22

Division 8 Solutions ...................................109

Spartan Specialties ...................................126

Doeren Mayhew.........................................114

Sullivan, Ward, Asher & Patton, P.C...........124

Safety Services, Inc .....................................55

Eastern Michigan Distrbutors ......................45

Testing Engineers & Consultants ...............125

Edwards Glass Co. ......................................40

Thompson IG...............................................46

Elite Fire Safety...........................................BC

Valenti Trobec Chandler, Inc ..........................5

Environmental Maintenance Engineers, Inc..............................................80

Varnum Law.................................................14

Executive Vehicle Sales ...............................24

Wade's Electrical Contracting .....................15

Ferndale Electric ........................................IFC

Wally Kosorski and Co.................................70

G2 Consulting Group...................................77

Wolverine Stone Co .....................................75

George W. Auch Co. ....................................42

Woods Construction ....................................95

Gillett Excavating.........................................60

Zervos Group...............................................26

Ventcon .......................................................36

Glazing Contractors Association .................37 126 CAM MAGAZINE OCTOBER 2017

“The Voice of The Construction Industry®”