This newsletter is full of information to help you get the most from your buildings and office spaces. We start with the outdoors, by looking at the role of landscaping in the image a building projects. Then we move to the importance of long-range planning, specifically in the area of making your building more competitive through improvements while keeping maintenance and repairs in mind. Last but not least, the question of cubicles in office spaces is considered. Enjoy!
No Building Stands Alone: “Plants and Berms, and Rocks, and Teams,” or “How Landscape Architects Help Manifest Your Vision”
Since the landscaping is often the first impression a prospective tenant has of a building, and first impressions are usually lasting impressions, the quality of the landscaping around a building makes a huge impact on how people react to the overall package. If you have a chance to integrate the landscape design with the overall building design in the pre-construction early planning phases, by all means, do it.
Although landscaping is often one of the last steps in new building construction, getting professionals involved from the start will help ensure its success and often keep costs lower by avoiding unforeseen constraints.
Don’t look at the landscaping as simply dressing up a building, but as helping create the overall image. A well-kept property can not only raise the property value, it can also create good will between property owners. It can even increase lease rates.
Many owners do not understand that landscape architects can deal with anything outside of the building footprint itself, including pathways, etc. They deal with moer than just plants.
If the landscape architect is included in the initial design phases, difficulties can be avoided before construction occurs, many times at a substantial savings. Budget allowances for landscaping can be worked into the overall planning costs, instead of tacked on after the completion of the project.
Utilize a team to instigate the landscape plan. Team members include the building owner, its marketing firm, architectural firm, engineers, land planners, interior designers, and the landscape architects. All the team members need to get together in the early stages of planning, while they are first formulating their concepts, so they can create an integrated design.
The role of the building owners as the leaders of the team is critical because they must be clear about and make certain every team member is aware of the goals set forth for the project. To be successful, the owners need to keep the team focused. The owners are the ones who give every project its uniqueness. It's their vision that guides the rest of the team.
Once the team is assembled, many factors must be considered before the actual landscape plan is decided. First, there is the type of project being developed. What’s going to be there and who you're trying to appeal to make a big difference.
For instance, hotels must provide instant effect to set a mood or ambiance for the guests, while a pre-leased or owner-occupied building can utilize smaller plants spaced further apart. This would allow for growth and minimize maintenance, since the look has time to develop over a period of years.
Even if an owner has a very restricted budget, landscaping can still be beautiful and useful. The best way to effectively use landscaping dollars is to design with maintenance very much in mind. If the landscape is not maintained, the replacement cost is very likely to be much higher than if maintenance is always a part of the budget. Too often, landscaping is looked upon as a one-shot event. Actually, the landscape management after the completion of the construction is more important than the initial installation.
A professional can help you decide on how best to spend the available dollars most effectively. For example, one strategy for a tight budget would be to focus on entry ways, or the focal points of the site. Make a certain area very attractive so it adds real value to the project. Other areas are given to more subtle plantings so as not to detract from the highlighted area.
Smaller plant sizes spaced further apart can work well. Minimizing annual plants that are high in maintenance costs also helps curb a budget. Utilizing interesting variety in background areas to create a pleasing visual picture can be used as well. You can create visual impact with color, texture, foliage, and flower. Using trees or shrubs that change colors with the seasons can create quite a striking image.
The lawn itself can also be looked upon to save money. A beautiful lawn program goes a long way towards setting off a building, especially on the East Coast with the large amount of office campuses there. Using a seeded instead of sodded lawn can create a thicker, more lush turf that will last. This is especially appealing to an owner who has a long-term interest in a property. A developer intending to sell a building, however, may elect to use a sodded lawn to save money. It's part of the landscaper’s challenge to understand the client's needs, so they can make a satisfactory recommendation.
The most obvious impact of the recent drought was how it affected lawns. Most lawns, where watering was restricted due to low water levels, turned a discouraging brown. In most cases, however, those lawns will recover.
Of greater concern is the effect of drought on trees and shrubs. Keeping those alive requires different methods. Deep water irrigation systems instead of pop-up sprinklers are one way to help concentrate the water where it is needed and reduce evaporation. Watering at night or at off hours, rather than in the heat of the day, will also help conserve water.
To reduce costs and cope with drought, use xeriscaping--landscaping that requires little or no water. Xeriscaping has become a popular way to beat the cost of replacing dead plants, since the plants used are hardier.
Many plants that fall in the xeriscape realm have not been used to their fullest extent. Landscapers can draw from a large list of trees, shrubs, vines, and groundcovers considered drought tolerant that are unfamiliar to many people. These plants were born to grow under low water, low maintenance conditions.
Xeriscaping has become very popular in southern California because of the demands the environment puts on the landscaping. As the costs of drought become more apparent, xeriscaping will become increasingly more popular throughout the country.
Landscape architecture is not just for new construction: it is also valuable in building renovation. The difference between what it looked and felt like before and the consequent results after renovation can be incredibly dramatic.
Renovation is not just a matter of sticking in a few new trees or shrubs to make a site look different. Instead, it often involves working with the relocation of entries, pedestrian and vehicular circulation, site reshaping, and earth contouring. Planting is usually the last thing decided upon. If done correctly, landscaping can complement the total presentation of the overall renovation.
Property owners presenting their building to prospective tenants or buyers need to understand how important landscaping is to the initial impression. If it looks bad, chances for leasing or selling decrease dramatically. Only an owner willing to sell at a bottom end price can make do without proper landscaping. Owners who take an interest in presenting the exterior environment and the lifestyle that goes with it are the ones who are really going to be successful tomorrow. Those who don't may very well be left in the dust.
In today's hot real estate market, the pace of renovation and restoration projects is increasing as building owners, managers and boards of directors look towards repairs and improvements as a means of securing high market value for their properties. People are thinking things like “Lobby re-design? New roofing or windows? Restoration of decorative exterior elements? Elevator upgrade?”
Any of these would improve a building's appeal and, quite often, operating efficiency. In this unprecedented residential real estate market, where prices and rents seem to be soaring ever upward, there is an understandably strong temptation to expedite capital improvements to keep pace. However, long-range planning and budgeting that includes a preventive maintenance program and anticipates repairs should be done before any purely elective capital improvements are undertaken.
The need for long-term planning is well illustrated by the recent eleventh hour rush to meet the deadline for facade inspection imposed by New York’s Local Law 11/98. Despite a one-year, well-publicized window of opportunity to offer a single, comprehensive report on all building walls, many building owners and managers have been scrambling to schedule inspections at the last minute. Many of these same owners and managers will soon face mandatory repairs that must be done by the next inspection cycle, or risk violations and fines.
The result is that landlords and managers who did not properly anticipate the financial ramifications of Local Law 11/98 may now need to forego other appeal-enhancing restoration and renovation projects in order to absorb the cost of mandatory facade and roofing repairs.
When building owners are looking at the big picture of ongoing maintenance and repairs in tandem with an interest in undertaking major capital improvements, they need to hire experts with the technical knowledge to get the job done right.
Finding a full-service engineering or architectural firm with which to develop an ongoing relationship is a strategic necessity. The firm chosen should be in synch with the building owner's long-range vision, have the expertise to develop viable budgets and timelines, and be able to professionally administer every aspect of a capital improvements program.
By creating such a partnership, building owners can make sure maintenance and repairs are ensuring safe, smooth building operations, while venturing into well-planned capital improvements that increase a property's appeal and value in a market clamoring for residential product at any price.
When setting up a new office space, deciding whether or not your office should go the cubicle route can be tricky. Cubicles do provide employees with barriers from noise and visual distractions in the office, allowing them to better concentrate on their work.
Cubicles also offer a certain degree of privacy, along with the impression that each employee has his or her own dedicated workspace. Cubicles also offer more space for shelves and a convenient canvas for posting schedules and memos, as the partition walls of the standard cubicle are usually thumbtack-friendly.
On the downside, cubicles have been known to drastically decrease person-to-person communication in the office, leading to frequent complaints about isolation, depression, and low employee morale. Cubicles can also be rather ugly and uninspiring due to their generally bland color, and have been the subject of ridicule for quite some time now in comic strips such as Dilbert and movies such as Office Space.
When figuring out the best workspace configuration for your employees, consider what your employees actually do. What are their needs?
If your employees spend the majority of their workday on the phone conversing with clients or the general public, going the cubicle route might make sense, as the enclosed space will provide them with the quiet they need to conduct a private conversation. If your employees spend the majority of their days typing away on computers and have little or no need to be on the telephone, or even talk amongst themselves, an open workspace plan might be a better approach.
Employees of an auto insurance company can most likely sit comfortably in a cubicle environment, as their workspace is one that doesn't have to be bustling with a creative spirit (this, of course, doesn't mean the space shouldn't be visually appealing). But if you've got a team of artists or designers who frequently work in collaboration with one another, an airy, open workspace approach may work better. Not only is the aesthetic more inviting to creative types (who don't enjoy being literally boxed in), but it also gives employees the freedom to collaborate on projects and see quite plainly how the process is coming together.
Many employers, themselves often housed in private offices, think the cubicle setup drowns out all sounds of chatter and noise in the office. Unfortunately, this isn't the case. One important issue that rarely is considered when cubicles go up is the quality of the ceilings and floors in the office. Acoustic floor coverings and ceiling panels should be essential parts of a plan to reduce office noise.
If going with cubicles, think color. There are many alternatives today to the standard drab gray cubicle on office furniture showroom floors and in catalogs. Many modern cubicles have multicolored walls, desks, and decorative panels. Including a splash of color in your cubicle setup is bound to brighten not only your office, but the outlook of the employee sitting inside it. To learn more about how the design of your office affects your employees, ask an experienced broker for more details.