Kwame Building Group of St. Louis played a key role as program manager in helping St. Louis Community College achieve LEED Gold certification on its new Wildwood campus. The project received the certification this month.

The $18 million 75,000-square-foot St. Louis Community College Wildwood campus is the largest community college facility in the United States to receive U.S. Green Building Council Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Gold certification.

“Having KWAME as our full-time, on-site construction manager on a job of this size and complexity insured that the work progressed as it should and that all prerequisites were met to qualify for LEED,” said Carla Chance, vice chancellor of business and administration services at St. Louis Community College.

“Without question, KWAME was a key player in our LEED Gold accomplishment,” she said.

The new campus construction included high-tech classrooms, a science lab, faculty and administrative offices, an art studio, and a bookstore. The rooftop was planted with 4,000-square-feet of sedum, a drought-tolerant plant that reflects heat in the summer and insulates the building from cold in the winter. The facility will be 30 percent more energy efficient than a typical code-compliant building of the same size.

Nonresidential construction starts were down 13.1% in January as compared to January 2007, according to Reed Construction Data. Monthly starts have been slowing since October 2007 and were down down 8% from December 2007

In 2007, nonresidential starts were up 10.6% as compared to the 2006.

The slowdown in nonresidential construction starts is expected to continue into the summer and then recover enough to end 2008 at about the same level as 2007. Commercial building starts are expected to be impacted most by an abrupt slowdown in Gross Domestic Product in the first half of 2008, according to Reed.

Statistics show that the education and health care sectors are both weakening, while starts in public safety buildings and cultural/religious facilities have not declined. Construction starts for heavy/engineering projects were down 13% from last January.

Source: Reed Construction Data

St. Louis-based Lawrence Group and Austin Tao & Associates have merged, combining two successful, well-respected St. Louis design practices that have been teaming on national and international projects for many years.

The Lawrence Group board of directors approved the acquisition as a move to expand services both nationally and internationally. Austin Tao joined Lawrence Group as a principal and is responsible for the firm’s growing international work.

“We’re picking up Austin’s Beijing, China, office as part of this acquisition,” said Lawrence Group CEO Steve Smith.

“The combination of our practices will allow us to more effectively grow our international business, where we both already have significant design assignments.”

Top hot building markets for AEC firms in 2008 include healthcare, higher education, K-12 schools and commercial office buildings, according to the Building Design+Construction chief economist and ZweigWhite, a leading management consulting firm for the industry. Highway and bridge construction also will be strong in 2008.

The economists also reported that the cost of building materials and construction wages were up in the last months of 2007, factors that could affect project costs. Labor and materials also are in relatively tight supply.

Source: Building Design+Construction 

Dave Dwars of the Lawrence Group was quoted in a Midwest Construction cover story on redevelopment of downtown St. Louis this month.

According to the article, 69 buildings have been restored downtown since 1999, totaling $1.3 billion in development.

An example is the Lawrence Group’s $125 million Park Pacific Building. Renovation of the 22-story, 470-sq-ft former Missouri Pacific/Union Pacific building, originally constructed in 1928, will include 108 condos, 50 apartments, 51,000 sq ft of office space and another 10,000 sq ft of space for street-level retail.

Another $1 billion in projects is in the pipeline with 26 buildings being restored or under development.

Other facts:

• 10,000 people live downtown of which 5,000 are new, according to the Downtown St. Louis Partnership.
• About 1,200 additional residents are expected to move in over the next three years.
• 2,700 new housing units opened downtown in the past two years.
• Downtown currently has more than 7,400 rental and sale units.

Walton Construction St. Louis operations manager Tom Kaiman of Chesterfield, Missouri has been chosen as one of 40 young professionals nationwide to receive the Building Design+Construction’s third annual “40 Under 40” award.

The honor is bestowed to young professionals in the design and construction industry. The editors described the winners as the “next generation of leadership.”

Currently, Kaiman supervises a 40-person team working on 11 projects in three states with a total construction value of more than $100 million. Kaiman is responsible for overseeing design, estimating and budgeting, construction operations and startup.

Kaiman’s early background as an AHL professional hockey player gave him special expertise to work on the $18.5 million St. Peters Rec-Plex Renovation and Expansion project in St. Peters, Missouri, which opened in November 2007. He also worked on the $6 million St. Louis Blues Ice Hockey Practice Facility in Hazelwood, Missouri.

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