As is often true in Hollywood, the success of a project usually rests on the shoulders of those "behind the scenes." Take a land development project for example. Before the developer can bask in the glorious construction of his new development, several things must take place: site investigation, civil engineering, land planning, zoning administration, storm water management, surveying and transportation engineering, to name a few.

Enter the civil engineers, like those at The John R. McAdams Company. A one-stop shop for land developers, the McAdams team of over 15 professional engineers do everything but design their client' buildings. Apart from that, they provide all the design services a land developer could need, including site design and construction permitting of all the horizontal construction.

McAdams started his firm in April of 1979, while an MBA candidate at Duke University, his alma mater. Initially, he served a mix of clients in both public sector and private sector land development. Over time, the company grew and evolved to solely a design service provider in the private sector because, as McAdams puts it, "Land development is where our strengths are."

Now the 94-person company, based in North Carolina' Research Triangle Park, deals with all kinds of land development projects, including multifamily developments, residential communities, shopping centers, malls, educational campus facilities, office buildings and golf courses. Large-scale mixed-use developments are also becoming a large part of the company' business. "We1ve become proficient in the land planning, permitting and engineering of mixed-use developments," notes McAdams.

Group Services

The John R. McAdams Company provides its services through a structure of specialized departments called "groups," each of which is led by an experienced director and supported by multiple experts, including a professional engineer. The cross-trained groups work together closely to meet each client' needs while providing a single point of contact.

Three specialized groups provide land development services. The first group is the Land Development Services Group, which partners with clients to ensure the success of all projects. The Land Planning Group' certified planners and landscape architects work in conjunction with the Land Development Group, providing unique professional services not typically offered by engineering consulting firms. These include site research, feasibility studies, master land planning, landscape design, and permitting and zoning coordination.

Dawn Heric heads up the company' Land Planning Group. Formerly a zoning administrator in the public sector, Heric understands the importance of adopting the client' goals or vision for a project. "We help our clients think strategically about how to accomplish what they want," says Heric. "That might mean looking out 3 years into the project or it might mean telling them what needs to happen right at that minute."

Heric says land planning can mean both site planning and strategic planning through the regulatory approval process, which can take place at a variety of levels, whether it be site planning for a master-planned community or shopping center, or writing text amendments for a local jurisdiction.

The Land Planning Group has also recently added a traffic engineer so that it can address transportation issues at the planning stage or front end of a project. Transportation issues can mean the life or death of a project, according to Heric. "We added the position mainly because our group was growing and we were finding that more and more of the issues that we were dealing with had to do with traffic," she says. "Whether it be regional transportation issues or trying to provide innovative ways to accommodate bicyclists, it just seems that transportation is playing a larger role in land use planning."

The third Land Development Group is the Surveying and Construction Administration Group. This group consists of multiple survey crews, including a considerable number of registered surveyors as well as in-house design, production and administrative support staff. The group offers expertise in construction administration, ensuring that actual construction adheres to plans and specifications.

The company also has a Stormwater Management Group, which provides solutions to difficult land use challenges whether for a small, urban parcel or a comprehensive drainage basin study consisting of multiple land uses and thousands of acres. The group consults on issues including flood studies, detention analysis and design, flood prevention, water quality issues, high hazard dams, and watershed and coastal issues.

Multi-Site Focus

In the early 1990s, multi-site design services became a big part of The John R. McAdams Company. In the Multi-Site Services Group, the company works with national commercial clients who want to conduct a fast-paced site rollout program throughout the United States. Many of those multi-location clients are restaurant chains, such as McDonald', Wendy', Arby', Kentucky Fried Chicken, International House of Pancakes and Krispy Kreme Doughnuts. Other clients include Kroger, Holiday Inn Express, Marriott-Courtyard, Kerr Drug and Dollar General. The Multi-Site Services Group provides comprehensive site-development services, including expertise on issues involving site investigation, site plan approval, engineering of the site and satisfying local permitting requirements. The firm' engineers are licensed to perform engineering work in 40 states. Aside from multi-site projects, the company' work has been confined to Virginia and the Carolinas.

"Multi-site takes us into more far-flung places than anything else," notes McAdams. "With our multi-site program, we travel almost anywhere in the U.S." For example, the company has Texas Roadhouse projects in Cheyenne, Wyoming, and Albuquerque, New Mexico; Krispy Kreme projects in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and the Ohio River Valley; and Homestead Village projects in Birmingham, Alabama; Nashville, Tennessee; Indianapolis and Detroit.

One of the company' most recent retail projects is The Streets at Southpoint, a 1.3 million-square-foot mall in Durham, North Carolina, that opened in March. The 140-acre project was developed by Urban Retail Properties of Chicago. The John R. McAdams Company was involved in the permitting, zoning, site engineering and construction permitting for the project.

Another project underway is Meadowmont, a 420-acre mixed-use development in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. The approval process for this project, which is being developed by East West Partners, required about 4 years for re-zoning and special use permit approval, according to McAdams. Following that came site engineering and construction permitting. "It' a gem of a project," says McAdams. "We' sure it will be an award-winner because of the intense mixture of uses and the pedestrian corridors. Its center is a replication of Chapel Hill' downtown areas and you can easily walk to recreation uses, offices, small shops and the village center."

A residential development that the company is currently involved with is called Bedford at Falls River in North Raleigh, North Carolina. Developed by the Sandler Company of Virginia Beach, Virginia, the 1,800-unit development has both single-family and multifamily residential components as well as a small retail village core. "It' a very fast-paced project," says McAdams. "We began the design in June 2001, and we' still working on it, but the early phases are under construction."

Office developments are few and far between, since those developments are so dominated by architects, according to McAdams. But the company has been working on a sizeable one-story office development, called Keystone, adjacent to Research Triangle Park in Durham County. It is a 300-acre office park with single-story as well as five-story office buildings and a small amount of warehouse flex space.

Looking Ahead

The company' current goals include focusing on its strengths, understanding its client' goals on every project and partnering with its clients.

"We exist to help land developers have successful projects," says McAdams. "That is our orientation."

McAdams adds that it is important for the company to understand not only the client' development, but also its business. "We need to understand their market and their time needs," he says. "And we have structured ourselves to serve those needs."

McAdams also notes that the company wants to be more adept at mixed-use projects, mass-friendly projects and very dense inner-city redevelopment projects. "We think that we, as a society, need to turn our heads from the continuation of sprawling development back to the increasing density of the inner core of our cities and make them habitable, people-friendly places," he says. "We think we' going to see this as a trend in the development industry, and we' be right there on top of the design issues involved."

©2002 France Publications, Inc. Duplication or reproduction of this article not permitted without authorization from France Publications, Inc. For information on reprints of this article contact Barbara Sherer at (630) 554-6054.