FEATURE ARTICLE, OCTOBER 2004

SUPPORTING CAST
Wakefield Beasley & Associates prides itself on building and maintaining healthy relationships.
Julie Fritz Hunt

When companies join forces to create a commercial real estate development, cooperation is key. There are so many pieces that must fall into place that each entity has to do its very best in order to take a project from groundbreaking to successful completion.

Wakefield Beasley & Associates designed The Forum at Peachtree Parkway in Norcross, Georgia.

For architecture firms, the process begins long before ground is even broken. The vision these companies possess must be boundless. Additionally, architects must perform their work in such a way that potential clients take notice — and strive to ensure first-time clients turn into long-term relationships.

For the majority of its existence, Wakefield Beasley & Associates took this relationship-focused approach very seriously: the firm did not market itself in the traditional sense until a few years ago.

“It was all word-of-mouth marketing, purely relationship-oriented,” explains Eric Robinson, vice president of business development.

With the help of Robinson and Michel Lentz, principal and director of the firm’s retail studio, the company is starting to share its story. However, that doesn’t mean its relationships are any less important.

“Our client relationships are still a big focus of our company,” notes Robinson. “They don’t get any more important to us. We have a history of long-term relationships with our clients, and we want to keep it that way.”

Repeat clients include Thomas Enterprises, Ben Carter Properties, Simon Property Group and Jacoby Development.

“Wakefield Beasley has been a consistent and important part of the Atlantic Station team,” says Brian Leary of Atlantic Station. “I would challenge anyone to find a more complicated and challenging project than Atlantic Station. Wakefield Beasley and, most importantly, Matt Mastin, partner-in-charge, have been up to the task and have provided us with the talent and leadership necessary to see us through a successful opening, scheduled for next October."

Wakefield Beasley & Associates has been a part of the Atlantic Station project in Midtown Atlanta since fall 2000.

Established in Norcross, Georgia, in 1980, Wakefield Beasley & Associates opened an office in Jacksonville, Florida, in September 2003. “It has done phenomenally well,” Robinson comments. “We now have 12 people there and would like to have a few more. We are probably going to do about $2 million out of the Jacksonville office this year.”

Currently, the full-service architectural design firm is working on the retail component of St. John’s Town Center in Jacksonville for Simon Property Group and Ben Carter Properties. Located southeast of Jacksonville between downtown and Ponte Vedra, St. John’s Town Center will include townhomes, apartments and hotels in addition to 1.5 million square feet of retail, restaurant and entertainment space. Hardin Construction Company is building the development. Completion of the entire project is scheduled for March 2005.

Wakefield Beasley & Associates is designing the retail component for The Shops at Coconut Point in Estero/Bonita Springs, Florida.

Wakefield Beasley & Associates also is designing the retail component for another Simon project, The Shops at Coconut Point. The 166-acre mixed-use project is located within a 500-acre master-planned community in Estero/ Bonita Springs, Florida. Coconut Point will include 1.2 million square feet of open-air retail space, 90,000 square feet of office condominiums, residential units and hotels.

During its first 20 years of business, Wakefield Beasley & Associates’ focus was not on retail. “Up until the late ‘90s, the meat and potatoes of the company was office campuses and parks, and industrial/warehouses and light industrial,” explains Lentz. “In the last 5 years, we’ve done a good job of counter-balancing all the different product types that we provide. For the last 2 years, the volume of retail design will actually lead the company in revenue.”

The focus on retail has led to mixed-use developments. “The mixed-use type of product is 50 percent of what’s on our boards right now,” Lentz notes.

The firm began working on Atlantic Station, the 138-acre project being developed by Jacoby Development and Atlantic Station LLC in Atlanta in the fall of 2000.

“That was kind of the turning point for us into the mixed-use arena,” says Robinson. “We designed that project, and then The Forum on Peachtree Parkway, and a number of other similar developments throughout the United States.”

The Forum on Peachtree Parkway in Norcross is a 350,000-square-foot lifestyle center in a pedestrian-friendly, village-like atmosphere. Tenants include Barnes & Noble, Belk, Talbots, Victoria’s Secret, Chico’s, Pottery Barn, Gap, Old Navy and restaurants. The Forum also includes 30,000 square feet of second floor office space. A second phase is in the works. There is a vacant parcel of land at one end of The Forum, which most likely will become a 90,000-square-foot building with retail and office space, according to Lentz.

Wakefield Beasley & Associates is licensed in 40 states and currently is active in 22. “We’re working on preliminary plans for mixed-use developments in Loredo, Texas, and Morristown, Tennessee,” says Lentz.

While the retail and mixed-use divisions of the company have grown over the last several years, Wakefield Beasley & Associates continues to be active in other product types.

“Our office and institutional work hasn’t diminished at all, it’s just that retail has grown so fast and so dominant that it has surpassed the other studios,” says Robinson. “They continue to have growth in their market sectors as well.”

“Also, the company as a whole has grown in numbers,” Lentz adds. “When I got here in 1999, we had 55 people. Today we’re at about 125.” This number represents the Atlanta and Jacksonville offices as well as the additional services the company provides.

For the future, Lentz says he would like to expand the retail studio with national quality tenants like Blick Art Supplies.

“We just got involved with Blick Art Supplies,” says Lentz. “Based in Chicago, they’re on a national expansion program. We’re doing all of their design work, all over the country. We’re doing three stores for them in Omaha, downtown Chicago and Pittsburgh.” While two of the stores are new developments, the downtown Chicago project is a renovation of two floors of an 81-year-old high-rise at the corner of State and Monroe.

Even with all of the expansion and growth plans, Wakefield Beasley & Associates will continue to maintain and build the relationships it has with existing clients.

“I would say that’s our Number 1 goal, for short-term and long-term: to continue to take care of those clients that we have established long-term relationships with,” Robinson says.

Lentz adds: “[Our ultimate goal is] really just to grow our company in a quality manner. We could get to be 200 people tomorrow, but if it’s not the right people and the right work structure and the right environment, then it’s not healthy.”

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