The star of this story is a 7-story “spec” office tower developed by Crow Holdings Devlopment of Dallas, TX. The new building is located north of Dallas in the City of Frisco, near the intersection of the North Dallas Tollway and State Highway 121; which for the last several years has been the number one area in the country for companies to relocate to.
But perhaps more importantly, this is a story of collaboration, sustainability and user-wellbeing at a very high level. The collaboration occurred among Crow Holdings, the developer, Duda|Paine, the design architect and Gensler Dallas, the architect of record – not to mention the strong collaboration of the contractors and suppliers.
The sustainability part of the story concerns Mass Timber construction, which to the delight of the collaborators mentioned, also figures strongly in the wellbeing of future users. But more on that later. As for the sustainability story, the use of mass timber in the construction sequestered more than 4,000 metric tons of CO2 and generated a 34% smaller CO2 footprint than comparable construction using reinforced concrete. Plus, the team chose to work with the SmartLam, North America location in Dothan, Ala. for the engineering and manufacturing of the southern yellow pine glulam and sawn pine products; thus, minimizing the carbon emissions due to transportation.
In a meeting arranged by Kelly Hardwick, associate and public relations manager at the Gensler Dallas office, I had an opportunity to meet the leaders of the team responsible for the design and construction of the building: Brendan Beachler, AIA, Associate Principal at Duda|Paine joined those of us in the room via a remote link from his office in Durham, N.C.; In Gensler’s Dallas office I was joined by Cody Armbrister, senior managing director – office, joined in Gensler’s Dallas office; from Crow Holdings, Scott Armstrong, AIA, LEED AP BD+C, Principal at Gensler Dallas, Dana Vickerson AIA, Technical Director|Senior Associate at Gensler Dallas, and the aforementioned Mr. Hardwick.
My first questions were directed to Mr. Armbrister to better understand the strategy behind picking the site. Along with discussing the attractiveness of Frisco, Texas as a whole, Mr. Armbrister said, “The unique aspect of Southstone Yards, the name of the overall master plan there, which constitutes 45 acres, fully entitled and zoned, is that the zoning requires that 22% of the area must be green open space. That could look like several different things, but mainly it’s going to look like parks with trails and activated space that will be available to both the public and the residents and office occupants.
“[So the site] has a really great juxtaposition of hard urban edge and densification of several product types – office, single family, multi-family, hospitality and retail but it will be softened, if you will, or balanced by open-space, which is what humans want – whether you’re a resident, an office occupant or you’re a hotel guest. So the site looked like a great place for us to invest.”
Next, I asked Mr. Armbrister to discuss the decision to build a mass timber high rise.
“We actually drew – all the way through schematic design – two materially different office buildings,” he said. “We drew a 10-story building with a traditional concrete structure, and we drew a 7-story mass timber building. And that allowed us to go to the market, writ large, meaning both the occupier market and the capital market and say we have two options on the menu. We don’t want to purport that we know better than capital or what tenants want. We’re here to deliver what both capital and tenants want. And unequivocally, both capital and occupiers came back and said, ‘We want mass timber.’”
The site plan with its parks and green open spaces inspired the design team to do as much as possible to ‘bring the outdoors in,’ which figured significantly in the orientation of the building to the site. Each floor has a terrace on the side of the floor facing north toward the central park and away from the nearby freeway. The terraces are large enough to support furniture plans and plantings to allow tenants to truly access outdoor healthy activities; whether commercial — as in outdoor team meetings, or just social and relaxing. The ambiance is accentuated by the smell of southern yellow pine and the 11-foot, floor to ceiling windows throughout offer tenants unobstructed views of the parks and the distant horizon.
With Duda|Paine as the design architect and Gensler as the architect of record, the opportunity for internecine strife and disagreements was definitely a possibility. Since the project started in 2021 during pandemic restrictions on travel and gathering in person, many of the meetings during the transition from schematic design to buildable design were held via video conference. But rather than strife, according to every member of the team from Crow Holdings to Duda|Paine to Gensler, this was an unusually effective collaboration that made solving the myriad problems associated with building a mass timber building work smoothly.
Where the mix between remote work and ‘return to the office’ work will end up is of major concern to our industry. And, given that this complex project was carried out sequentially, via video meetings and then in-person meetings, I was very interested in the thoughts of the team about their experience with the two forms of collaborating.
Dana Vickerson summarized her experience, “When the project started, I was just coming off a year on a project where we were all at home but working collaboratively. You adapt and make the best of the situation, and you learn how to jump on things as much as possible, but there’s really no comparison to sitting in a room with the team.”
Mr. Armstrong added, “Yes, I think what COVID taught us, and this is backed up by our research: Can you do it remotely? Can you collaborate across all the teams and all the technologies? Can it be done? Absolutely. But is it the best? No. And I think you find in team collaboration that when you’re in a room with the others you can understand body language and you can better understand what they’re thinking, what the mean and what they want.”
Incidentally, the founder of Crow Holdings, Trammell Crow, also founded the National Tree Trust where he is famously quoted as saying, “There is a responsibility to the future to do things right.”
Given that, I think this development is an excellent example of how the firm continues to be guided by his wisdom.