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Come Back to the Office Now!

There’s been a lot of talk in the news lately about how to best bring employees back to the office after over a year of working remotely. It’s a conversation that has changed a lot in recent months, with the vaccine becoming more widely available, proven methods of a safe workplace, and cities and towns lifting restrictions on everything from indoor dining and exercise classes to mask mandates and social distancing. While most of our competitors in the industry, especially on the design side, are working from home and have been for over a year, Clayco and our subsidiaries, Lamar Johnson Collaborative and Ventana, are fully back in the office, and we never left the field. In fact, we were busier than ever on job sites across the country, and we have been leaders in proving that you can work together in-person safely, even during the uncertainty of the pandemic.

June 4, 2021

2021
Adventure
Life Lessons
Essays

Wildhorse Village

In Chesterfield, Missouri, not too far from where I grew up, we’re currently hard at work on a massive multi-use development that’s going to be a complete transformation for the area. Serving as a brand-new urban center for the suburb, Wildhorse Village is going to offer 1 million square feet of office space, 150 for-sale residences, 500 apartments, and 100,000 square feet of retail space that spans across 80 acres of land. We’re delivering on this outstanding project through Clayco’s integrated services that leverage both CRG and Lamar Johnson Collaborative. Once completed, Wildhorse Village will include scenic lakefront locations for working, living, and playing and will include some amazing amenities like boardwalks, parks, an amphitheater, and a boathouse.

June 3, 2021

2021
Business
Inspiration
Innovation
Architecture

May's Featured Architect: Frank Gehry

There are very few architects that are as widely celebrated and recognized today as Frank Gehry. Honestly, at this point, Frank stands alone at the top. A constant innovator, a disruptor of traditional practices, and a creative visionary, Frank has designed iconic buildings that are found all over the world, and each of them is more stunning and unique than the next. His works stand alone and are unaligned with any traditional styles, and he’s played a crucial role in shaping a whole new chapter of architecture and design. In addition to being known as a revolutionary, Frank is also famously known for being unapproachable and is often dubbed by people in the industry as being difficult to work with. In my personal experience spending some time with Frank a few years ago, I found the complete opposite to be true.

May 30, 2021

2021
Inspiration
Architecture

Supporting Alderman Burnett at Fulton East

As the first next-generation office building in the nation, Fulton East is built for the future. In addition to 85,000 square feet of floor-to-ceiling glass skyspace, this groundbreaking project includes health protection measures, like a hands-free elevator system, plasma disinfection technology, and touch-free secure access systems. My favorite feature of Fulton East is its amenity deck that includes 2,925 square feet of vegetated space and reflective roofing that earned the building LEED certification for reducing the project’s urban heat island effect. There was no better place to host a fundraising event for Alderman Walter Burnett, Jr. who currently represents Chicago’s 27th ward. For 26 years, Alderman Burnett, Jr. has been a great advocate for the communities he serves, and he’s a leader who has shaped Chicago in many ways.

May 26, 2021

2021
Adventure
Life Lessons
Essays

PayneCrest

David Payne is an electrical engineer and the CEO of PayneCrest, an award-winning electrical contractor company that handles highly complex electrical and communications projects for commercial and industrial customers nationwide. David acquired PayneCrest around the same time that I started Clayco and has successfully grown his company to what it is today, weathering many of the storms in the industry over the past 35 years. He was even named the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year in 2014. Like Clayco, PayneCrest has strong ties to the St. Louis community while continuing to grow its presence nationally. We have worked with PayneCrest on important projects like the Washington University School of Medicine Mid Campus Center, and more recently we worked together on Pfizer’s Research and Development Facility. Their expertise in electrical service distribution has helped us build stronger foundations for our buildings and delivered some outstanding results. They take on projects that span industries and consistently help solve challenges with their engineering capabilities.

May 24, 2021

2021
Business
Clayco

Recent Feature: ENR’s Critical Path Podcast

I recently had the opportunity to sit down and have a conversation with Jeff Yoders and Aileen Cho for ENR’s Critical Path Podcast. It has always been one of my favorites to listen to, and it’s a great platform for industry experts to share their knowledge and views on everything that’s happening in construction. During the Exec Talk, we spoke about a wide range of topics, including the terrific response I’ve received from the Ride the Wave tour, the many ways Clayco has adapted during the pandemic to keep our team members safe, and how important I think it is to get everyone back in the office. I also shared some of my thoughts on OSHA’s vaccine guidelines, current trends in the economy, and how far we still have to go to improve employee diversity in the construction industry.

May 19, 2021

2021
Adventure
Life Lessons
Essays

In Memory of Helmut Jahn

I am so saddened to hear of the passing of my good friend, Helmut Jahn, who passed away in a tragic bicycle accident. He was truly one of the great architects of the world, and also one of my greatest inspirations. By designing iconic buildings like Terminal 1 at O’Hare International Airport and the James R. Thompson Center, Helmut played an important role in shaping Chicago’s architectural landscape, as well as its continued growth and future. Helmut also designed one of my all-time favorite projects, The Joe and Rika Mansueto Library at The University of Chicago. He had a personality as big as the scope of his buildings, and he was definitely a “star-chitect” who brought so much joy and light into the lives of all those who had the pleasure of knowing him.

May 10, 2021

2021
Adventure
Life Lessons
Essays

Ride the Wave: Week 3 Update

We headed way out west on our most recent leg of the Ride the Wave tour, and we sure saw a lot of great things happening on the ground at all of our building sites this past week. We started Monday off with a visit to Washington, and I stopped by Project Fireball in Spokane Valley and Quincy MWH06 in Wenatchee. I also visited Project Winlock in Winlock on Tuesday morning before heading on to the NP Chewy project in Reno, Nevada and Project Shelby in Sacramento, California. On Wednesday, we toured Project Big Bird in Tracy, California and a confidential facility in Bakersfield, California, before heading down to Otay Mesa (San Diego) to see progress on the Arcilla and Herminito building sites. We finished the week with stops at “The Cubes” and 303 Glendale, two of our new projects in Glendale, Arizona.

May 7, 2021

2021
Business
Clayco

Pfizer R&D Facility - Chesterfield, Missouri

At Clayco, we believe that every one of our projects is important and play a crucial role in the neighborhoods and communities they are located in. Over the past year, perhaps none of these buildings has taken on a more important role for the entire world than Pfizer’s new research and development facility located just outside of my hometown of St. Louis in Chesterfield, Missouri. Designed in accordance with LEED sustainability certification standards, Pfizer’s cutting-edge research and development campus includes a combined 295,000 square feet of flexible laboratories and open office space, supporting its development capabilities in biologics and vaccine therapy. This brand-new project has not only become an important hub for Pfizer in the Midwest region, but is also currently the place where every Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine dose originates.

May 3, 2021

2021
Business
Inspiration
Innovation
Architecture

April's Featured Artist: Bisa Butler

Known for her stunning and colorful quilted portraits, Bisa Butler seamlessly blends a passion for storytelling with the dynamic medium of textiles to create vibrant works of art that document the Black experience. Butler was born in New Jersey in 1973, where she first learned sewing techniques passed down to her from her grandmother and mother. Her father was an immigrant from Ghana, and Butler drew inspiration from the colorful fabrics and garments of his homeland, as well as batiks from Nigeria, and prints from South Africa. After majoring in Fine Art and graduating cum laude from Howard University, she wanted to use art as a way to communicate and highlight the stories of people who far too often have been marginalized.

April 29, 2021

2021
Inspiration
Art

April's Featured Architect: Maya Lin

Artist, architect, and memorialist Maya Lin was born in 1959, into a family of artists. Her mother was a poet and literature professor and her father a ceramicist and the dean of Ohio University’s College of Fine Arts. Both of her parents fled China in 1948 in order to escape Communist rule. During her childhood, Lin already demonstrated a propensity for mathematics, ceramics, and a keen interest in nature—all of which have become central in her works. Though she was trained as an architect, she prefers to describe herself as a designer. Lin has designed a range of works from public and private buildings, to memorials and landscapes. She is best known for her memorials that have a historic character—the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington D.C. and the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama. It was the Vietnam Veterans Memorial that earned her success very early in life, winning the competition for her design at the age of 21. Remarkably, she had not even completed her undergraduate studies at Yale University when she won. She has also completed several large sculptural landscapes of note, such as Groundswell at Ohio State University, Wave Field at the University of Michigan, and Eleven Minute Line in Wanås, Sweden. Lin and her work have received many awards, including the National Medal of Arts and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, both awarded to her by President Barack Obama.

April 26, 2021

2021
Inspiration
Architecture

Earth Day Book Review

On Earth Day, when Shawn was about 7 years old, I was working from home for some reason (very rare) and Shawn ran by me and I noticed he had a shirt on with an animated cartoon of the Earth. I beckoned him over so I could get a better view and was horrified to see that he had a t-shirt on that read “SAVE THE TREES” on the front in bold letters. My immediate reaction was to tell him to get rid of that shirt because we (Clayco) are who the trees are being saved from. That was true then and it’s still true now. My company probably cuts down more trees that are “in the way” at our projects than any other building company in America. Although we now work hard to mitigate our footprint, we have a long way to go. Now we try to not just understand our footprint and completely mitigate it, but also take into account the BIG picture and work towards helping our clients achieve their ambitious plans in this same regard. Like SAFETY, these types of initiatives require a top-down/bottom-up strategy within a business. The first step to that is “The Greening of Bob Clark”. It’s a journey, and I can promise my company and I are on the right path.

April 22, 2021

2021
Inspiration
Books
Beyond Book Club
How to Avoid a Climate Disaster by Bill Gates, Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace-Wells, Dirt to Soil by Gabe Brown, For the Love of Soil by Nicole Masters, Where the Water Goes– Life and Death Along the Colorado River by David Owen

Let’s Get Back to Work, Safely and Vaccinated

Shots of the COVID-19 vaccine in arms are picking up quickly across the country, and a few companies are starting to call people back to work, including Clayco. One of the most important things about Clayco is our company culture, and we can’t sustain it if everyone continues to work remotely. We’ve asked our office employees to return on May 10th, not only because I believe our employees do their best work when they’re together in the office, but also because we want to set an example for other companies to show that workplaces can be safe if you implement the right training and precautions. Because safety is always our highest priority at Clayco, we’ve done a lot of work recently to ensure we have an even safer workplace than ever before. In addition to social distancing, desk spacing, masking, rotating employees in and out of remote work, and other creative ideas, Clayco has developed an extensive vaccination policy, encouraging all of our employees to get vaccinated once shots are readily available with exceptions for medical or religious reasons. By doing this, we can better protect the people we work with and the communities we interact with.

April 14, 2021

2021
Adventure
Life Lessons
Essays
Candida Alvarez

March’s Featured Artist: Candida Alvarez

March’s featured artist of the month is Brooklyn-born, Candida Alvarez. She is well-known for her bold and colorful creations such as the piece featured above. I became acquainted with her work through her involvement within Chicago and the Art Institute of Chicago. The painting featured in the Clark Collection, titled “No Chickens,” is particularly special because we added it while it was still being made. Since 1998, Alvarez has been a tenured professor of Painting and Drawing at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Alvarez works in a range of diverse mediums, including but not limited to sculpture, collage, and painting. Her work is often highly complex. It is full of pop, historical, and modern art references, while also incorporating world news and personal memories.

March 21, 2021

2021
Impact
Inspiration
Clark Art Collection
Art

Some Of My Favorite Books

I was recently asked to create a list of my top 5 books of all time. It’s difficult to narrow down my top 5, or even my top 50 books of all time. If you ask me in 6 months, my answer may even be different. However, here are some that come to mind.

March 4, 2021

2021
Inspiration
Books
Beyond Book Club
Gods and Generals by Jeff Shaara, The Stand by Stephen King, Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors by Piers Paul Read, The Guns of August by Barbara W. Tuchman, The World Without Us by Alan Wiseman, The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming by David Wallace-Wells, Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America's Vietnam by Fredrik Logevall, We Were Soldiers Once…and Young: la Drang – The Battle That Changed The War In Vietnam by Harold G. Moore, Joseph L. Galloway, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William L. Shirer
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