McCullough wishes you a joyous holiday season
All of us at McCullough wish you a joyous holiday season.
May your peace + cheer continue throughout the New Year!
In honor of the holidays, our offices will be closed December 23rd through January 2nd.
Photo courtesy of Nikki Holloway
Topaz, Housing for SDSU Students
Client of the Month:
PIERCE EDUCATION PROPERTIES
As a national leader in student housing that shares ties with San Diego State University, we are excited to feature Pierce Education Properties as our December Client of the Month.
Pierce Education Properties (PEP) was founded in 1995, however, their story begins in 1984 when President and CEO Frederick Pierce was an undergraduate student at San Diego State University (SDSU). At the age of 21, Pierce had the opportunity to participate in two real estate internships and was immediately intrigued by the tangible nature of real estate. It was then when he became confident that one day he would start his own company. Keeping his sights open, in 1989 he landed his first development project; he bought a parcel of land and built nine houses on it.
Several years later, the SDSU Foundation hired Pierce to evaluate the land surrounding the campus and they were ready to put the project out to Request for Proposal (RFP). After doing so twice and receiving negative feedback about the project’s feasibility, the SDSU Foundation began to question Pierce’s recommendations. Confident in his work, Pierce quit his job to become the developer himself! It was all worth it when, at the end of his 90-day contract, the Foundation approved and adopted his business plan and hired Pierce to be the developer.
A vision at age 21 became a reality at 32. He was now the developer of a five-million-square-foot project, and PEP was born.
From there, Pierce scaled up the business in the higher education realm by building relationships, gaining valuable experience through his early projects, and serving in ways that opened the doors to investment opportunities. Volunteering and public service work provided him with some of the most valuable experience he’s gained. He won an appointment to the California State University Board of Trustees where he served for six years. Additionally, he was nominated to the San Diego City Pension Fund Board by former Mayor Susan Golding and appointed by City Council where he served as its Real Estate Investment Committee Chairman for his entire eight years on the Board.
In 2006, Pierce took the platform national. Since then, they have grown to acquire $1.1 billion in assets, hold 30,000 student housing beds around the country, and they have two projects currently active in development at SDSU. PEP has been selected as a Top 25 Owner and Top 25 Manager of Student Housing by Student Housing Business magazine every year for the past 10+ years. They have a vision to continue to be a leader in student housing for many years to come.
Starting out with just a handful of employees, PEP currently oversees ~150 employees at 11 locations throughout the country.
COMPANY LEADERSHIP
PEP is led by a seasoned, expert group of individuals alongside Frederick Pierce, President and CEO, who was selected as one of the “San Diego 500 Influential Business Leaders” from 2018-2021 by San Diego Business Journal, among a myriad of awards and recognitions. The leadership team also includes Neal Singer, Senior Vice President of Asset Management and Development; Clark Wardle, Chief Financial Officer; Matthew Maruccia, Chief Investment Officer; KrisAnn Kizer, who went from Community Assistant at PEP in 2007 to Vice President for Property Leasing and Marketing today; and Jasmin Zelinko, Vice President for Property Operations.
Giving back and maintaining a family-oriented environment are some of the most important values within PEP Leadership. It is important for their employees to like where they work, like the people they work with, and foster a family-oriented work environment for all. Pierce shared…
“We want to instill in our workforce thankfulness for what opportunities we’ve been provided and, in turn, make sure that we can individually, and as a company, do what we can to give others similar opportunities.”
PEP contributes to universities and scholarship funds around the country. The company is a large investor in SDSU, where they provide multiple scholarships every year, enabling students the resources they need to enjoy the full college experience.
Although the COVID-19 pandemic caused many to question the stability of student housing, the reality has been significantly different from expectations. Despite the conversion to 100% online instruction at universities, “students demonstrated a high propensity to return to college irrespective of course delivery method.” During Fall 2020, PEP experienced one of the strongest move-ins to off-campus housing in recent history. Net income from their portfolio in the pandemic year exceeded the budget that had been created pre-pandemic, and out of 18,000 residents, there were only 30 documented positive COVID-19 tests. Read more in PEP’s white paper, COVID-19 and Student Housing: Myths and Realities.
TOPAZ MIXED-USE STUDENT HOUSING
McCullough was first introduced to PEP through our mutual connection with Architect and Artist Frank Wolden. Pierce met and came to know Wolden because of their collaborative involvement at the early onset of the SDSU Redevelopment project in the late 1980s. Wolden was one of the original concept designers and performed planning studies for the project. On the cutting edge in the 1980s urban design world, Wolden had become a leader in placemaking and mixed-use development in urban locations. When PEP had the opportunity for a new mixed-use student housing project for SDSU students in 2015, Pierce chose Wolden’s design team to lead the project. Wolden brought McCullough on to collaborate for the landscape/site design.
Now known as Topaz, the project has had a journey of its own. Pierce had served as the Master Developer of the Topaz site on behalf of SDSU for more than ten years, striving to acquire any property that falls within the boundaries of the redevelopment project area. However, properties in this area don’t become available often. The Topaz site is comprised of properties owned by a local family for more than 50 years. In 2017, the family reached out to Pierce to redevelop the property, and PEP formed a joint venture with the family later that year. The project is currently going into construction and is scheduled to be complete for fall semester 2023.
Fun fact: The project site is part of the project area surrounding SDSU that he was hired to implement in 1995 when he got his big break and founded PEP!
Topaz will be a ground-up 53-unit, 169-bed apartment building with a mix of restaurant and retail spaces on the ground floor and amenity spaces on the second and third floors. The development is also part of a transit-priority area, since it is located within two blocks of the underground SDSU trolley station. This allowed PEP to scale back parking to just 42 parking spaces.
There is much less of a need for parking among university students than there once was. SDSU has a new policy that prohibits freshmen from having a car on campus, 25% of freshmen don’t have their driver’s licenses, and the current generation of students are accustomed to ride-share services – all of these factors reduce the need for parking spaces, leaving more room for creativity within the design and more efficient and cost-effective use of the space.
Through the landscape/site design, McCullough has created a unique streetscape experience with interesting paving, art, furnishings, and plant material that evoke the qualities of San Diego's canyons and coastal vistas. Residents will be greeted by a large and generous entry stair as they make their way up to the second floor, where custom raised planters will display a bounty of low water-use shrubs and ornamental grasses. The design of the third floor is inspired by San Diego’s deep, shady canyons and will provide several common open space areas for residents to sit and gather, relax in the spa, or engage with the life of the street below.
A creative architectural frame will create a window to open spaces on the third level. Through that “window,” Wolden and McCullough have designed a large architectural “tree,” made from wood and other materials, that will extend up through the window from the ground floor. The introduction of this unique, artistic element is intended to intrigue residents and people passing by, activating the space in an engaging way.
When asked about the experience working with McCullough’s staff, Pierce shared…
“Especially for an urban project, we’ve had both the opportunity and the need for a lot of creativity in the approach to the landscape and hardscape development… Sometimes technical constraints can work against you, but McCullough always had super creative solutions that could help us achieve the technical requirements while, at the same point in time, not at all compromise and, in fact, enhance the built environment, functionality, and aesthetics of these important spaces. In an urban built environment, you’ve got such a finite amount of gathering spaces that it’s imperative to make those spaces usable, practical, and aesthetically pleasing.”
Senior Vice President, Neal Singer added, “David and the design team are always so responsive. It’s a great working relationship with good communication – we’re not trying to track people down.”
It is a pleasure to contribute to this project alongside such a powerhouse in higher education. We look forward to Topaz’s completion and the enhanced university experience that residents and visitors will enjoy as a result.
To learn more about Pierce Education Properties, visit https://pepstudent.com
Nikki Holloway
Marketing + Creative Manager
Twenty by Six
New Office Building Combines Functionality and Style in San Diego’s Financial District
Twenty by Six, our recently completed project at 450 B Street, is a corporate office facility that provides an enhanced, modern, and functional presence within San Diego’s downtown Financial District.
Home to what was formerly a Bank of America branch office, the property owners determined that the original Brutalist building – which included terraced roof gardens – was not the best use for this highly visible location. They hired Gensler’s San Diego office to rethink the possibilities. Through the process of evaluating the former site, the team determined that the underground garage would stay, the top building would be scrapped, and they would build a new mid-rise Class A office building on top of the existing garage. McCullough teamed with Gensler to tackle the exciting new challenges that this plan presented.
Our initial challenges were to create a cohesive, unified design across the various spaces and amenities planned for the building with a clear understanding of the specific, varying needs of each space. This included the design of:
A new courtyard on the existing garage roof
An exterior corridor/promenade that connects the courtyard to the street from below the new building
A rooftop garden planned for the third level
Several below-grade light wells that needed to be treated as special amenities as they would be very visible to prominent indoor spaces
A building lobby and atrium space on Gensler's wish list to highlight
The resulting courtyard is a programmed, outdoor extension of the interior spaces that draws tenants and guests in at the street level. Achieving seamless indoor/outdoor connectivity, it includes a warm, textured corten steel fire pit and separate fireplace, comfortable seating, an outdoor extension of the building’s fitness facility, and a large, covered patio that will serve as additional space for a future restaurant tenant.
On the third floor, a rooftop garden creates a direct connection to the adjacent interior suites and looks down on the courtyard below. For this garden, McCullough designed planters filled with clumping grasses and wildflowers that would blow softly in the wind and reflect the warm glow of afternoon sun.
The placement of the lightwells presented a challenge that needed special attention. They were planned for dark, cold places within the building that would be difficult for living elements to flourish within. McCullough approached this by designing a curated garden space that appears like a landscape painting on a large canvas when viewed from the interior of the building. Understanding the delicate conditions within each space, we gave special attention to ensure we selected plant material with complementary lighting that is both aesthetically pleasing and enables the plants to thrive.
Gensler designed an open stairwell that descended from the upper levels to the ground-level lobby where they wanted to include plant features. McCullough collaborated with Gensler to contrast living, planted elements with materials like raw steel and wood in a sophisticated style. The outcome of the space presents a striking first impression to building visitors.
Overall, the design of the new building over existing structures was the catalyst for our design team to develop some unique creative solutions, perfectly aligned with the owner’s vision for the building. We worked through waterproofing and structural details, coordinated live and dead loads of landscapes on rooftops, and simply pieced together what, at times, seemed like intricate puzzle pieces.
We are very proud of how this project came together and the way that it tastefully fits the needs of downtown and the building’s future office tenants.
David McCullough, ASLA, PLA
Principal Landscape Architect