Case Studies May 2019

Taking a deep breath, yet armed with a steely resolve, Cyndi Smith pushes the City Council Chamber doors wide open. The latest Baltimore School District project is on the table—and as the director of facilities design and construction, she has come to stand her ground, plead her case, or both. Inner Harbor. Fells Point. Midtown. […]

Five years ago, the Sack ‘N Save at the corner of Wilshire and Avenue C in Denton, Texas, looked like any mid-sized grocery store: meat and produce around the perimeter, aisle upon aisle of food and household wares in the middle, all of it illuminated by a battery of fluorescent lights. Should a former customer […]

There aren’t many such enterprises still in existence, not when the competition is the big-box store. But here in and around central Michigan, the Self Serve Lumber & Home Center chain isn’t just surviving, it’s thriving—seemingly unfazed by the ubiquitous Home Depots and Walmarts. Then again, it preceded the gargantuan retailers by decades. It also […]

At 5:04 p.m. it struck: A 6.9 magnitude earthquake. For 15 seconds, the earth shook; structures collapsed like dust, bridges were wrenched like toys, craters ripped open to swallow people and vehicles. It was October 17, 1989—the infamous Loma Prieta earthquake, which ultimately killed 67 people and caused billions of dollars’ worth of damage across […]

Jon Papps likes to joke that he was the first person in history to bring the University of South Carolina and Clemson University—heated rivals whose football teams have divided the state for more than a century—together for a common cause. The mission: to save lives and improve medical care in one of the state’s largest […]

Jacob Lebowitz might just be a modern-day maverick in the real-life rust-belt version of Monopoly. However, there is no Boardwalk, Park Place or Atlantic Avenue. DelMonte Hotel Group, led by president Alex DelMonte from its home base in Rochester, New York, has moved the game of acquiring properties to second- and third-tiered cities, not streets, […]

It’s a disturbing but realistic analogy that Robert Thompson cites. Stringent aviation rules and regulations notwithstanding, commercial airliners crash, however infrequently. And should it be found that the company was cutting corners on maintenance, the boss had better expect repercussions. Now let’s look at hospitals, says Thompson, who’s fashioned a long and productive career as […]