July 5, 2011 – SUWANEE, GEORGIA – Blue Landworks LLC, civil engineering, surveying and consulting, announced that it has been approved by the Texas Board of Professional Engineers as a registered Professional Engineering firm. Taylor Anderson, PE, was also approved as a Professional Engineer in the State of Texas. Blue Landworks LLC now has engineers registered in four states: Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Texas.

“Service to our clients is our top priority,” said Mr. Anderson. “As our clients respond to the demands in this economy and expand their geographical footprint, our responsive, client centered focus and registration with NCEES allows us to become quickly licensed in other states. We can then provide our clients with the level of service and commitment that they’ve come to expect from us, regardless of the state their projects are located in.”

Blue Landworks’ projects in the southeast includes a diverse mix of clients and locales. With experience in new civil site land development to redevelopment projects and serving clients from the north Georgia mountains to the North Carolina coast and now to the plains of Texas, Blue Landworks is ready to tackle not only today’s challenges, but the uncertainty of tomorrow.

Your Project. Successful. Now in the Lone Star state.

CONTACT:

Blue Landworks
Taylor Anderson, PE – President
(678) 551-BLUE
media@bluelandworks.com
bluelandworks.com

1. Water Quality: Any development which constructs new or replacement of more than 5,000 square feet of impervious area is required to provide  water quality treatment. The idea behind water quality treatment is to provide removal of suspended solids in stormwater in the most common storm events.
2. Channel Protection: Also known as the 1-year storm, this requires the development to detain the 1-year storm for a period of 24 hours to avoid the scouring and degradation of stream channels.
3. Detention: This requires the development to detain stormwater for the 2- through 25-year storm events to their pre-development flows.

Redevelopment projects present several unique challenges and opportunities. Among the most challenging hurdles that many redevelopment projects face is that of stormwater management – both water quality and water quantity (detention). Typically older developments, if they have any stormwater treatment at all, have an undersized facility that provides detention only. Current regulations in Gwinnett County, and across most of the metro Atlanta area, require those redeveloping parcels to provide the same level of stormwater management as is required for a greenfield development. In other words, the site, even if it is covered with buildings and parking lots, is viewed as though it is still in a forested, undisturbed state for stormwater management purposes. Gwinnett County, recognizing that redevelopment provides both economic and environmental advantages over greenfield development, is making development regulation changes to distinguish stormwater regulations between redevelopment and greenfield development.

Greenfield developments will continue to have to provide all three components of a stormwater facility (see table). A greenfield development is property still in an undeveloped state and has not had any impact on downstream properties.

Redevelopment projects, on the other hand, have impacted downstream properties as much as they likely can. Fully atoning for the sins of the past by providing the full host of stormwater management, while a noble idea, is not realistic on many projects. Redevelopment projects will have the opportunity to apply for a variance from providing channel protection and/or detention. Developed parcels, particularly those which are candidates for redevelopment, have already impacted their downstream channels. Providing channel protection won’t accomplish its intended purpose. Providing detention in an already urbanized zone only makes sense if there is existing flooding downstream during the more typical storm events. Otherwise it, too, doesn’t accomplish its intended purpose.

All projects will have to provide water quality, as required by state law. This makes sense, as water quality is an on-going impact in both greenfield development and existing developments. Unlike channel protection, stormwater runoff doesn’t reach a peak pollution point and then find a new stability or gradually reduce. Providing a measure of water quality on every project is the prudent thing to do, even if state law didn’t make it so.

This change to the Development Regulations will provide a significant new tool to redevelopment projects by addressing one of the most expensive and difficult challenges that a project faces. The variance, if approved, would allow a project to waive either all or a portion of channel protection and/or detention requirements. Once a variance is approved, the developer would pay a fee to Gwinnett County that would be utilized in the same fashion as fees from the County’s stream buffer variance. These fees are used in stream restoration projects throughout Gwinnett County. The fee will be calculated on the volume of stormwater management that is waived. (i.e. if 10,000 cubic feet of stormwater management is waived, multiply the 10,000 cubic feet by the cost per cubic foot to determine the fee amount.) The fee amount is currently under consideration and will eventually be set by the Board of Commissioners.

Gwinnett Village Community Improvement District and Gwinnett Place Community Improvement District conducted three case studies to assess the impact of the new regulations on sample redevelopment projects. In those cases, it was assumed that a variance would be sought for both the entirety of channel protection and detention. It was also assumed that the impervious area in the redevelopment scenario would be equal to its present condition. Two of the three cases were conducted on project sizes where many redevelopment projects are anticipated – sites in the half acre range. Typically, smaller redevelopment sites provide the most challenges for providing stormwater management due to the lack of land necessary to provide all three stormwater components. In most cases, stormwater management will be provided in an underground facility. These facilities can only be placed under parking lots or open space and reduce the buildable area on a site.

The variance can only be obtained for up to the existing impervious area on the project site. If a developer proposes to increase the impervious area beyond what presently exists, the developer will be responsible for providing all three stormwater components for the increased area. The developer will not be able to obtain a variance from the stormwater regulations for the increased impervious area and must maintain or improve the existing downstream conditions. The developer can still apply for a variance for the portion of the project up to the existing impervious area.

It is important to point out that these regulations only apply to the unincorporated portion of Gwinnett County. Projects within the cities located in Gwinnett County, should they chose to also follow this process, will have to adopt the changes into their development regulations. Since the cities represent some of the most urbanized portions of Gwinnett County, these regulation changes, if adopted, would enhance the ability for revitalization within their boundaries.

The bottom line is that these changes will provide a new tool for developers to add to their tool box to satisfy stormwater management requirements for redevelopment projects. This new tool will allow Gwinnett County to provide a significant advantage to developers looking to do redevelopment projects in the metro Atlanta area. At the same time, it will improve the environment by providing an additional funding source for improving the streams throughout the county. Of course, redevelopment projects themselves provide other significant environmental advantages over greenfield development by utilizing existing infrastructure and reducing consumption of undeveloped property.  Finally, it supports the significant economic impact that redevelopment projects provide by revitalizing the aging areas of the county while increasing employment and property values. This is one of those rare situations when new government regulations provide a win-win scenario for all involved. Gwinnett County should be applauded for its forward thinking and proactive efforts to address one of the biggest challenges that many projects face.

Taylor Anderson, PE, is President of Blue Landworks LLC. Blue Landworks provides civil engineering, land surveying and development consulting across the southeast. Taylor is the chairman of the committee assisting Gwinnett County in re-writing their development regulations on stormwater for redevelopment projects. The opinions expressed in this article are his and are not intended to represent those of Gwinnett County or the committee. A version of this article appeared on the Gwinnett Chamber’s Redevelopment Newsletter Website.

March 16, 2011 – SUWANEE, GEORGIA – Blue Landworks LLC, civil engineering, surveying and consulting, announced that its owner and president, Taylor Anderson,PE, was re-appointed by the Gwinnett County Board of Commissioners to the Development Advisory Committe. He was selected as the Professional Engineer representative on the committee that advises the County on all aspects of land development. Mr. Anderson’s appointment is a two year term. He was subsequently elected by the committee to the position of vice-chairman.

“To once again be selected to represent the engineering community on the committee is a great honor,” said Mr. Anderson. “I appreciate the confidence that both the staff from Gwinnett County and the Board of Commissioners has shown in me. I also appreciate the committees faith in electing me to vice-chairman. I’m looking forward to continuing to engage the county and development community in a dialogue on how to continue to make Gwinnett County the best place to live, work and conduct business.”

Mr. Anderson’s work in the southeast includes a diverse mix of clients and locales. With experience in new civil site land development to redevelopment projects and serving clients from the north Georgia mountains to the North Carolina coast, Blue Landworks is ready to tackle not only today’s challenges, but the uncertainty of tomorrow.

CONTACT:

Blue Landworks
Taylor Anderson, PE – President
(678) 551-BLUE
media@bluelandworks.com
bluelandworks.com

Recently the claim department of the Design Professional group of XL Insurance has seen an up tick of onerous public contracts. Public entities are using tough new contracts as a way to transfer inordinate amounts of project risk onto design professionals’ shoulders, jeopardize their insurance and make demands that design firms cannot reasonably fulfill.

Best advice: Read the contract. It sounds obvious, but many A/Es assume that the contract for a new project is the same one they received from the same entity on the last project. Onerous clauses and phrases that you negotiated out of one contract have a way of finding their way back into another.

In many contracts, engineers are accepting risk that their insurance will not cover. Worse still, many engineers don’t realize what they’ve done. It’s important, as an industry, to negotiate out those portions of the contract that transfer risk and responsibility to the engineer that the engineer has no control over. Often times this includes statements such as taking responsibility for the contractor’s actions, even if construction administration is not part of the contract. By accepting these unreasonable provisions in contracts, engineers are setting precedent for bad terms that will be carried forward in the future.

XL Insurance even makes the following strong statement regarding municipal contracts:

Public agencies have tremendous power and many delight in using it. [Emphasis added] However, persistence, reason and the knowledge that you were chosen based on your track record can get you past more than a few government attorneys. When you’re tempted to sign on the dotted line, think about your exposure to serious liability for circumstances you’d be rendered powerless to control. As tough as it may be to get a good public contract, it’s even more difficult to defend yourself under a bad one.

John McIlwain, ULI Senior Resident Fellow for Housing, describes the U.S. housing market, and how it will be affected by demographic trends. John’s talk was recorded at a gathering of ULI trustees on Jan. 26, 2010.

At the end of 2009, the area had 149,277 lots, down slightly from 149,782 in 2008, but above the 143,253 lots in 2007.

The inventory of lots kept rising because even has Atlanta’s housing market crashed, lots continued to be developed, said Eugene James, director of the Atlanta division of Metrostudy Inc., a residential real estate research firm.

“We were watching developments being reluctantly finished up,” James said.

In the 12 years Metrostudy has been recording data from metro Atlanta’s housing market, the area had the fewest new home starts — 4,400 — in 2009, James said.

That means in 2009, effectively only 500 lots came off the market in the metro Area, or about 1/3 of 1% of the available developed lots. Doing the math on new starts, 3,900 lots were developed last year in Atlanta.

At 4,400 new homes a year equates to a 34 year supply if no new lots were developed. A reasonable number of starts for the metro area in a normal economy is probably in the 20,000 unit range, meaning there is about a 7 year supply of lots. However, the reality is that anywhere between 10-20% of the current developed lots will likely never see houses on them either because of location or other factors including poor configuration and environmental concerns.

A good article from Inman News highlighted the area that many investment funds are headed to – residential lots.

As a result, finished lots are being dumped back into the market at 50 cents on the dollar — or much, much less — by builders and banks, which took back the properties due to loan defaults.

In bigger developments, investors have been buying these lots at 30 cents on the dollar, notes Nate Nathan, president of Scottsdale, Ariz.-based Nathan & Associates. In fact, well-funded investor groups have been sweeping up these long rows of unfinished lots by the dirtful leaving individual investors with no other option than to haunt smaller projects. And that, too, has been a worthwhile use of time and resources because, as Nathan points out, customized lots are selling for 10 cents to 20 cents on the dollar.

Think of it this way, lots are being acquired below finishing costs, which if new construction proceeds means the land cost is negligible, if not zero-valued.

The article noted that investors are expecting to hold the unfinished lots for 3 to 4 years and that they aren’t expecting significant new building to start until 2012. It also notes that we’ll need 1.2 million housing units in the next 10 years for population growth alone. (1.1 million units were built in the previous two years.)

Residential News

The WSJ says we don’t need to get worked up about Monday’s home sales report. Meanwhile, the ENR reports that while there won’t be a recovery in housing in the immediate future, one person believes that we’ll see 15%+ growth towards the end of the year and into 2011. In line with the weak housing numbers, Tom Royce reports that the Builders Confidence Index has dropped. Finally, not surprisingly, the WSJ reports that the number of subprime mortgages currently with negative equity is 6 in 10 borrowers on both the national and Atlanta level.

Commercial News

CIRE magazine highlights market trends for all sorts of markets and Atlanta is mentioned several times. The AJC summarizes the Atlanta office market. Finally, the WSJ thinks the worst is over for the commercial real estate market.

GA DOT

Lots of news on the transportation front this week for Georgia. Maria Saporta says that if we can’t do transportation funding right, then don’t do it at all. The ABC reports that DOT is changing its accounting practices in an effort to get projects moving. B King at Terminal Station comments on both the Saporta article and the fact that the statewide sales tax to fund transportation is dead. Finally, it what seems to be a never ending string of articles on ranking traffic, this week’s flavor ranks Atlanta a modest 22nd worst, which is actually pretty good.

Gwinnett Airport Privatization

A story that will probably be in the news a lot this year is the possibility of the privatization of Gwinnett County’s Briscoe Field. The Board of Commissioners is proceeding with studying the topic and reports on this can be found here, here, here and here.

Miscellaneous

Poverty is rising in Atlanta’s suburbs. A small business snapshot in the southeast. A look at a potential huge mixed-use project on Atlanta’s south side.

The region’s homebuilders and Realtors both reported the pace of home sales had softened slightly since August. Despite this, homebuilders noted an increase in traffic with several reporting the credit quality of potential buyers had improved as well. Demand for low- to mid-priced homes remained relatively strong, supported by the first-time home buyer tax credit and increased interest by investors. However, most continued to note downward pressure on home prices from foreclosures and short-sales. The majority of homebuilders and contractors observed construction remained very low. The sales outlook among both builders and Realtors over the next three months was less upbeat than reported in August.

Private-sector commercial real estate activity in the Southeast weakened further in September. Vacancy rates continued to rise across all segments, and contacts continued to cite downward pressure on rents. Developers reported fewer backlogs and more projects were delayed or canceled. Contractors expected activity to continue to decline into 2010.

This panoramic picture of downtown Lawrenceville captures many of projects Taylor Anderson has worked on for Mr. Morsberger. Picture taken from atop McCray's rooftop dining deck, another project Taylor Anderson provided engineering services for. (Click for full size image.)

To say that Emory Morsberger has bold vision is quite the understatement.  Assisting him in bringing his vision of historic downtown Lawrenceville back to life proved to be among the most challenging and rewarding projects that Taylor Anderson has had the opportunity to work on.

Having provided engineering services on three sides of downtown Lawrenceville’s main block provided numerous opportunities to tackle the issues that will likely face developers going forward – meeting the stringent requirements of development regulations within the context of redevelopment projects. The crown jewel thus far in Mr. Morsberger’s revitalization of Lawrenceville was the redevelopment of the old Wachovia bank site at the corner of West Crogan Street and Culver Street to the new Cornerstone on the Square. The project features condos, townhomes, and courtyard residences along with upscale retail space.

McCray's Tavern features unique outdoor dining on its rooftop deck.

As the development landscape continues to evolve, redevelopment of city centers provides unique challenges and opportunities. Blue Landworks extensive experience allows clients to maximize those opportunities while understanding and addressing those challenges.

Just a few of the projects that services have been provided for in downtown Lawrenceville:

• Cornerstone on the Square
• McCray’s Tavern
• Sperata
• Dominicks

“You all have done an exemplary job on our projects including… Cornerstone on the Square in Downtown Lawrenceville, a historic redevelopment project.” – Emory Morsberger, Chairman, The Morsberger Group regarding services provided by Taylor Anderson.