WithersRavenel was a member of two project teams winning prestigious honors Thursday in Cary.
The Triangle Business Journal Space Awards honor companies that have attained significant achievement in the real estate industry and contributed to growth in the Triangle.
WithersRavenel was part of a team with the Garner Economic Development Corporation and others developing the Project Axis site, honored with a 2019 TBJ award at Cary’s Prestonwood Country Club. Work by WithersRavenel and others proved instrumental in attracting a major employer planning to invest $200 million in the site with a 2.6-million-square-foot distribution facility that will create an estimated 1,500 jobs, becoming Garner’s largest single employer.
Working with Hillwood, a Dallas-based developer, WithersRavenel prepared site surveys, wetland, stream, and buffer evaluation, site design, and off-site road improvement design, and coordinated all entitlements and permitting for this fast-track project. The site, which was formerly a food processing facility, includes just under 1,800 surface automobile parking spaces, 200 trailer storage spaces, requires more than 75 acres of disturbance, and incorporates two massive underground stormwater detention devices on a recognized Brownfield redevelopment site. In addition to the on-site improvements, WithersRavenel designed just under one mile of roadway improvement plans to convert Jones Sausage Road from a two-lane roadway with turn lanes into a four-lane median divided roadway and associated turn lanes.
From conception to initial approval to construction, WR worked with the Town of Garner, NCDEQ, USACE, NCDOT, Wake County, the City of Raleigh, and various economic development agencies to meet the less-than-six-months design and permitting deadline required for the project. The project was further unique in the sense that it became a quasi-design/build project as WithersRavenel worked with the developer, project architect, and site contractor to deliver the project on time while a prototype for the facility was being developed. The project, which broke ground in July of 2018, is slated to be open in the fall of 2019.
In a second TBJ Space Award victory, WithersRavenel was a subconsultant with Spectrum Companies on its Regency Woods II project. The 6-story office building development overlooking Cary’s Symphony Lake launched in 2015. WithersRavenel did the surveying, wetlands/streams delineation, engineering and site construction administration on the project.
WithersRavenel Project Manager Ryan Fisher said the WR survey and environmental departments were vital in collecting existing data to aid in the design of the site. To meet the client’s requirements, WR divided the project to deliver a stand-alone parking lot at an accelerated pace for construction timing. Once the parking lot was approved, WR proceeded with the office building site plan construction documents. After that approval was granted, a prospective tenant in the building required additional parking so the client added a one-level parking deck to the site that was then added to the construction documents.
Fisher said the most challenging aspects of the project were the compilation of the project elements into the overall construction and the large amount of topographic relief across the site, which made grading design critical to efficiently utilize the site while protecting environmental features.
