Developers and real estate brokers are calling this one of the best markets for office space
in more than a decade, and among the beneficiaries of the building boom are companies
like Waverly Construction & Management Co.
The company, which both constructs shell buildings and does interior tenant work in old
and new structures, has major projects in the works in Columbia’s Gateway, the BWI
Business District and North Laurel. The company also does a fair chunk of business in
another rejuvenated economy: Poland in Eastern Europe, where its EastWave Building
Co. has put up more than 1 million square feet of office and industrial space.
While Waverly Construction (www.waverlyconstruction.com) is only seven years old,
the principals of the company have been together as a team for 17 years, and seen both
the boom times and the bust locally, said president John F. "Jef" Eyring III. The
management team used to run Norwood Industrial Construction, an arm of Rouse &
Associates, which later morphed into Liberty property trust.
When Norwood’s operations were moved to Philadelphia by its parent company, the
team decided to stay put. 1993 "was a pretty scary time for us," said Eyring in the troth
of a tanking commercial real estate economy. "We washed windows, we vacuumed
floors," in the projects they managed to scrape together. That experience "gave us a very
specific view of the punch lists" used to check the completion of a building.
While times are better now, "the philosophy of the company has stayed pretty much the
same," said Eyring. "We’re trying to solve problems for owners. Our preference is for
someone to tell us what their goal is" in terms of price and quality, and then to work
closely with the architects and the developer to achieve that goal. "They’re going to
make it challenging for us," said Eyring, but "at the end of the day they’ve got a good
project at a good price.
"We align ourselves with the owner’s interest in mind," said Waverly vice president Ed
Brnich, and "get involved in the design process ahead of time." As an example, Brnich
points to the buildings they’ve done for Gingery Development Group at the Whiskey
Bottom Trade Center in North Laurel, a high-end hybrid of flex office and warehouse
space that developer Montogomery Gingery calls "a California loft."
The building code required a shell that would withstand a two-hour fire, and the design
originally called for an expensive masonry solution. Working with architects, Waverly
came up with a different solution using NASE-developed heat resistant paint for the
girders that met the code at a lower price.
"They did a lot of value-added stuff," said Gingery. "They interface with tenants very
well [and] make my life easy - they’re very easy to work with."
"What energizes us is to try and figure out how to try to solve people’s problems" said
Eyring, "not just putting brick on brick."
Waverly Construction, no relation to the mixed used development on I-70 called Waverly
Woods, operates out of a windowless command bunker in Lansdowne. "We’ve created a
bullpen atmosphere," said Eyring. ‘We had the plush executive offices back in the
Norwood days," but "it was expensive and we decided to put the money into our people
and our projects."
"Jef doesn’t believe in high profile overhead," said Clai Carr, of Top Shelf Development.
Waverly built The Gardens Ice House in Laurel, the three-rink skating and fitness
complex developed by Carr, who now helps the builder with marketing. "They have a
real commitment to long-term relationships."
"Our major focus is on repeat business," said Eyring. Both Carr and Gingery did
buildings with the Waverly team when they were with Norwood.
In other projects nearby, Waverly is managing the fast-track completion of 24,000 square
feet of interior tenant work for Chrysler Financial in the first building of Crespointe
Corporate Center by Abrams Development on I-95 in Gateway. Waverly is also
undertaking another of several projects it has down for Aerotek, the huge technical
staffing agency headquartered south of Route 100 at the Baltimore-Washington Parkway.
Waverly’s venture in Poland, where Eyring spends about one week per month, shows
how even a small firm can profit from globalization in competition with multinational
construction giants.
Waverly was brought to Poland in 1994 by an American developer trying to solve a real
estate problem. "When we first got there, it [a capitalist economy] was still very new to
them," said Eyring. He was able to pare down the construction cost of a building for
pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson that was being built to U.S. standards, including
air conditioning, then a novelty in Poland. "The standard had been you turn on the fan
and open the window," said Eyring.
Eastwave Building Co. now has 12 Polish employees. "We’re a little bit ahead of the
curve," said Eyring, but "the cultural issues can be challenging."
One interesting consequence is that "we’ve gotten projects here from things we’ve done
there," said Eyring, and not the other way around. Brnich for instance is managing a
construction project in D.C. for Johnson & Johnson.
