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September 29, 1999

Paul McCormick, AHBL, Inc.

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By SAM BENNETT
Journal Staff reporter

Paul McCormick
Paul McCormick

Paul McCormick

Firm: AHBL, Inc.
Year founded: 1969
Staff size: 55
Office: 2215 N. 30th St., Tacoma
Recent local project: AG West Black Hills High School

Q: What does your firm do?

A: We are a consulting firm that provides civil engineering, structural engineering, land-use planning and landscape architecture. We work for a wide range of clients - one-third are architects, one-third are corporations or private businesses; and one-third are contractors or developers.

Within each of these client bases, the type of projects we do are diverse but include post offices, military projects, all kinds of industrial manufacturing facilities and work for ports such as Tacoma, Seattle and Silverdale. We do work for retailers. We're the Pacific Northwest engineer for Fred Meyer. We do quite a lot of schools around the state and we do the civil engineering work on residential subdivisions. The rest of our work is all kinds of commercial buildings.

Q: What is your business approach?

A: As a company our philosophy is to offer really diversified services. By doing that we have been able to team up with some of the bigger clients and some of the bigger developers in the area. So we've been able to get involved in bigger projects than in the past.

Q: What are a few recent projects you are proud of?

A: An office we're particularly proud of is the News Tribune Building headquarters in Tacoma. That project was the recipient of the 1997 Southwest Washington Chapters AIA Honor Award. We performed civil and structural engineering on that project. That was an upscale office building, with a large glass entrance area, and when you walk in there is a piece of Chihuly glass hanging in the lobby. From an engineering standpoint it was not only a very challenging design but very impressive to look at the completed stage.

The second project is AG West Black Hills High School in Tumwater. This project was the recipient of the C.E.F.P.I. 1997 Project of Distinction award, which is an international award. Our firm provided the civil and structural engineering for that project. It was a huge project that also took advantage of a lot of architectural creativity. The building itself was 180,000 square feet which equated to 5 acres of building alone.

Another project is the Valley South Corporate Park, an industrial project we're proud of. It consists of 190 acres of industrial facilities in which we worked with the developers for a master plan for the entire park. On this project, we did the master planning site work, the civil engineering, land architecture and building design. This project won two awards in '98. The first award was the Industrial Development of the Year award. We also were awarded the Industrial Project of the Year Award presented by the Society of Office and Industrial Realtors.

Q: What areas of the industry do you see as high growth potential?

Valley South Corporate Park
The Valley South Corporate Park in Sumner has 190 acres of industrial facilities.
A: We see industrial projects as a fairly large growth area in the next years. We also see downtown Tacoma project revitalization work as a large growth area in the next five to 10 years. And as a company we have worked hard to align ourselves with both real estate agents and contractors and other consultants aligning themselves to do work in downtown Tacoma.

Q: How do you see Tacoma changing?

A: For a long time, there has been a big movement to revitalize Tacoma, because years ago it had a lot of retail and housing. But during the '60s and '70s that all left. Since that time, there has been a movement underfoot to bring that back and revitalize downtown Tacoma. I would predict it will be a big movement for the next 10 to 15 years. The streetscape 15 years from now in downtown Tacoma will be different from what it's been in the past. Some of that has already taken place.

Q: Outside the city, where do you see growth happening?

A: An area of growth for our company in the Pierce County area is residential plats, which is anticipated to have large growth over the next eight years. The cost of living in the King County area is becoming significant, forcing a lot of residents to areas like Pierce County.

News Tribune Headquarters
The News Tribune Headquarters in Tacoma involved a $10 million expansion and addition.
When we work on plats we work directly with developers to resolve land use issues relating to the site such as zoning issues and wetlands mitigations, and we work with jurisdictions of either counties or cities to resolve these problems. And once that's done, we have to develop lots on a particular piece of property, and we design all of the infrastructure including the roads, storm systems, water system and sewer systems.

Q: What attracted you to the field of engineering?

A: Originally, when I was young, I had plans to be an engineer of some type. Within the first year of college in the engineering program I had decided on structural engineering so I pursued that and graduated from UW with a degree in structural engineering. Then I got out of school and began working here as a structural engineer. As I progressed into the management of projects, I found I enjoyed managing other aspects of the design to include land-use issues, site design and building design. What I enjoy most is managing projects where we perform a full range of services for clients. I'm kind of a big-picture guy.

AG West Black Hills High School
The AG West Black Hills High School in Tumwater is an 180,000-square-foot, $27 million complex.
Q: How do we see your firm as different from others?

A: Because of our diversity, we have a lot of relationships with owners of businesses, contractors and developers, and because of that we are in a position to know about future projects very early on, many times way before the architects. So we have the opportunity to bring projects or project leads to our architects. It's usually the other way around. Usually as a subcontractor we look to architects to bring us work.



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