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Anyone can talk a big game. It seems that in the name of public relations, lots of business leaders are talking up green initiatives, corporate responsibility and the importance of a welcoming in-office environment. It all sounds good, but does it ever really play out in day-to-day operations?
I’ve always thought that corporate culture goes far beyond philosophy. It’s about application and tangible execution when possible. That was top of mind as we made plans for our new campus. We tried to make every detail speak to who we are as a company. The conference table, a focal point of our largest gathering place, was no exception.
Throughout my career, I’ve sat at many a conference table. It seems most are rectangular, a shape requiring someone to sit at the head, “in charge.” A round table would support a “team” atmosphere, but is inefficient for the number of chairs accommodated to its size. This led us to choose a square design—it’s efficient and puts us all on equal footing.
With that decided, I commissioned my friend Tom Church and his wife Susan to design and construct the piece. I requested our table be made from Red Bald Cypress we salvaged from swampland on a project in Florida. The Churches came from Tennessee to collect the wood.
Tom was kind enough to call a few weeks later to let me know he’d come up with a layout for us to discuss. Over the years, I have learned that one should never tell the artist how to paint the painting. I knew Tom had a unique eye for design, a gift of craftsmanship and patience of task. I gave him free reign on the finished product and signed off without seeing a single drawing.
The result was beyond my expectations. The real beauty of the table lies in the way it was put together. The Red Bald Cypress is exceptional, and the craftsmanship equally superb. It was obvious that Tom and Susan devoted a great deal of time to the detail of the design, from the seemingly flawless surface to the curvature of the edges to the solidity of the support. All is in arts and crafts style, hand-assembled with pegs.
While the table is attractive to the eye, the message lies in its components. I found huge significance in Tom’s decision to incorporate two cracked boards. Rather than discard the flawed wood, he reinforced it with burl walnut so that those two boards could be used in the table along with the others. Every time I see the table I am reminded that none of us is perfect and we require a little mending from time to time. With the support of others, we form a solid team.
What are you doing to bolster your team? If you’re talking the talk, are you walking the walk? I encourage you to live your corporate philosophy. We continue to see the benefits. Mementos around the office—like our table—are reminders not only of who we are, but what we can be.
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Merrill Stewart is Founder and President of the Stewart Perry Company, a commercial building contractor based in Birmingham, Ala. Contact him via email.
Last week when I was at the University of the South, Sewanee, I traveled through the new Spencer Wing of Woods Laboratories on the campus. I found myself in the Forestry Department in front of a plaque that reads “Restoring Our Forest,” with the subtitle “Importance of fire in the forest communities.”
It goes on to explain the benefit of flames. When fire strikes a wooded area, the species living there adapt to survive, often using the disturbance to their advantage. If the flames are suppressed, it can actually hurt the adapted species. It’s an intriguing concept. The very thing that tears a forest down is essential to maintaining it.
I couldn’t help but think of the times we are in. The last couple of years have been difficult, challenging and devastating to some. It feels like the blaze is rising high around us, but I believe we will be just like the species of the forest community. We will survive, adapt and find a competitive advantage in our experiences. Until the fire is extinguished, I’ll be thinking about how it can help my team evolve.
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Merrill Stewart is Founder and President of the Stewart Perry Company, a commercial building contractor based in Birmingham, Ala. Contact him via email.
Last week, I attended the Cahaba River Society’s (CRS) annual meeting. I’ve been a board member for about a year now. The Society protects our beautiful river and facilitates public conversations about environmental well-being.
While the CRS still focuses much of its energy on the River and its basin, it is also evolving into something much greater and more important from my perspective, and that is the business of “water education.” Without quality water, there’s not much life. The health and abundance of our water supply has immeasurable impact on our environment, both now and for future generations. It seems vital that we teach the public how to protect this resource.
Unfortunately, environmental campaigns are often politically charged and met with equal parts support, resistance and apathy. As the organization grows and matures, I’ve seen the CRS learn better ways of being collaborative in efforts to deal with those who might disagree. They are listening, being transparent and stating operations clearly. I have always found that if two sides are opposed, as long as there is a sliver of agreement, some kind of compromise can be reached. This has rung true for the CRS as they deal with local businesses and the public.
This meeting focused on educating about the environmental impact of storm water. Both as a conscious citizen and as a builder, I found these lessons valuable and thought I’d share takeaways here:
• How we build our communities and deal with storm water today will determine the kind of rivers we have forever.
• If proper designs are not put in place, the increased runoff from development will degrade water quality, increase flooding, collapse riverbanks, impoverish the river’s diverse life, and make our drinking water more expensive and scarce.
• A natural forest absorbs rain like a sponge, replenishing groundwater and keeping our rivers clean and flowing, even in droughts. Maybe we begin to think about fewer hard surfaces and single points of discharge.
• Designers might consider concepts of low impact development and green infrastructure – rain gardens, permeable paving, green roofs, cisterns – practices that use rain as a resource, infiltrating and reusing it.
• Low-impact development tries to keep as much water as possible on site so that it can be infiltrated to replenish groundwater or harvested and reused in a manner that reduces the use of treated municipal water.
• It’s important to get involved with municipalities and storm water partners to nurture a working relationship for a unified voice to the policy changes needed to protect us all. Would you consider using this knowledge to better the environment? More importantly, would you please share what you’ve learned with others? Simplistic as it may sound, together we can make a difference.
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Merrill Stewart is Founder and President of the Stewart Perry Company, a commercial building contractor based in Birmingham, Ala. Contact him via email.
We’ve all heard the saying, “everything old is new again.” At our place, we’ve challenged ourselves to find inventive ways to repurpose materials that might have otherwise left behind. As a result, our ceilings, parts of our deck and even our conference table are crafted from wood that would have otherwise been left at our Florida projects.
Never have I seen a truer personal example than in Sam Mockbee, a pioneer in pragmatic design whose biography I recently received. He made turning old things into something unique and usable his life’s passionate work.
Sam or “Sambo” as he was known to his friends, understood the “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” concept long before it became a slogan for sustainability and doing things right. He created the Rural Studio Program at the Auburn University School of Architecture, where students repurpose ordinary and recycled materials into houses and useful buildings for the residents of Hale County, Alabama. His creations take care of basic needs and in the process provide rays of hope.
Sam would tell his students that the places they create have got to be warm, dry and noble. He spent the last 10 years of his life building those spaces for many and that legacy continues. Using salvaged materials like lumber, bricks, discarded tires and hay bales, the Rural Studio produces inexpensive structures in a style that Mockbee described as “contemporary modernism grounded in southern culture.” As noted in this Metropolitan Magazine article, the process gives students hands-on experience in designing and building something real, extending their education beyond paper architecture.
Our Stewart Perry headquarters have always reminded me of Sam Mockbee’s work and about half way through the building process I found out why. I learned that Tommy Goodman, who designed our place and is now a professor or architecture at Mississippi State University, was Sambo’s business partner. The influence of the Rural Studio is woven all through our campus. We removed coal tailings from the lake and used them to repave parking area for a neighborhood church. Our hardwood floors are refurbished from a tobacco plant in Virginia. I feel our folks are always thinking of ways they can lower our environmental impact.
Are there opportunities to do similar things around your office, home or construction site?
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Merrill Stewart is Founder and President of the Stewart Perry Company, a commercial building contractor based in Birmingham, Ala. Contact him via email.
“To whom much is given, much is expected.”
That adage has stayed with me for many years. Our company is fortunate to have a nice corporate campus, and I feel that in order to be a good steward of the land, I should invite others to enjoy our place. In the last few months, the Birmingham Museum of Art, the Fresh Water Land Trust and the U.S. Green Building Council have met using our conference area.
Our conference room is surrounded by a porch that hangs out over a small lake. There’s an island in the middle of the water where a single willow tree sits—the same one you see illustrated on our homepage. In the surrounding woods, wildlife abounds. The setting is tranquil and invites open conversation. Last week Stewart Perry was privileged to host the Cahaba River Society, bringing supporters of the river together in dialogue with community and business leaders.
Over the years, we’ve been active with the CRS as a company. The picturesque river has been the beneficiary of their conservation efforts over the last several decades. It meanders through the region, providing a source of drinking water, recreational opportunities and even a distinct species of lily only found here. While we’ve always been interested in preserving the River, our first real advocacy in the Society came when we built a grocery store project literally on its banks. We took great precautions to leave our surroundings unaffected and have been passionate about keeping the river clean and natural ever since. Hosting a CRS event seemed like a logical extension of our commitment.
This particular fall evening was crisp by Alabama standards, with a backdrop of trees changing color around the lake, a campfire and glass garage doors open from the kitchen to the patio. While the setting was perfect for talk of preserving nature, the presentation by CRS’s Betsy Thagard made the event truly special. She talked about water conversation and explained why water quality is so important to our lives and to our community. Beyond environmental benefits, there are huge economic payoffs that come with being good stewards of resources.
The time together not only reinforced relationships with donors, but helped open doors for new benefactors. As relationships with development professionals were strengthened, they were encouraged to excel in efforts to protect our water systems for future generations. I’m proud that our campus could be a catalyst for environmental preservation.
Click for more information on the Cahaba River Society, or check out this article in the July issue of Smithsonian Magazine.
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Merrill Stewart is Founder and President of the Stewart Perry Company, a commercial building contractor based in Birmingham, Ala. Contact him via email.
When my work requires travel, I reward myself by staying somewhere listed in the Historic Hotels of America directory, which is closely affiliated with The National Trust for Historic Preservation. The HHA is an association of hotels and inns scattered across the United States, usually in urban areas, which were usually built in the beginning of the last century and typically have been restored. These places are often reminders of historical events, and in some cases the trail has not been a pretty one.
I recently traveled to New England with a friend. On Saturday afternoon I found myself at Nor’East, a firm in the business of recycling historic architectural pieces for reuse. They’re located in New Hampshire, just across the Massachusetts border. As I was leaving, I asked the owner where we might stay for the evening since I couldn’t head to my ultimate destination of Hyannis Port until the next morning. He said, “Saturday evening on the coast of Massachusetts during the ‘in’ season…that’s a hard one.” In the end he gave me several suggestions, and we decided on the Hawthorne Hotel in Salem, MA. This interesting hotel is located in the downtown area, was constructed in 1925 and has been beautifully restored.
The next morning I found a placard in the lobby that said “THIS PLACE MATTERS” I got to thinking and realized it’s up to us to make sure our favorite landmarks gets their due. Please consider supporting one of these charming places and the rich history they contain the next time you travel.
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