Design Development

How do you add 10 stories to a building without adding a single square foot of floor area? Brian McFarland and his team did exactly that at Soma at 25 Water in New York. Brian is a Principal at CetraRuddy Architecture, and he calls Soma the largest completed office-to-residential conversion in the U.S. to date. The building was a late-1960s back office for a bank, built for computers, not people....

What if the biggest misconception about senior living is that it’s where life winds down? Walter Ramos has spent his career moving between government, law, hospitals and senior living. Today he is President & CEO of Rogerson Communities, a nonprofit that has been providing housing and care for older adults since 1860. On paper, the path looks scattered. It isn’t. It started with a college inte...

What if the incentive package isn't what decides where a company goes? Kyle Touchstone grew up in South Mississippi, the kid of a hardware store owner who watched one large manufacturer change what a small business and its employees could afford. Today he is Director of Raleigh Economic Development, a program of the Greater Raleigh Chamber that provides business recruitment, retention and exp...

Founders can run a real estate firm on heroics for a while. At some point, the business needs a system. In this episode of Design Development, Leslie Cohen, Founder and Principal of Ops Alchemy, talks about strengthening operations, reducing founder dependence, and preparing a business for growth and leadership transitions. Leslie shares how she approached becoming the first COO at Samuels & A...

What if the most valuable thing a window cleaner brings down from the side of a building isn’t clean glass — but information? Matt Pierce started his career pounding the pavement, walking into restaurants, car dealerships, and storefronts selling recurring window cleaning. Today, he leads PIERCE Property Services, a roughly 120-person company providing maintenance, waterproofing, restoration, roof...

Most business owners go through a pivotal moment—their first real look behind the curtain at how buyers value companies. For Rens Hayes, that moment came when he went through a sale and due diligence process for his father’s structural steel business. What he learned from that experience completely changed how he approached building and scaling his own company, H&O Structural Engineering. In t...

For roughly 40 years, developers looked at a six-acre oceanfront site in Long Beach and couldn’t get it done. Then B2K did. In this episode of Design Development, Jon Weiss explains what finally unlocked the 1.2-million-square-foot Superblock - and why getting a project built often has less to do with the idea and more to do with timing, local buy-in, construction strategy, and understanding the e...

Early in his career, Patrick Carino tracked real estate opportunities with aerial maps pinned to the wall and a binder full of spreadsheets. It worked, but it exposed a bigger problem: real estate is inherently visual, yet much of the information developers use to make multimillion-dollar decisions is fragmented across spreadsheets, maps, inboxes, and relationships. That frustration eventually bec...

(Ep. from 10/24)  Rens Hayes IV is the co-founder of H+ O Structural Engineering, a pioneering firm focused on innovative solutions in real estate development, design, and construction. With a background in steel construction and engineering, Rens's journey in the industry has been fueled by an early influence from the family business and a commitment to lifelong learning. He is a certified v...

A dog run almost triggered another stair. The solution? Convince the building official that the space wasn’t assembly space. It was a fitness center. For dogs. That story is a good snapshot of this conversation with Ben Kasdan, Principal at KTGY Architecture + Planning. Great multifamily design isn’t just about creating something that looks good. Every decision sits at the intersection of resident...

Rens Hayes IV, the host of "Design Development," is a structural engineering expert and co-founder of H+O Structural Engineering. With a lifelong commitment to learning and growth, Rens is passionate about high-powered organizations and leadership. He brings extensive experience in real estate development, design, and construction, aiming to share actionable insights drawn from top indus...

Rens Hayes is the passionate and insightful host of "Design Development." With a wealth of experience in architecture and engineering, Rens has dedicated his career to advancing professional growth within the industry. He leverages his podcast platform to share invaluable lessons, engaging discussions, and expert advice to help individuals overcome career plateaus and achieve their profe...

In 1933, two teenage immigrant brothers signed over their house to buy $12,000 worth of lumber and bet everything on a single job. Ninety years later, their great-grandson runs the $450 million construction firm they built. Dave Fontaine Jr. is the fourth generation to lead Fontaine Brothers, and he joins Rens to unpack the question every multi-generation business eventually has to answer: how do...

A. Brooks Fischer unlocks the key to managing a team of architects - and gives sound advice for future leaders in the field.  For more than 60 years, Newman Architects has built a respected practice, a strong portfolio, and lasting client relationships. As the firm entered its third generation of leadership, President and CEO A. Brooks Fischer saw an opportunity to build on that foundation by crea...

Barriers to affordable housing often look procedural: tackling zoning, securing funding, and facing opposition. Andrew DeFranza believes the affordability crisis sits much deeper. It begins with who communities think should be allowed to live there. This week on Design Development, Andrew joins Rens to discuss how Harborlight Homes treats housing as more than a physical building. The nonprofit dev...

Pattern District is the product of a vision built patiently over decades. Beginning in the mid-1990s, Northland looked beyond its individual Needham Street properties, acquired two neighboring parcels, and ultimately brought 23 acres together under one plan. This week on Design Development, Northland's Vice President, Development, Santo Dettore joins Rens to trace the 30-year journey from lan...

When Jay Connolly stepped into leadership at Connolly Brothers, he became the fifth generation of his family to carry forward a construction firm founded in 1880. After nearly 150 years in business, the company is still shaped by the same forces behind its longevity: family ownership, trusted relationships, deep-rooted ambition, and a willingness to adapt as the industry evolves while staying focu...

Can strict technical requirements and elegant design coexist? Jay Siebenmorgen says yes. As Design Partner at NBBJ, Jay has spent over 30 years working on hospitals, research labs, and higher education buildings — some of the most technically demanding spaces in architecture — and made beauty a non-negotiable. Jay walks through the exploratory design process behind 325 Binney Street — Moderna&apos...

When James von Klemperer joined Kohn Pedersen Fox, the firm was still early in its story: growing quickly, defining its culture, and creating real opportunity for young architects. Today, the firm has reached 50 years in business, with hundreds of employees across nine global offices, and James has helped carry forward a culture built around authorship, opportunity, and the belief that great archi...

Paul Zeckser didn’t follow the traditional path into construction. He’s not an architect, engineer, or contractor – instead, he built a career in tech. But as the Co-Founder and CEO of LightTable, he is solving one of construction’s most expensive problems: helping project teams catch drawing and coordination issues before they become RFIs, change orders, and delays. LightTable was built around an...

Four years into his architecture career, Stefano Basso returned to school for a Master's in Construction Management. Not to change professions.  To better understand how contractors think, what they need from architects, and where friction between the two begins.   This decision reflects how Stefano has approached much of his work at SV Design: with curiosity about the full project process, n...

Addie Grady has built her career at the intersection of housing, sustainability, and urban development. Today, her expertise is focused on a very specific location: Bunker Hill. As Senior Vice President and Partner at Leggat McCall Properties, a Boston-based real estate firm with more than $3B in assets developed as principal and an active pipeline of $1.5B, Addie serves as Executive Director of t...

Nick Pasquenza has spent more than 25 years in commercial real estate, leading complex projects and the teams behind them across design, construction, and delivery. Throughout his roles, he has developed a deep expertise in the full arc of urban development, establishing a clear conviction: if you don't understand how buildings are valued, you don't truly understand the impact of the dec...

Fred Kramer joined ADD Inc. when it was a 15-person operation focused entirely on suburban Boston office buildings. Over the next three decades, he rose to President, blending his business discipline with design ambition.  Under Fred's leadership, the firm diversified into multifamily housing, higher education, and interior design - scaling into a 250-person multi-sector powerhouse before its...

In 2008, Greg Minott and co-founder Troy Depeiza launched DREAM Collaborative with a clear conviction: architecture, planning, and real estate development should exist under one roof.  Now, seventeen years later, DREAM stands as Boston's leading minority-owned integrated design and development firm with a portfolio that has transformed neighborhoods across the city.  Greg joins Rens on Design...