Holder Properties Selects Balfour Beatty Construction to Build New Blackbaud Corporate Campus in Charleston, S.C.
Holder Properties, a privately held full-service commercial and residential real estate developer, has selected Balfour Beatty Construction to build a new corporate campus for Blackbaud in Charleston, S.C. Headquartered in Charleston since 1989, Blackbaud is a high-growth provider of software and services for the global philanthropic community.
Blackbaud’s new corporate campus will consolidate its Charleston operations into one location situated on 13 acres in the Daniel Island community. Balfour Beatty has been contracted to build the project’s first phase consisting of a four-story, 172,000-square-foot office building and 650-space surface parking lot. Once complete, Blackbaud’s campus will provide a modern workplace for its employees, featuring a coffee and tea bar, game rooms, ergonomic work stations and bike racks. Further nurturing its employees’ active lifestyles, the campus will include outdoor recreation spaces, a basketball court, bocce ball court and hiking trails.
“We’re honored to be Holder Properties’ construction partner in delivering this state-of-the-art corporate campus for Blackbaud,” said Russ Brockelbank, project executive for Balfour Beatty. “In addition to our past experience working with both Blackbaud and Holder Properties, we have a solid track record of successfully delivering projects in the Charleston market. With great experience delivering innovative corporate office projects for some of the nation’s most culture-focused companies, we are pleased for the opportunity to leverage both our proven local market and national subcontractor relationships to provide maximum value on this project.”
Designed by ASD | SKY to achieve LEED® Certified criteria, the eco-friendly campus will include many sustainable, green building features such as car-charging stations, low energy LED lighting and building materials using low-volatile organic chemicals. Native landscaping and an outdoor garden including fruit trees are planned for the exterior grounds.
As a leading global cloud software company, Blackbaud’s new campus will naturally be high tech with features such as ideation and collaboration spaces outfitted with SMART boards, video conferencing and digital signage to foster employee creativity in support of the company’s innovative culture. The campus will also include a customer technology center designed to help incubate non-profit organizations. The company will also host local students on campus for Camp Blackbaud, its employee-led STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) program.
Balfour Beatty will leverage the latest technologies and lean construction methods to achieve the project’s progressive environmental design. The building will be built using a tilt wall structure with applied finishes such as tile and plaster to enhance the speed of construction and preserve the quality of construction along the way. Technologies will include building information modelling (BIM) software and digital documents will enable the team to access real-time plans on the paperless project.
With site work underway, the first phase of the Blackbaud corporate campus is scheduled for completion in the first quarter 2018.
