1248

BUSINESS NEWS THREE LATITUDE 33 PROJECTS APPROVED IN LESS THAN TWO WEEKS Latitude 33 Planning & Engineering announced the approvals of Merge 56, Pacific Village, and Pacific Highlands Ranch Village Commercial Phase II. The project approvals demonstrate Latitude 33’s ability to effectively work with valued clients and decision makers to achieve its clients’ goals. Latitude 33’s recent planning approvals include: ❚ ❚ Merge 56. This highly anticipated project by Sea Breeze Properties, LLC features more than 500,000 square feet of commercial, office, and retail space; a diverse mix of 242 multifamily residential units (market rate and affordable); single-family homes; and critical public improvements. This 42-acre project was unanimously approved by the city of San Diego Planning Commission on February 22, 2018.

San Diego Planning Commissioner, Doug Austin, FAIA, stated, “I can’t say enough about the character and thoughtfulness behind Merge 56. It’s doing everything right. It’s sustainable, walkable, livable, and affordable. We want more projects like this in San Diego.” ❚ ❚ Pacific Village. Pacific Village by Lennar Homes of CA and Atlantic Pacific is an upcoming 600-unit residential development consisting of 99 single-family homes, 105 triplex homes, 120 townhomes, and 276 apartments, including 60 low-income affordable units. The 41-acre project was approved by the San Diego City Council on March 5, 2018. ❚ ❚ PHR Village Commercial Phase II. This two-acre project by Coast Income includes two commercial buildings and a parking garage. This project was approved by the San Diego City Council on March 5, 2018.

The Latitude 33 Planning team has a broad range of expertise, including residential, mixed-use, biotech/life science, higher education, and suburban infill, among others. Melissa Krause, associate principal at Latitude 33, says, “Because we do both the planning and engineering in-house, we were able to ensure these properties were designed and developed to the best extent possible. We also collaborated with stakeholders and decision makers to ensure we understood the needs of the community to put forth the right project for the region.” Founded in 1993, Latitude 33 Planning & Engineering offers a comprehensive, interdisciplinary approach to design. The firm provides public sector planning, land use planning, public outreach, entitlement services and civil engineering design to public agencies, developers, and property owners.

growth, excellence in marketing, and best places to work several years running. And it starts with us being blessed by having a wonderful list of strong and supportive clients. Some firms may call our issues gold-plated problems to have. Nevertheless, the problems we did have would surely prevent us from continuing to grow; would prevent us from creating a fortress-like balance sheet; would prevent us from growing the value of the firm and creating more opportunities for our team members and clients; would prevent the creation of shareholder value. For me, that was a big problem and it required change. Our team members dealing day-to-day with our organization’s changes may sometimes feel like it’s because of something they did incorrectly. Or that changes being made are some sort of passive-aggressive punishment. That could not be further from the truth. As I’ve explained, because upper management failed, the changes necessary as part of growth were made later than they should have been, so they feel much greater, and perhaps, punitive. The important thing to note is that the changes are correct, and critical to the future success of the organization. After all, those who do not embrace change oftentimes get left behind by it. And we cannot let our firms get left behind. Thankfully, LBJ was correct. If we win tomorrow, nobody will remember yesterday. Because, the lessons we learned yesterday are the reason we’re going to win a lot of tomorrows. WILL SCHNIER is CEO of BIG RED DOG Engineering & Consulting. He can be reached at will.schnier@bigreddog.com. “If we win tomorrow, nobody will remember yesterday. Because, the lessons we learned yesterday are the reason we’re going to win a lot of tomorrows.”

WILL SCHNIER, from page 9

fixing the underlying causes to prevent the same problems from reoccurring. As a result of that, we will surely win a lot of tomorrows. The idea of winning a lot of tomorrows gets me excited to come to work every day. In our case, we had to make institutional changes to how we operate to create growth and increased opportunities (and shareholder returns). It is one of the many responsibilities of the leaders of every A/E firm to create growth and opportunities, perhaps the most important one for a president or CEO. There is an ideal point for creating change when it will cause minimal interruption. As humans, we rarely meet that point exactly. Practically speaking, when change actions come later than they ideally should, it feels like even greater change. Of course, we could ask LBJ about that. For our firm, we had to make changes due to actions, or as was more likely the case, actions not taken in a timely manner, at the top of our organization chart. I want to be very clear that every undesirable issue in our organization could be reasonably identified as a symptom of something that I had done directly, failed to do quickly enough, or had knowingly allowed to occur. That doesn’t mean that there were a lot of problems, in fact there were very few. We had, after all, grown to more than 100 people in less than eight years, won awards for fast “There is an ideal point for creating change when it will cause minimal interruption. As humans, we rarely meet that point exactly. Practically speaking, when change actions come later than they ideally should, it feels like even greater change.”

THE ZWEIG LETTER May 14, 2018, ISSUE 1248

Made with FlippingBook Annual report