Helping to Build Community:
Brookhaven's City Centre
Brookhaven, Georgia
In 2023, Palacio joined the Sizemore Group design team to provide Estimate Review & Reconciliation for Georgia's first mass timber municipal building which is on target to open this summer.
Leveraging our deep municipal project experience, we provided strategic cost reconciliation services that helped honor the community and design vision, while managing all-important project costs.
Introduction
While thousands of new public buildings are constructed each year in the U.S., officials in Brookhaven, GA, met the extraordinary challenge to develop an iconic, community-focused City Centre where the public can gather and engage with their government.
The design team led by the Sizemore Group realized the city’s vision with a modern civic architecture approach to help shape the identity of one of America's newest cities, incorporated in 2012.
​The Brookhaven City Centre mixed-use development, anchored by the Brookhaven City Hall and constructed on a former MARTA parking space, marks a significant milestone for this DeKalb County city of 60,000 residents. The design incorporates mass timber and features a rooftop garden, dome, and terraces. The project is poised to attain LEED and WELL certifications with its transit-oriented proximity to the MARTA station, sustainable materials and construction methods, and significant public accessibility. The Centre will include a coffee shop and retail space, along with an expansive public green space and connectivity to nearby trails.
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Strategic Cost Optimization
Palacio joined the Sizemore team after the design development phase was complete to provide estimate review and reconciliation, helping to carefully analyze costs to keep the project on budget while working to preserve design elements.
Having successfully completed over 40 projects with Sizemore since 2012, Palacio's deep understanding of the firm's design philosophy proved invaluable in reconciling competing cost perspectives with design integrity and stakeholder interests.
Innovative Municipal Development
Given the diversity and volume of projects Palacio works on each year, our team is frequently able to quickly reference similar scope and size buildings to benchmark costs and systems. Integrating cost management expertise invariably helps ensure project success – especially during the initial design phase – and will better align design aspirations with budget constraints.
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“This construction project is not just about bricks and mortar, it’s about building a foundation for a stronger, more vibrant community.”
Brookhaven District 4 Councilman
John J. Funny and Mayor Pro Tempore
​Palacio has provided cost management for more than 340 municipal government projects. We leverage this deep understanding of compliance processes; familiarity with typical municipal building systems, materials, and construction methods; stakeholder requirements, and strategies for value engineering. ​
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​Navigating Green Building Requirements
Although joining later in the design process presented challenges, Palacio drew upon our extensive experience with sustainable building practices to guide critical decision-making as project costs crystallized. Our team's expertise in regional construction costs, including mechanical and electrical systems, enabled our cost managers to identify opportunities for optimization without compromising functionality.
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Review & Reconciliation
The reconciliation process brings stakeholders together to assess the budget/scope relationship and to assure the design team’s vision is accurately and responsibly represented. We worked closely with the Brookhaven design and construction teams to review cost estimates for the building and parking structures, going line by line to provide a comprehensive analysis of the existing cost data’s alignment with our understanding and experience with similar projects.
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Focusing on the scope of work, finish level, and CM pricing, we helped the Sizemore Group target where the least impactful design changes could be made to get costs back on track. Materials choices, specifically the quantity of glazing, were revisited since windows affect the sizing of expensive, previously engineered building systems.
Kathryn Scott, the Sizemore Group's Project Architect said Palacio's contribution "was valuable in helping check the cost and enabling the city to better understand the budget and funding."
As with our previous projects, parallel estimating and reconciliation efforts for Brookhaven was an investment that paid for itself many times over by providing cost control, honoring the community and design vision, while delivering the project within budget.
