The last seven months

garyl62

garyl62

Active member
Some of you know I'm a project manager for a substance abuse, mental health organization. About one year ago we had the opportunity to sell one of our main buildings in an area of town that we wanted to move out of. The problem was we didn't have a place to move the 100 employees that see 5,500 clients a year in that current building. In January of this year we purchased a 44,000 grocery store that had been vacant for 3 years. We started gutting the building, hired an architect, held focus groups, and designed a building in two months. We then went out to bid and hired a general contractor to being construction in late April. Seven months later we have completed an $8 million building. Last week we held some open houses, worked on punch lists then this past weekend we moved all the files, charts and other paperwork related to all those employees and clients so on Monday we could open the doors to clients. It was an amazing process to manage and oversee with a great team of co-workers and contractors that happened so quickly none of us could believe it. Here is a link for a video that our marketing department put out that shows a snapshot of the process that we went though this past year.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqHTm1qQ7EM&feature=youtu.be
 
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blkhwkbob

Active member
Damn that's nice. I work for a Village in Illinois and I can honestly say that that would have taken at least twice as long, been twice as expensive, and ended up being a complete piece of crap had it been a government job.
 
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catalac

Active member
That is awesome! Must feel good to walk in those doors and say you had your hands on this from the start. Nice.
 
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Deleted member 10829

Guest
Pretty neat to watch the transformation! Glad to see it all went so well and it turned out beautiful. Well done Gary!
 
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t_man

New member
Gary,

Congratulations on your success! I spent most of my career in corporate real estate and understand the leadership and effort required to pull of such a project, especially on such a short timeline.

Also, thank you for being part of the substance abuse and mental health support network. I don't know anyone who hasn't been touched by those issues and feel our country does not have a good overall support strategy to assist those in need.

I also have a decent sense of the unique challenges and frustrations of supporting that community. It takes strong and passionate people to do the work.

Thanks for sharing!

T_man
 
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