CHARLOTTE, N.C.—DLR Group CEO Griff Davenport has announced the acquisition of Charlotte-based healthcare design firm Wright McGraw Beyer Architects (WMBA). DLR Group established its Charlotte office in 2016 and provides K-12 Education, Higher Education, Performing Arts, Sports, and Workplace design for public and private clients in the region. WMBA and DLR Group will merge operations to create a 45-person Charlotte office.

Founded in 1996, WMBA practices solely in healthcare, specializing in the planning, design, and interiors for acute care facilities, ambulatory surgery centers, behavioral health, bio-medical centers, and medical office buildings for health systems across the Southeast. In Charlotte, WMBA has delivered multiple projects for both Atrium Health and Novant Health.

“A fundamental part of DLR Group’s growth strategy is adding firms with a focused design expertise in markets where we have an established DLR Group office,” said Davenport. “Our Charlotte office is experiencing rapid growth in K-12, Higher Education, and Workplace. Adding WMBA and an established healthcare practice to the office enables us to develop a significant footprint in one of the nation’s fastest growing metropolitan areas.”

Founders Todd McGraw, NCARB, and John Beyer, AIA, will join DLR Group as Principals, along with Studio Director Damian Huneycutt, AIA, and Director of Interior Design Wendy Ferlisi, NCIDQ and continue to lead the office’s healthcare design practice, which will operate as DLR Group | WMBA.

The staff of WMBA will relocate to DLR Group’s office in the Refinery Building at 1213 West Morehead Street in the 3rd Ward’s Wesley Heights neighborhood before year end.

The Charlotte office will provide clients an array of integrated design services including planning; architecture; structural, electrical, and mechanical engineering; and interior design. WMBA clients will also have access to a depth of design expertise – laboratory planning, clean room design, acoustics, lighting, high performance design, and more, as part of DLR Group.

“We firmly believe the expertise of WMBA, coupled with DLR Group’s Healthcare studio and the depth of design services within DLR Group makes us more competitive for the large-scale projects we want to pursue,” said McGraw. “We are getting scale with the resources that DLR Group brings to the table. We are no longer a boutique, 28-person firm. We are DLR Group with a great depth of expertise and resources behind us to enhance services for our healthcare clients.”

DLR Group is a 100% employee-owned firm and all WMBA employees will have the opportunity to purchase stock in DLR Group during the firm’s annual stock exchange. This employee-ownership opportunity was a key factor in WMBA’s decision as it provides a proven method for ownership transition to ensure the firm’s legacy of healthcare design.

WMBA’s work in the Charlotte area includes the Atrium Health—Pineville Bedtower Addition, Atrium Health—Cabarrus Bedtower Addition, and Octapharma AG North American Headquarters. DLR Group work in Charlotte includes Jerry Richardson Stadium at UNC Charlotte, restoration of the 1927 Carolina Theater at Belk Place, the Charlotte office of Octagon, and the current renovation of the Durham Bulls Athletic Park.

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CHARLOTTE, N.C.—Stance Healthcare, a furniture designer and manufacturer specializing in general healthcare and Behavioral Health settings, has opened a new showroom and design collaborative in Uptown Charlotte, N.C. The 6,000-square-foot space featuring the 2019 Nightingale GOLD Award-winning company’s Behavioral Health and general healthcare products is a new approach to the traditional furniture showroom—designed to also be a working space where designers, healthcare facility decision-makers, and Behavioral Health thought leaders meet, learn, and collaborate.

Set just 15 minutes from Charlotte Douglas International Airport, the showroom solidifies Stance Healthcare’s presence as an industry leader in the U.S.

“This design collaborative is a natural extension of Stance Healthcare’s mission to create more healing environments through the spaces we furnish,” said Suzanne Fawley, Stance Healthcare’s Behavioral Health designer. “We want anyone who visits the space to leave empowered with not only product knowledge about Stance Healthcare’s lines, but also the insights and best practices that will continue to transform the healthcare experience – from the waiting area to patient rooms – across the country.”

Stance Healthcare envisions the space, which is currently open by appointment only for safety reasons, to be utilized post-COVID 19 and in the long-term as a highly collaborative “open door” gathering place for healthcare industry decision makers and influencers. The first-of-its-kind showroom will offer designers, healthcare facility planners, and Behavioral Health and wellness experts a space to collaborate on projects in progress; receive education – including Continuing Education Unit (CEU) accredited courses – on the latest industry best practices; and obtain one-on-one counsel from in-house experts regarding individual Behavioral Health and other healthcare spaces in progress. Following the eventual loosening of COVID-19 capacity restrictions, the Stance Healthcare team also has plans to host a speaker series in the space that rotates healthcare-related subject matter. Future topics for the speaker series, tentatively slated to launch in mid-2021, will include mental health, wellness, and Behavioral Health trends and insights, among others.

The showroom opens on the heels of back-to-back award-winning seasons that preceded 2020, a year marked by challenge and innovation for the family-owned company. Notably, two months into the global onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Stance Healthcare announced a new fabric partnership in May 2020 that brought coronavirus-fighting fabrics to North America. This announcement came just 9 months after winning Healthcare Design’s Nightingale GOLD Award for the Frontier line, a bedroom collection for Behavioral Health settings, just two years after taking home the same honor for Stance Healthcare’s Resilia drum table collection.

Offering the industry’s largest selection of Behavioral Health-specified furniture, Stance Healthcare’s rotationally molded products feature rounded corners and are manufactured with naturally pick-proof materials for patients experiencing Behavioral Health treatment. Meanwhile, their solid surface side tables and metal chairs provide highly cleanable and comfortable options for a waiting room and other general areas of a healthcare facility.

Founded in 2006, Stance Healthcare manufactures furniture for healing environments, with a particular focus on hospitals and behavioral health facilities.

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HICKORY, N.C.—Healthcare real estate player Flagship Healthcare Properties has extended its holdings in the Tarheel State with yet another acquisition, this time three medical office buildings (MOB) totaling nearly 90,000 square feet of medical use space.  The property is located in Hickory, which is about 60 miles north of downtown Charlotte, where Flagship’s operations are based.

Flagship purchased the trio of MOBs through its subsidiary, Flagship Healthcare Trust, which is the company’s private real estate investment arm.  Flagship will provide property management and asset management services as the buildings’ brand-new owner.

The trio of MOBs currently has an overall occupancy of 96 percent, Flagship announced, with such long-standing tenants including the Veteran’s Administration Hickory Outpatient Clinic, which caters to the primary and specialized care for veterans in the area.  Other tenants at the MOBs include A Woman’s View, whose specialties include obstetrics and gynecology, as well as laboratory services.  Among the other healthcare tenants are the offices of Frye Regional Medical Center, which is owned by Duke LifePoint Healthcare.  Frye’s offices at the MOB in Hickory provide patient care in subspecialties such as behavioral health, internal medicine and pulmonary services.

In a statement regarding the acquisition, Gerald Quattlebaum, executive vice president of acquisitions at Flagship, said that his firm is thrilled to be increasing its share of the healthcare sector in the firm’s “home market” of the greater Charlotte region.

“Hickory has a strong healthcare market that serves a sizable population in the northwest area of North Carolina,” Quattlebaum said.  “These medical office properties are ideally situated in close proximity to important hospital services and surrounding patient populations.”

Financing for the deal was made possible by First Horizon Bank.

Flagship’s private real estate investment trust, Flagship Healthcare Trust, Inc., maintains ownership of 1.6 million square feet of healthcare assets at over 60 properties, with a collective value of some $450 million, the firm announced.  Other properties the firm has recently acquired in North Carolina include an ambulatory surgery center, also in Hickory, as well as a surgery center in Charlotte.

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CHARLOTTE, N.C.—General contractor Brasfield & Gorrie, founded in 1964 and based in Birmingham, Ala., has begun constructing a pair of state-of-the-art Atrium Health medical office buildings and a nine-level parking deck set amid the Pappas Properties Midtown development, which is located at Kenilworth Avenue and Harding Place in Charlotte.  

Pappas Properties, founded in 1999 and based in the “Queen City,” develops and manages residential and mixed-used projects, according to their website.  The firm has developed many similar properties in the greater Charlotte area, including in the neighborhoods of Birkdale, Sharon Square and Midtown.  The firm also provides asset management and consulting services to various client firms.

“The Pappas Properties team is excited to work with Brasfield & Gorrie in delivering these state-of-the-art facilities as an outstanding foundation to our mixed-use campus,” CEO and president of Pappas Properties Peter A. Pappas said in a statement. “This campus will be further developed in phases and include additional medical, residential, hotel, and restaurant uses that will further amenitize the site.”

Brasfield & Gorrie, one of the country’s biggest privately held general contractors, has over 3,000 employees spread across 12 offices countrywide. 

“We commend Pappas Properties for their long-term vision for this noteworthy development,” Brasfield & Gorrie Vice President and Division Manager Michael Byrd said in a statement.  “Their incorporation and revitalization of Pearl Street Park will create a live/work/play environment in a new part of our city.

“We are also honored to build on our long history with Atrium Health as they demonstrate their continued commitment to Charlotte through these new facilities.”

The twin medical offices will be connected by a four-level pedestrian bridge.

The project is slated for completion in the third quarter of 2020.

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The system is designed so that users can move their hands from left to right, starting with a touchless soap dispenser, moving to a touchless faucet and finishing with the high-efficiency, dual-sided hand dryer. As a result, users don’t have to move from the station to look for soap or towels — eliminating water splashing and the possibility of a patient slipping. Plus, the design guarantees that water goes down the drain, as opposed to on the floor or down the walls.

It is the greenest lavatory system available in the market, according to Bradley, with a 0.38 GPM flow faucet, low-power hand dryer and Terreon recycled solid surface, which is Greenguard certified as low-emitting material. Additional accessories available for the Advocate Lavatory System are a paper towel dispenser, waste receptacle and storage cabinet.

Its all-in-one features allow for users to have their own personal space in public; however, each component can be separately replaced if any individual part of the system ever fails.

Since the product launch, it has won several awards, including the 2012 Product Innovation Award from Architectural Products magazine and platinum-level Award for Design Excellence from Design Journal magazine.

“Receiving the platinum-level ADEX award is a true honor, as well as an affirmation of Bradley’s exclusive all-in-one design for the new Advocate Lavatory System,” said Jon Dommisse, director of global marketing and strategic development for Bradley, in a press release statement. “We take pride in the fact that our washroom products — most recently the Advocate Lav System — continue to meet the highest design standards while incorporating product features that matter most to architects and building owners. We are thrilled that the innovation, sustainability, comfort, convenience and safety features of this new product have all struck a chord with the architectural community.”

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