Greener Pastures

From outdoor amenity spaces to showpiece rain gardens to a city park celebrating jazz legends, creating extraordinary green space is a priority in many construction projects.

In Baltimore City, the Nathaniel J. McFadden Learn and Play Park is a key element in the transformative Somerset Homes redevelopment. Although the site is just one acre, it includes play and exercise equipment, a pavilion, an amphitheater, grassy areas, walkways and lines of trees.

Extensive communication with area residents helped the developers and design team shape the park to reflect community needs and local culture.

“It’s a pretty exceptional space,” said Kristen Gedeon, Senior Associate at MK Consulting Engineers. MK provided site/civil engineering, planning and project coordination services. “The park honors great jazz musicians from Baltimore, so we incorporated a lot of artwork into the design. We worked with artists from MICA (the Maryland Institute College of Art) to create a mural and three metal sculpture silhouettes. We also have the Jazz Walk – a sidewalk that has a mural painted on it to show different jazz icons.”

In total, the project budget included more than $1 million for art acquisitions.

The park was designed around universal access principles “so it works for people under seven and over 70,” Gedeon said.

It also included CPTED (Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design) measures and created an ecological asset on the previously developed site by completing urban soil restoration, a reforesting plan and other measures that improved stormwater management.

Spectacular parks on tight sites

Constructing the park presented some challenges.

“The park is right in the middle of a number of big buildings and it had a ton of elements on it. There were brick pavers, special soils, sod, playground equipment, benches and trees all the way up and down the streets,” said Michael Martin, President of Live Green Landscape Associates.

In addition to working on a tight site, crews had to contend with complex underground conditions while excavating and remediating soil.

“There were abandoned steam tunnels and utilities in the ground – gas lines, electric lines, fiber optic and telephone lines, stormwater management and water lines,” Martin said. “It’s ungodly what’s in the ground.”

Heightened efforts to create new green spaces within the city has presented other project teams with ambitious goals and challenging conditions.

At the edge of the harbor, a team lead by Plano-Coudon Construction is currently building Phase II of the reimaged Rash Field. The design for the five-acre site includes beach volleyball courts, pickleball courts, a field fitness area with exercise equipment, a multi-use lawn, gardens and walkways.

“It also features a pre-manufactured shade structure system which is coming from a manufacturer in the Netherlands,” said Ben Banbury, Senior Project Manager. “It has interlaced components that will come out over a large amphitheater and it will have integrated lighting and conduit pathways.”

In addition to tackling that complex construction, crews are dealing with grading challenges. “Key Highway is at a pretty high elevation and you are working all the way from there down to the harbor,” said Colin Sutch, Project Engineer. “We will be creating land terraces with granite benches and completing pretty intricate grading.”

Crews are also working 20 feet from the harbor which makes the installation of new stormwater management structures especially difficult.

“But any time you can create a multi-use green space in a city like Baltimore, that’s a really rewarding project,” Banbury said. “It’s obviously a very egalitarian space and you know that generations of people will enjoy this space long after we build it.”

Green amenities and lush plantings

Attractive green spaces have also become a priority on most multi-family developments and some institutional projects.

“Multi-family projects are extremely prevalent, and these communities have a tremendous amount of amenities,” Martin said.

That market desire has reshaped landscaping requirements in several ways.

“Synthetic turf is a huge trend. I can’t think of a project in quite a while where we haven’t used synthetic turf,” he said.

The material is used in rooftop gardens, dog parks and around community pools. In some multi-family and mixed-use developments, high-end synthetic turf is also used to create lawns in common areas. For example, Live Green recently installed 6,000 square feet of synthetic turf at the center of Hunt Valley Towne Centre to create a durable and perpetually attractive surface for summer concerts, the Christmas tree lighting and other community events.

Other trends are channeling more focus and project dollars into beautiful and expansive plantings.

More clients, Martin said, have started requesting improved soil mixes in planters and planting beds after realizing those soils produce more vigorous and attractive vegetation.

Meanwhile, the trend in stormwater management has moved away from large SWM facilities to numerous micro bioretention ponds. This has greatly expanded the number of plants installed on some projects.

“Big projects will have 40 micro bio-ponds. They’re big versions of rain gardens,” he said. “They will have special soil mixes and every pond gets special planting, and they’re beautiful. We could put 50,000 plants – all kinds of flowering perennials – into the bio-ponds in just one development.”

Some multi-family projects, such as Boulden at Southfields in Elkton, use those lushly planted bioretention ponds to create the highlights of their community’s landscaping.

To enable residents to get out and enjoy these enhanced green spaces, clients are also budgeting more for site furniture, such as Adirondack chairs, benches, grilling stations, tables and trash receptacles.

“We do a tremendous amount of site furniture on all these jobs now,” Martin said. “We’re doing a job right now at the University of Maryland Leonardtown. It’s student housing but there are massive courtyards with special soils and brick pavers. And the site furniture package alone for that project is $500,000. It’s going to be a tremendous space.”

Thank you to the BC&E member companies that contributed to this story: MK Consulting Engineers, Live Green Landscape Associates and Plano-Coudon Construction.

Strategies to Combat Rising Rents

Flex and warehouse rents in Greater Baltimore have risen faster than many contractors expect, and the surprise usually hits at lease renewal. For years, market rents increased by roughly 3% annually, which felt manageable for most. The problem is that fair market rents have moved higher, much faster.

Here is a simple example. A company leasing space at $6 per SF with a 3% annual increase would expect to be paying about $6.95 per SF after five years. Instead, many are now seeing market rents closer to $12 per SF. That is a $6 per SF increase overall. On a 5,000 SF space, that is an additional $30,000 per year. On a 15,000 SF space, it is $90,000 per year. That pain is real and it often shows up all at once.

What business owners need to know: start planning at least 12 months before your lease expires, reassess your space needs, understand true relocation costs, and test the market before renewal conversations begin.

Michael Singer is the Co-Founder of Singer Damareck Real Estate and a 25+ year veteran of tenant representation. He advises business owners and C-suite executives throughout the greater Baltimore metropolitan area on property strategy and negotiation, with a singular focus on protecting tenant interests. Michael can be reached at mike@singerdamareck.com

Mixed market conditions demand heightened business savvy

From sluggish growth projections to the data center boom to debates about the impacts of tariffs, interest rates and labor shortages, the construction industry is heading into a complex market in 2026.

So, what are some of the biggest market forces that BC&E members expect to contend with this year? And what best business practices are they employing to thrive in the year ahead?

“The market is stable with a strong demand for infrastructure, data centers, healthcare and public works,” Mark Rich, President of Baltimore Fabrication said. “However, owners are being more selective. Value engineering comes into play, which makes award cycles a little longer.”

Many clients, however, are shifting their contracting practices to contend with market conditions, including the “stabilized” but historically high price for steel and uncertainties around securing power for data centers and other large projects.

“There has been a noticeable improvement in early collaboration,” Rich said. “Engaging us sooner contributes to better budgeting, enhanced constructability and more efficient sequencing, ultimately strengthening the project’s overall outcome.”

Material prices, labor shortages and supply chain challenges have compressed margins, so Baltimore Fabrication has focused its pursuit of new contracts to increasingly prioritize “alignment over volume,” Rich said. “The wrong type of work can spread you too thin.”

The company, he added, is focusing its bidding practices on “risk factors, scope and schedule, constructability, the type of project and is the job site open and accessible. If it is constrained or has obstacles, that impacts the crane price. Also, when we are bidding a large steel project, we are getting price protection from the mills.”

The region’s construction market has been “steady but different,” said John Prusak, General Manager – Maryland, Delaware, DC/Northern Virginia & Harrisburg, PA Markets at Johnson Controls.

Clients are moving forward with significant numbers of large and small projects, but few mid-budget jobs.

Furthermore, “there is pressure on budgets for projects from whatever hangovers there are from tariffs and obviously by the cost of labor,” he said.

Mindful of the challenges posed by labor costs and shortages, Johnson Controls is “constantly recruiting talent. We are recruiting through the community college programs, various trade schools and by being active in higher ed and high school environments,” Prusak said.

The company is looking to address labor needs through “deployment of AI technology,” he said. “We have more intelligent equipment and smart devices, so maybe we can provide remote services to connected equipment. If we can diagnose and triage an issue remotely and not have to roll a truck, that can help manage the labor pool challenge and deliver cost savings for the customer.”

Gray & Son has also been navigating mixed market conditions. The data center, healthcare and public school construction sectors have been solid, but road and residential construction have been “very weak, particularly in the Baltimore metro area,” said Rick Scheetz, CEO and President of Gray & Son.

“Pricing for materials and equipment has leveled out. This has helped with pricing stability and margins,” he said. “As interest rates ease, we should see more activity in mixed-use and residential projects.”

The company has a good backlog of work and a “consistent flow of jobs to bid,” Scheetz said. “We are stretching our market area outside of Maryland and that is paying good dividends.”

To thrive within those conditions, Gray & Son is dutifully following “standard procedures and consistent processes,” he said. “We are metric driven. Understanding the bid and making sure we know where we are daily versus the bid has driven extraordinary success.”

For Rosendin Electric, the market in Maryland and surrounding states is currently “very healthy,” with ample construction projects in healthcare and data centers, and equipment modernization projects in various sectors, according to Dimitri Kontos, Division Manager at Rosendin Electric.

He anticipates work opportunities will increase further in the coming years, partly due to the implementation of NFPA 70B — a regulation by the National Fire Protection Association that mandates Electrical Maintenance Programs (EMPs) in commercial, industrial and large residential facilities.

To keep up with that demand and serve clients well, Rosendin follows two key business practices.

To guard against pricing issues, “we keep very strong relationships with a lot of vendors. We check in with them weekly or bi-weekly to see what prices are fluctuating and make sure they know what work we have coming up so they can notify us when they feel prices are about to change,” Kontos said.

To fully serve clients, Rosendin conducts “quarterly reviews with some clients to see what their portfolio needs look like,” he said.

Rosendin has also switched from a 12-month to a rolling, 36-month planning cycle to match the long-term planning processes of many clients. “If we have that long view of upcoming projects, we can also partner with union halls to help organize people.”

Thank you to the BC&E member companies that contributed to this story: Baltimore Fabrication, Gray & Son, Johnson Controls and Rosendin Electric.

Meet the 2026 BC&E Leadership

The beginning of a new year brings a new BC&E Board of Directors. The following directors were unanimously approved during the October 2025 election. They began their new terms on January 1. 

EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE
President
Jeff Hossfeld, The Whiting-Turner Contracting Company

Vice President
Thomas Koch, Plano-Coudon Construction

Treasurer
Marianne Crampton, MK Consulting Engineers, LLC

Secretary
John Gregg, GWWO Architects

Member At Large
Jonathan Goetz, Oak Contracting, LLC

DIRECTORS
Schyler Bailey, Shulman Rogers
Tim Campbell, Clark Construction Group, LLC
Chris Eisenhart, Gray & Son, Inc.
Rick Kottke, Harkins Builders
R. Nelson Oster, HMS Insurance Associates, Inc.
Mark Rich, Baltimore Fabrication
Emily Sales, Design Collective, Inc.
Ricky Venters, Hartman Executive Advisors
Dennis Walsh, Floors Etc
Louis Westermeyer, Windsor Electric Company 
Ted Bowes, Excell Concrete Construction, LLC (Immediate Past President)

BC&E Welcomes New Members & Bronze-level Partners

Gross, Mendelsohn & Associates are CPAs and consultants with a passion for helping businesses, nonprofits and families through coordinated accounting, tax, business, technology and financial advisory solutions.

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The Weber Group is a professional services firm that works with business owners, families (on a multi-generational basis), and individuals to provide guidance and strategies that help grow wealth, protect assets, and pass wealth on to future generations.

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New Bronze-level Partners

Cenero LLC is BC&E’s newest Bronze Partner. Cenero is a solutions provider for audio visual, unified communications and IT services. Cenero offers design-build services as well as systems management support, including proactive services, analytics and staffing.

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Temp Air Company – an HVAC, plumbing, and mechanical contracting company – recently upgraded its membership to become a Bronze Partner.

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Worcester Eisenbrandt, which specializes in the repair and conservation of highly significant structures that require knowledge and experience in the treatment of historic building materials, also upgraded from long-time member to a Bronze Partner.

TAI, WBCM expand services with merger

A recent merger is creating new opportunities for TAI Construction to provide a broader range of services to a longer list of clients.

The company was formed through the merger of WBCM Construction with the construction management division of TAI, an Owings Mills-based engineering firm.

Principals of the two companies, which had worked together on projects for more than a decade, realized a merger could create significant growth potential.

“The type of engineering they do is a great fit for the type of construction we do,” said Mike Baker, former President of WBCM Construction and now President of TAI Construction. “By bringing these two businesses together we become a powerhouse in the industrial construction field.”

The merger expands TAI’s ability to deliver design-build and general contracting services across multiple markets, including industrial, food and beverage, chemical processing, pharmaceutical and life sciences, advanced manufacturing, power generation, commercial, government and mission critical.

The new company which is headquartered in Baltimore and has access to TAI offices across the country, can also expand services to clients through TAI’s other divisions. They include specialty construction and inhouse rosters of electricians, ironworkers and pipefitters.   

In this brief: TAI Construction, WBCM Construction

Dealing with tariffs and supply chain issues

Changing tariffs and shifting conditions in the supply chain have created challenges for construction companies over the past year.

At BC&E’s “New Realities of Construction” webinar in December, Bill Cole, President of Cole Roofing and Gordian Energy Systems; Jerry Taylor, Vice President of Sales and Estimating at Baltimore Fabrication; Daniel Hefter, Senior Estimator at Harkins Builders; and moderator Peter Loftus, Principal at CLA discussed how to best contend with tariffs, materials pricing and other supply chain challenges.

• Conduct “radically candid conversations” with all parties in construction projects – owners, GCs, subcontractors and suppliers. Honest, ongoing and detailed conversations are essential to identifying possible pricing and scheduling issues, and to negotiating acceptable ways of sharing risk.
• Stay flexible and focus on solutions. Changes in prices or lead times may be mitigated by value engineering, bulk purchases, early releases, expanded storage, sending your own trucks to retrieve material, or arrangements that provide select trades with additional resources.
• Finetune your estimating and bidding practices. Deepen your relationships and information sharing with suppliers, and maintain a data warehouse to provide accurate, real-time pricing. If volatile prices necessitate an escalation clause in a bid, spell it out rather than using that escalated price as your bid. A lower price plus a clear escalation clause will make you more competitive and give the GC an opportunity to properly assess the financial risk.

In this brief: Baltimore Fabrication, CLA, Cole Roofing, Gordian Energy Systems and Harkins Builders.

Blue Line Civic Plaza

The Civic Plaza project in Largo challenged the design-build team from Design Collective and J. Vinton Schafer Construction to meet multiple, lofty goals.

Part of Prince George’s County’s Blue Line Corridor revitalization strategy, the site needed to become a vibrant, inclusive, multi-use community destination that could support everything from large festivals, farmers markets and public protests to low-key, everyday recreational use. It would have to include a large lawn and stage, an outdoor game area, a children’s playground, a dog park and a butterfly garden.

And Largo residents had firm ideas about how the new plaza should look.

“We went through a public engagement process and the public was very clear that they didn’t want a traditional open space,” said Brian Reetz, Principal at Design Collective. “They wanted something that was art-focused and represented the community.”

Early financial analysis concluded it would be impossible to fit all the desired structures and amenities within the budget using conventional designs and products. So, the project team embraced a “tactical urbanism” approach — a lower cost and often art-based process of creating dynamic public spaces.

Rather than investing in decorative pavers, the team contracted an artist to create a huge ground mural. The bold, abstract composition of blues, greens and purples would flow across walkways, patios, play spaces and part of the adjacent parking lot.

Early in the design process, the team color-coordinated the mural with custom structures that would be crafted for the plaza.

There is the Osprey Structure “that provides shade and has a unique shape. This was designed and fabricated in Arizona,” said Anthony Vaughn, Senior Project Manager at J. Vinton Schafer Construction.

There was custom playground equipment and “pavilions with colored acrylic panels and swings,” Vaughn said. “These all had very long lead times to design, fabricate, custom paint and deliver to the site from Kalamazoo, Michigan. The design and fabrication for these started prior to the remainder of the plaza being finalized due to the lead times.”

There was also the Free Speech Stage with its irregularly shaped, heavily textured and aqua-colored “frame.”

“The plaza is beside the Wayne K. Curry Administration Building so the idea was to create a location for Instagrammable moments,” Reetz said. “We have the free speech frame on the stage. There’s also a peace sign, a handshake symbol, a power-to-the-people symbol to create a mood in a public setting where government is involved. This becomes a recognizable location where television crews can set up and people may gather to protest issues.”

Limited to a one-acre site, the design-build team also maximized the project’s use of space. Part of an existing parking lot was covered in lawn but a traffic cut-through was added to enable the local farmers market to use a section of the remaining parking space.

Thank you to the BC&E member companies that contributed to this story: Design Collective and J. Vinton Schafer Construction.

Craftsmen deliver the finishing touches

From installing luxury floors in a 200-year-old building to creating a stone masterpiece beside a hospital’s emergency department, winners of the Craftsmanship Awards delivered exceptional finishes in challenging conditions.

The Visitation Hotel project transformed an 1824 Catholic girls’ school and former Civil War hospital into a boutique hotel in downtown Frederick.

Although the team from Carpet Fair Commercial Flooring knew that creating spectacular floors throughout the 139,500-square-foot building would be a big job, they couldn’t know how complicated it would be.

Workers discovered approximately 20,000 square feet of uneven subfloors, fragile joists and irregular structural supports, including “joist spacing that ranged anywhere from 12 to 28 inches” and joists that changed directions in parts of the building, said Ana Steinberg, Account Manager at Carpet Fair.

In those challenging conditions, the Carpet Fair crew had to perfectly install 22,500 square feet of broadloom carpet, 1,200 linear feet of custom runners on six refurbished staircases, and 3,200 square feet of specialty finishes on back-of-house concrete floors. They had to restore and feather in 12,500 square feet of hardwood floor. And they had to devise ways to install new, high-end, ceramic tile floors over historic hardwood.

“We had to work with an engineer on the tolerance for movement of the substrate so that there could be normal expansion and contraction of the hardwood but also a solid substrate for ceramic tile that could meet warranty requirements,” Steinberg said.

Tile was being installed at numerous locations around the building to create bathrooms for each hotel room. However, different areas of the building had very different substrate conditions.

“Every room became a bespoke solution,” she said. “We worked with multiple systems and multiple manufacturers to create additional substrates over historic hardwood, using cementitious substrates, various liquid membranes, moisture infiltration systems and tapes to create crack-suppression systems.”

The Carpet Fair team did more intensive coordination with framers and other subcontractors than on any previous project, Steinberg said. But that effort created “a fully modernized building with elegant finishes that created a beautiful feeling.”

The Mandy and Dennis Weinman Cancer Center Building at Sinai Hospital also required exceptional finish work but presented a very different range of challenges to craftspeople.

The team from Henry J. Knott Masonry was tasked with crafting a key architectural feature – a 3,500-square-foot expanse of Jerusalem stone that would bring natural beauty to the façade and entrance.

The stone, however, had to be installed across multiple elevations, each presenting challenges.

The southwest elevation included an exterior stairway and the stonework would have to follow the pitch of the stairs. On that side of the building, masons would also have to work right up against the drive lane to the hospital’s Emergency Department (ED).

Maneuvering the telescopic forklift around the work area and through the ED lane without impacting the flow of ambulances and hospital personnel required traffic control and a skilled lift operator to get materials to the scaffolding.

The north elevation included a radius retaining wall so masons would have to segment stone blocks to create that radius.

The Henry J. Knott team leveraged their combined 80 years of masonry experience to overcome each challenge and deliver an exquisite stone installation.

Through planning, careful cutting and fitting, they ensured the design pattern was executed proportionally on each course. And when a potentially catastrophic four-inch bust occurred through the width of an entire wall, they developed a new joint layout that resolved the problem and procured replacement stone without delaying the project.

Teams master mass timber building and academic center

Some projects step beyond construction norms and require project teams to fulfill extraordinary requirements.

The Under Armour Teammate Building 2 Corporate Headquarters stands out as probably the largest and most complex project Windsor Electric Company has completed in its 70-year history.

“Of all the work we’ve done, I think this is our crown jewel,” said Louis Westermeyer, Vice President-Director of Estimating Services, who has been with the firm for 27 years.

An iconic, mass timber, net zero building, the Under Armour project required BIM Level 450, “which means we had to BIM model everything — every pipe, every conduit, every hanger, every light, every outlet, everything,” Westermeyer said.

Responsible for the rough ins for multiple trades, Windsor Electric also had to model all branch lighting and power, light fixtures and controls, mechanical power, feeders, fire systems and conduits for security, AV, PV and Tele-Dat.

Windsor Electric’s crew would have to install 300,000 linear feet (57 miles) of conduit, 65 distinct types of light fixtures and 5,300 interior lights in total. And those installations had to be flawless.

“It’s a mass timber building made from timber brought over from Austria,” Westermeyer said. “The minute they set any of that wood, you are looking at finished product — the finished wooden deck that will be your ceiling.”

Installers needed to follow the BIM model exactly to avoid any errant holes and to achieve the high aesthetic requirements. So, Windsor Electric equipped its installers with Trimbles to complete layouts digitally. On every floor of the building, it also established data vaults – computers with large monitors where crews could check the project model and retrieve essential details.

The team also installed a dramatic exterior lighting package that included 260 site light fixtures, a massive exterior LED sign that required its own 400 panel, and exterior illumination of the entire front of the building which can change colors to celebrate sports teams, holidays or other events.

“The exterior illumination is the focal point of the building,” Westermeyer said. “You can see it as you drive up I-95. Every time I pass it, I’m just in awe.”

The new Martin Luther King Jr. Center at Bowie State University presented Snap-Wall with a different set of extraordinary requirements.

The building’s bold architectural vision included murals of King and Lieutenant Richard Collins that tower up to 30 feet tall.

Snap-Wall was responsible for obtaining and installing the murals which were etched into massive felt panels. The project schedule, however, meant that walls would not be complete by the time the murals had to be ordered. The team combined mid-construction field measurements with its deep expertise in panel installations to perfectly manage the creation and installation of the signature artworks.

An expansive and artistic plan for acoustical panels in the building’s large auditorium presented several more challenges.

“With a space that large, managing the work was tough, especially with height and weight limitations, a tight schedule, strict manufacturer requirements, and multiple trades all working in the same area,” said Drew Wilson, Estimator/Project Manager.

The Snap-Wall crew would need to bring in large scaffolding to complete installations on two wing walls on either side of the stage. The auditorium’s flooring and seating, however, would prohibit scaffolding in the area.

To complete the installation and meet the project schedule, Snap-Wall arranged to follow on the heels of the drywall crew so they could temporarily bring in a scaffold and complete the wing walls while drywalling and other finishes continued elsewhere around the auditorium. They took precautions to protect the finished paneling from construction dust, and then continued the difficult, exacting installation around the room by working from lifts.

“The panels come on rolls about 30 feet long and three feet wide. They are glued to the wall, so we had to spray the wall and spray the panel, wait a few minutes for everything to get tacky and then start adhering it to the wall,” Wilson said.

The process was cumbersome and made more complex by the fact that the walls were taller than 30 feet. The Snap-Wall team knew that having a horizontal seam running across the installed panels would not be attractive. So, they staggered the lengths of panels installed in order to create a seamless appearance and a beautiful arrangement of the panels’ bold, multi-colored stripes.