Bayley Construction was the general contractor for the Riverside County Administration building in California.

Premier Business Partners:

Bomel Construction WA Rasic Construction Co. Inc. Columbia Steel Commercial Scaffolding Demcon Concrete Excel Rentals & Services

Bayley Construction has been an established entity in Southern California for more than 20 years, and the company boasts some of most experienced personnel in the region, according to Vice President Mark Florer. “The average tenure of our employees is more than 10 years,” Florer says. “Our project managers have over 10-plus years and our superintendents have 15-years-plus. We hire our project managers out of school and train them in the way we conduct business. Our superintendents come up through the trades. Then we’ll bring them up through the ranks.”

Robert E. Bayley founded Bayley Construction in 1963 in Seattle, and the company soon established itself with a diverse project focus, quality work and a team of people committed to integrity and professionalism. The company maintains headquarters on Mercer Island, Wash., near Seattle and has had an office in Santa Ana, Calif., since 1985. It opened its San Diego office two-and-a-half years ago.

Today, Bayley Construction’s expertise is in the retail sector. The company cut its teeth as the exclusive contractor for Nordstrom’s department store, which led it into other parts of the country, including California.

Florer, who works out of the Santa Ana office, took time to speak with Construction Today about succeeding in the Southern California region, the changing construction market and the company’s work with the Anaheim GardenWalk project.

Construction Today: What prompted the addition of the San Diego office?
Mark Florer: We found that when pursuing work in San Diego, there is a “good-old boys” network. Unless you have an office established down there, we wouldn’t get preferred subcontractor proposals. Brandon Etnyre, another vice president, is responsible for overseeing that particular office, and he has grown it into substantial office similar to the Santa Ana office, in Orange County [Calif.].     

CT: How is the construction market changing?
MF: We’ve seen projects delayed, but with the clients we work with, they are not being cancelled. We see that as a positive.

With the delays, we’ve decided to pursue public projects that require bidders to be pre-qualified based on experience

CT: How has that worked out?
MF: We’ve successfully qualified for most of the opportunities we pursued.  We have an excellent portfolio and we are now just beginning to see results.

CT: What separates Bayley Construction from the competition?
MF: We have top-notch personnel, and we foster the teamwork spirit. We try to give individuals a little freedom under a structured system. The personnel we hire are very eager to take the ball and run with it.

CT: What type of training do you offer?
MF: Safety is a major priority with us. We have a safety director in Mercer Island and he has safety managers in the field in both the Southern California and Northwest areas. They conduct safety training for the OSHA 30-hours, CPR and first-aid training. We’re always staying current with regulations required of the general contractors. Additionally, we are sending more personnel to LEED courses to be accredited as well as conducting monthly educational classes and holding company wide workshops twice a year.

CT: What can you tell us about the Anaheim GardenWalk project?
MF: This is the single largest project to date in the company’s history. We are calling this project a “10-year overnight success.” It was introduced to us back in 1999 after a new ownership group took over in 1998. We worked with this owner before they sold it to the current owner, Excel Realty Holdings.

We were ready to start construction in 2002, but Price Excel didn’t want to be in the development business anymore, so the project was put on hold. Price sold the project in 2002 and the project was put on hold.

We started back up with our preconstruction services with the new ownership group – which consisted of former Price Excel employees who renamed their company Excel Realty Holdings – in 2004 and broke ground in the summer of 2006. The Anaheim GardenWalk opened to the public on June 14, 200, and cost $140 million. The current ownership is Anaheim GW II LLC, which was formed by Excel Realty Holdings.

CT: What was the scope of work?
MF: This is a mixed-use outdoor retail/
entertainment center and parking structure. Timeshares and a hotel will be built on the property in the next couple of years. So far, the outdoor retail/entertainment center is open with 440,000 square feet of retail space and a seven-level, 1 million-square-foot parking structure that holds 3,050 vehicles. The parking structure was designed for the weight of a new 400 unit timeshare structure to sit on a podium deck above the top level of the parking structure deck.

CT: What were some of the challenges building the Anaheim GardenWalk?
MF: Building buildings in any job is the easy thing. The true challenge is what I call the “political engineering” – working with all the different personalities that a project has. We all have the same common goal but sometimes are agendas are different.

Consultants on the team must interact with many other stakeholders and personalities and working relationships vary with the degree of understanding each individual posses regarding the construction process and the business deal.

For a project of this size, we had an on-site management staff of 15 people at one time to make sure everyone is pulling together instead of pulling apart in their own direction. Those are the challenges every job has: figuring out how to come together, and working as a team to build a project everyone will be proud to be associated with.