President's message: Get involved and be BOMA strong

February 19, 2015 - Connecticut

Ronald Goodin, Fletcher Thompson, Inc.

As I write this month's article, I'm sitting in my open sided office (no door), located in the center of our space, looking out over our staff to the falling snow. Over the past few weeks we've gotten more than our fair share of the white stuff and I'm beginning to hear of overtaxed roof structures and even a few collapses, especially with our Boston neighbors. It has "mercifully" stayed cold enough to keep the snow loads fairly light and fluffy, unlike the past when freezing rain compounded the weights to make things much more dangerous. The bigger problem these days are keeping enough parking spots available in your lots. During the site planning process, especially here in the northeast we always plan for snow stacking areas. However, just like HVAC you plan for 85-90% of the typical load, not 6+ feet of snow.
The other reason that first sentence was important brings me to next month's educational presentation. Titled: The Incredible Shrinking Office Space - Panacea or Pandora's Box, the morning session on March 10th will review the pros and cons of the recent trend of open office layouts and how it can affect staff culture, your building and its supporting infrastructure. Please join us and hear the local industry professional's thoughts on the subject.
We had a great showing at this month's event at the XL center, starting with a tour of the renovated areas and followed by an exciting college hockey game featuring the newest UConn addition to big-time college sports. (Hard for a Syracuse grad to admit) The view from the club area was excellent and a nice social break from staying seated in one place throughout the game. We'll see what the future brings for the center or if this "temporary fix" stretches on as groundbreaking occurs for the new baseball stadium on one of the sites previously thought of for a new Civic Center. There are a lot of opinions as to the relocation of the Rock Cats from only 14 miles away and I'll keep my thoughts to myself (a difficult task). At least there appears to be a lot of action going on in the multi-family housing market and this development on the north side of the route 84 chasm will, hopefully be a suture to stitch the broken pieces of the city's downtown back together.
Apparently a few people read last month's article and decided to join and have become new members and are getting involved in committees.

We welcome new members:
* Elizabeth Bryson of CBRE
* Christopher Frey of GZA GeoEnvironmental
* Harry Jewett of Select Medical Corporation
* Stafford King of Shepard Companies
* Caroline Miller of CBRE/New England
* Becca Monstream of New England Mechanical
* Nick Volpe of CBRE
* Kathleen Woodward of Grunberg Management
* Colleen Yarnot of CBRE
New scheduling and program updates:
The High Performance class information is out and there are scholarships available to the early member registrants. As previously mentioned, you can find information on this web page http://www.bomi.org/Students/high-performance-management.aspx
Our June program will be a tour of the newly renovated 777 Main St. adaptive re-use residential tower project. Becker has agreed to lead us through once progress is far enough along for our group to be safe.
Finally, the board asks that you keep Karen Tietjen (recent BOMA Hartford past president) and her husband John in your thoughts as they struggle with the challenges of losing their home recently to a fire.
In closing...Get involved and make your Hartford BOMA as strong as it can be. Be BOMA Strong.
Ron Goodin is the president of BOMA Greater Hartford, and is with Fletcher Thompson Architects, Hartford, Conn.
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