Company: Environmental Management Inc.
Location: Grandview Heights, Ohio
Grandview Yard, when finished by the end of this year, will be a 125-acre mixed-use neighborhood with hotels, restaurants, apartment complexes, grocery stores, commercial offices including facilities for a Fortune 500 company and lots of green space.
Environmental Management Inc. (EMI) initially contracted with developers to install hardscapes and softscapes throughout the campus but won the maintenance contract as well.
Jason Hall, EMI’s senior commercial accounts manager, says working on the design/build side and the maintenance side of the contract carried a huge advantage — EMI maintenance professionals were able to advise developers on what foliage to choose based on the region’s soil and climate and EMI’s capabilities.
“Originally, they were putting a lot of hollies in that just don’t do well around here with the clay soil we have,” Hall says. “We were ending up replacing more of them when they died out, and it was costing them a lot more than they wanted.”
EMI has a two-person crew on-site all week
to handle watering, pruning and other detail maintenance, and it brings in five-person crews to spend two days mowing every seven days in the growing season.
“The biggest challenge for us is irrigation,” Hall says. “There’s a ton of construction going on. They’re getting close to being finished, but they’ll bust through main lines or tear out the wires, and we won’t know about it until it’s too late.”
Winning the irrigation work was great, he adds, but it’s meant keeping irrigation specialists and crew members on alert to fix damage caused by other contractors.
EMI’s work on Grandview Yard won a 2020 Silver Award from the National Association of Landscape Professionals’ Awards of Excellence program.
Grandview Yard, a nearly finished development near Columbus, Ohio, sits of 125 acres.
The mixed-use development hopes to attract restaurants, grocery stores and residents along with corporate offices there.
Flowers provide pops of color in front of many of the development’s buildings.
Tree-and-turf medians divide streets throughout Grandview Yard’s campus.
A lawn panel at one of the Yard’s entrances.
A pocket park sits next to apartment complexes at the development.
EMI sends five-person crews to Grandview Yard for two days of mowing every week to manage the site’s many open swaths of turf.
Trees bloom in spring in front of several of the development’s buildings.
Green spaces surround buildings at Grandview Yard, including this hotel.
Construction continues at the project site near Columbus, Ohio.
Retaining walls double as seating near corporate office entrances.
Newly installed tree groves line walkways at Grandview Yard.
