Jack Keigwin has built an awful lot of office buildings over the years – but none as smart as the one he is currently building in Smithfield. Keigwin, president of F.H. French Co., Inc. is building a 100,000-square-foot, three-story office complex on Route 295 at the intersection of Route 7. It is about one mile from Fidelity Investments and Bryant College.
Keigwin expects it to be completed by the spring of 2001. The building will have 450 parking spaces. Keigwin said the project represents the first “spec building” in Rhode Island to be built from the ground up as a “smart building.”
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”We are going to provide our tenants with a state-of-the-art work environment that includes in-building network access, voice service and high speed data and Internet access,” said Keigwin. “We’re installing the communications infrastructure right in the building.”
Keigwin is confident that the “spec building” will draw the tenant – or tenants – it needs to be profitable. In fact, he said, talks are ongoing with potential occupants. And Keigwin is not alone in that confidence. Fleet has helped to finance the project, he said.
Besides all the high tech wiring and fiber optic cables, the building will have its own, high-powered backup generator.
”We will have a system of standby generation that will maintain enough power to not only run the data systems but the HVAC systems and the regular power for lighting,” said Keigwin.
Keigwin clearly sees the construction of “smart buildings” as smart business. To him and others, it is a matter of economic development.
”There is a Chinese Wall at the border of Massachusetts and Rhode Island,” said Keigwin. “There is no momentum on the part of companies to come to Rhode Island because there aren’t any buildings here.”
Access, access, access
Last Monday morning (Sept. 11), Keigwin was out at the construction site in Smithfield making sure all was on schedule. By later afternoon, he was one of about 60 attendees at a seminar called “Smart Building Initiative,” sponsored by The Providence Foundation, the Rhode Island Economic Development Corporation and the Rhode Island Economic Policy Council.
The seminar was held in the offices of the Greater Providence Chamber of Commerce. Its focus was bringing “smart buildings” to the capital city.
Giovanni Cicione, a lawyer with the EDC, is working with the agency to secure money from the federal Economic Development Administration – money targeted for the development of “smart buildings.” He said the state has applied for $5 million in grants, and hopes to get at least $2 million by the end of next month.
The money would become part of revolving fund, one which would set up incentives for building owners to “get smart” in attracting tenants.
”It would be a way for the state to take on some speculative risk,” said Cicione. “There is demand out there. The problem is getting speculative space built. We would love to see such a building in Providence – either downtown or in the Jewelry District.”
George Loftus, a consultant with Meier & Loftus and the former director of network technology at Brown University, has been working to establish “smart buildings” on college campuses around the country for a decade.
”It is time for this kind of product to be emerging in the commercial market,” said Loftus.
Loftus told the audience of developers and commercial real estate professionals that there is a new take on the old adage of “location, location, location.” Now, he said, the key is “access, access, access.”
”Providing access attracts today’s tenants,” said Loftus. “I can’t think of a business operating today that is not looking for access.”
Jeff Deckman, president of the Rhode Island Technology Council and president and chief executive officer of SyNet, Inc., told the audience that “smart buildings” mean a commitment – but one that should pay dividends. Create a building, he said, that eliminates a tenant’s need to be an information or communications specialist.
”That alone will get them to open up their wallets,” he said.
Keigwin said that he has always been driven by opportunity – and he has never been driven hard than he has of late.
He fully expects his first “smart building” to lead to others.
”Companies who are in the Information Age have to have these kinds of capabilities,” he said. “For companies today to remain competitiveif they do not have this, you are going to be left behind.”
Keigwin is a former member of the Rhode Island Board of Governors of Higher Education and a visiting professor at Bryant College. He has seen that schools have been slow out of the gate in terms of churning out high tech workers. But that too is changing, said Keigwin.
At Bryant, he said, the presence of Fidelity Investments as a neighbor has helped to change that. And the state’s public colleges are also turning the corner, he said.
”The private sector is developing the technologies and the way we work far quicker than the colleges and universities,” he said. “Unfortunately, the colleges and universities are playing catch up.”
