Pellham-Phillips-Hagerman goes international

Springfield-based Pellham-Phillips-Hagerman Architects & Engineers is working with Chinese developer Dong Guan Huajing Consultant of Real Estate to develop a 3.88-million-square-foot, high rise facility near Hong Kong in Dong Guan, People's Republic of China.

Jeffrey Wells, chief executive officer of Pellham-Phillips-Hagerman, said the joint venture is the culmination of a long effort by the Springfield company.

"We've been working for years to build contacts over there. The way business is largely done in China is guanxi' ... it's personal relationships that people form, where they do business with one another, and they continue to do business with one another. It's very much on a who-you-know basis," Wells said.

The development, King's View Plaza, will be a mixed-use shopping center, with condominiums and an office tower. Pellham-Phillips-Hagerman will provide the front-end conceptual and architectural design work for the project from its office in Springfield, Wells said, and Chinese engineers and personnel will provide technical and engineering work for the development.

"There's no way we could do it if we wanted to. All their building codes are in Chinese, they use the metric system, which is killer for us. There are just so many little technical difficulties," he said.

Wells, who visited China, said the pace of economic development in that country is staggering.

"They don't do anything small over there. It just floored me when I was over there just looking at the size of the things they do ... here, if you were to try to do something that big, developers and cities would be working on it for 10 years before it ever got to happen. There, they're just like, well, let's do it,' and they do, and it's incredible," Wells said.

Wells said because of the Internet, the biggest barrier in working with a China-based company isn't physical, but communication and cultural differences are the hardest things to deal with.

"When you're doing design, architectural design, that's such a culturally sensitive thing ... it's almost like our style versus their style, or their prejudices versus ours, and communicating those things is what's really hard," he added.

Wells said participation in the King's View Plaza development is a valuable opportunity for younger architects at Pellham-Phillips-Hagerman to gain experience in high-rise development.

He said the company hopes the King's View Plaza project is the first in an ongoing relationship.