ValleyCrest Continues 30 Years of Support for Annual Meeting
As landscape installation and maintenance company ValleyCrest quietly launches new design group, it continues to support ASLA and the landscape architecture profession, noting, "We're a small piece of a large marketplace."

Richard Sperber, ValleyCrest president, says the company’s new design group will fill a need for “design/build services on a high end that would deliver efficiencies and total accountability for complex projects.”

ValleyCrest Landscape Companies, once again demonstrating its commitment to the landscape architecture profession and ASLA, is sponsoring the badge lanyard for the 2006 ASLA Annual Meeting & EXPO and 43rd Annual IFLA World Congress. ValleyCrest will also be exhibiting at the annual meeting in booth 113. According to Richard Sperber, president for the company, ValleyCrest has always believed it is important to have a significant presence at the ASLA meeting, which is why it has been one of the only contracting companies to consistently exhibit at the annual meeting for the past 30 years.

“We’re in a large industry,” Sperber notes. “Landscape architects are a large part of that industry, and we want to support them and help them grow.”

He adds that without landscape architects designing work, there would be a lot less work for ValleyCrest to build and maintain. “It’s our belief,” he says, “that landscape architects and building and maintenance companies should get together to try to make quality landscapes a larger part of people’s lives.”

Sperber says ValleyCrest’s message for this year’s meeting will be the same as it is every year: the company is “here to see our friends and support the industry.” According to Sperber, making sales at its EXPO booth is secondary to its mission of having a presence at the meeting and letting landscape architects know that the company supports them and their work.

Design Group seeks to fill “high-end design/build gap”
Although the company will be interviewing job applicants at this year’s JobLink LIVE, one thing Sperber says ValleyCrest will not be focusing on at the meeting is the company’s newly formed unit, ValleyCrest Design Group, which it has been quietly assembling throughout 2006 and formally announced earlier this month. Since early March of this year, ValleyCrest has acquired or started four landscape architecture studios specializing in various aspects of design and located throughout the country. These firms include Comstock Studio, headed by Paul Comstock, ASLA; JamesHyatt Studio, led by James Hyatt, ASLA; HRP Studio, founded by Jim Hogan, ASLA; and SiteWorks Studio, led by Lois Shindelbower, ASLA.

According to Sperber, ValleyCrest decided to push ahead with the new design group as a response to client demand for more preconstruction services from the company on complex projects. He notes that in the last five to eight years ValleyCrest has become more involved in what Sperber refers to as preconstruction management on landscape architecture projects and that the company has been attempting to put a process together to work more closely on projects with landscape architects. This development came at the same time the company began seeing a need for large-scale design/build services.

“We found a hole in the marketplace,” Sperber says, “for design/build services on a high end that would deliver efficiencies and total accountability for complex projects.” He adds that, with the new design group, ValleyCrest will be able to see a landscape architecture project through all of its stages, from conception to design to construction and post-installation maintenance. This ability not only creates efficiencies and lower costs for clients, Sperber says, but it also creates a single point of accountability.

As ValleyCrest builds the design group, Sperber says it is looking to acquire firms or build new studios that will serve its clients across a variety of market segments. He says the company is trying to get the best people in the industry to work for its design group in the various niches and specialties of landscape architecture. He points to HRP Studio, formerly HRP LanDesign, which joined ValleyCrest in March 2006, as a firm that can provide excellent master planning services for housing communities as an example. On the other end of the spectrum, Sperber notes, is Paul Comstock, ASLA, who joins the studio after a long tenure as director of landscape for Walt Disney Imagineering and is someone ValleyCrest sought out for his exceptional horticultural knowledge.

Crystal Cove Ocean Garden, from the Irvine Company’s Crystal Cove Project. HRP Studio, ValleyCrest Design Group, served as landscape architect for the project.

According to Sperber, the design group will be set up as an umbrella organization for the company’s boutique studios, which will work independently of each other but will all be employees of ValleyCrest. Each studio will maintain its own branding and identity—for example, JamesHyatt Studio of ValleyCrest Design Group—and will remain in its original geographic location if it desires. ValleyCrest is also building facilities for some of the studios and has created a studio in its Los Angeles offices. Each studio will retain its current clients, and ValleyCrest will feed each studio clients in the future.

Sperber says the ValleyCrest Design Group presents a model for each studio that is compelling from a logistical standpoint and can be quite lucrative for studio heads because they are getting income from sources other than design fees. For the client, he adds, there is a clear sense of accountability on a project and the client will have only one or two points of contact during the design and construction phase.

“This is a delivery system that clients have been starving for,” Sperber says. “We are creating better accountability and more value for each dollar a client spends—we’re making those dollars go a lot further.”

When asked how he expects the landscape architecture community to react to the formation of the ValleyCrest Design Group, Sperber says he is unconcerned. He notes that ValleyCrest is recruiting and signing “top-tier” landscape architects for its new business segment and believes its past work with landscape architects, and ASLA, will help it maintain good working relations with the community in the future. He is also quick to note that ValleyCrest will continue to maintain its landscape development and landscape maintenance companies and believes these will continue to drive the overall business of the company.

“With the design group, we’re filling a hole no one can fill,” Sperber explains. “This is about customer choice, and at the end of the day, it’s a big industry coping with a large demand. We’re a small piece of a large marketplace.”

Hyatt Regency Huntington Beach. Landscape architect: HRP Studio, ValleyCrest Design Group.