Lat­i­tude Sig­nage Part­ners with R&R Real­ty to Help Achieve 80% Occupancy

The Chal­lenges

At the onset of the project, Alis­sa, with five years at R&R, had ​“grandiose visions” for the build­ings’ inte­ri­or but wasn’t sure if it would be pos­si­ble to trans­late those into a fin­ished design. Of course, as they were choos­ing part­ners, cost was a con­sid­er­a­tion but sac­ri­fic­ing the aes­thet­ic they were look­ing to devel­op for the West­field Cam­pus, was not an option. 

Anoth­er ini­tial con­cern was find­ing a sig­nage com­pa­ny well-versed in both ADA inte­ri­or sign require­ments and city codes for the exte­ri­or signs. In West Des Moines, R&R would lat­er find out from Lat­i­tude, there are rules that aim to lim­it exte­ri­or dam­age to the build­ings as well as rules around sign design and being ​“too com­mer­cial-look­ing” – some­thing Alis­sa said they had to rely on the Lat­i­tude to know and understand. 

Addi­tion­al­ly, the cus­tom sig­nage would need to coor­di­nate with the over­all look of the build­ings and be eas­i­ly rec­og­niz­able as the West­field Cam­pus ​“brand”.

The Solu­tion

After pro­pos­als were sub­mit­ted in April 2018 and accept­ed, work on the project start­ed in Octo­ber 2018 with Lat­i­tude as their cho­sen part­ner. Hav­ing a stel­lar track record with R&R, Lat­i­tude was an obvi­ous choice. ​“It would have been a chal­lenge to com­plete a project of this mag­ni­tude with­out a com­pa­ny as skilled as Lat­i­tude. With the size of the build­ing and mul­ti­ple entry points, a wayfind­ing and traf­fic direc­tion expert was a must,” said Alis­sa Nelson. 

Lat­i­tude Design Build Spe­cial­ist, Kristin Adkins, com­bines expe­ri­ence in design and Latitude’s depth of knowl­edge regard­ing codes and guide­lines. This was cru­cial to the suc­cess of the project. 

Work­ing with a local com­pa­ny was a ben­e­fit as well. They could have gone with an out-of-state com­pa­ny but would not have had the respon­sive­ness they received by part­ner­ing with Lat­i­tude. From start to fin­ish, the project took about a year over which time there was plen­ty of back and forth between the two com­pa­nies – brain­storm­ing and trou­bleshoot­ing things like mak­ing sure ten­ants’ sig­nage was prop­er­ly displayed. 

“I knew some­one was always work­ing on our project,” Alis­sa said. 

She had ideas about back­lit sig­nage in the ele­va­tor lob­bies, but they had to be mind­ful of reg­u­la­tions around read­abil­i­ty of the signs as well as includ­ing Braille for the visu­al­ly impaired. And the ten­ant sig­nage need­ed to be easy to swap out as new ten­ants came in. The trick­i­ness of the lay­out was some­thing Kristin helped tack­le, por­ing over floor plans to pro­vide care­ful­ly thought out recommendations. 

“Latitude’s cre­ative minds and feed­back pos­i­tive­ly impact­ed the over­all design,” Alis­sa said.

At one point, there was a road­block as they tried to deter­mine which type of wood to use through­out the build­ing signs – the inte­ri­or design pack­age spec­i­fied a beau­ti­ful dark pre­fin­ished wood. 

“With Alissa’s help we were able to con­tact the exact man­u­fac­tur­er to acquire sam­ples, but also learned that the mate­r­i­al was not suit­able for sign con­struc­tion,” Kristin said. Lat­i­tude researched var­i­ous alter­na­tives and pre­sent­ed sev­er­al cost-effec­tive solu­tions for R&R to consider. 

Kristin said ​“When a client gives you these amaz­ing mate­ri­als to work with, you want to hon­or their build­ing design with a sign sys­tem that tru­ly belongs.”

The Results

“The sig­nage that rep­re­sent­ed this pre­mier, state-of-the-art brand­ing the West­field Cam­pus has become known for, has added tremen­dous val­ue to the R&R Cor­po­rate Head­quar­ters. It’s the rea­son so many ten­ants want­ed to be a part of it,” R&R Design Man­ag­er, Alis­sa Nel­son, said. 

“We were able to lease space in the build­ing at a faster pace than expect­ed, reach­ing 80% occu­pan­cy in just 10 months,” said Mar­ket­ing Direc­tor, Spencer Shireman. 

The West­field Cam­pus is a sym­bol of com­mu­ni­ty and the com­mon area with beau­ti­ful, func­tion­al sig­nage con­tributed to that desired effect. 

The design of the build­ings was done with the idea of a com­mon des­ti­na­tion point and open col­lab­o­ra­tive space, dri­ving con­nec­tions between dif­fer­ent employ­ers and their employ­ees and Lat­i­tude was inte­gral in achiev­ing that. 

“Part­ners like R&R is what it is all about. Col­lab­o­ra­tion across all aspects of a project make every­one rise to the top,” said Tony Squire, Latitude’s Busi­ness Devel­op­ment Manager. 

The work they’ve done togeth­er will like­ly lead to future projects, both teams say. 

“When you col­lab­o­rate like this, it’s impor­tant to bring Lat­i­tude on from the begin­ning and know your bud­get upfront and get clear on the deliv­er­ables from day one,” Alis­sa said. It’s also impor­tant to look at pri­or work and weigh the high qual­i­ty you’ll receive against the cost. 

Whether you pay for high­er qual­i­ty or choose a low­er-cost option, ​“you’ll pay for it one way or anoth­er,” said Shireman.

“All projects are unique,” said Latitude’s Tony Squire — ​“but a strong part­ner­ship with my clients is crit­i­cal to exe­cut­ing an on-brand result.”