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I wanted to personally thank you (Chad Edwards) for all your efforts on the University of Cincinnati’s Campus Recreation Center while employed at your previous firm. Your fortitude and pursuit for accuracy and completeness proved essential to the LEED Certification process of the Recreation Center, our most complex project to date.

Dear Shawn, Thank you so much for attending my dinner and Sustainability Forum featuring Professor Eicke Weber.  Both Prof. Weber and I were very impressed with your insight and I truly appreciate your enthusiasm for sustainability, especially in architecture and building.  Thank you again for making this event such a great success and I know that we will continue to work together on sustainability issues in the future.  

When we bought a tired 90 year-old industrial building in Over the Rhine in 2000, we hired an architect who was unable to meet deadlines. Fortunately, after a careful search, we discovered Jim Cheng. Jim’s ability to quickly understand our program for the building and just as quickly get us back on schedule was a welcome relief. Our requirements were complex: space that would not only safely and attractively accommodate an after-school arts program for 5-10 year old city kids, but also provide the children and their caregivers alike, a sense of being special in a special place. Additionally, we needed space on the first floor for administrative offices that could also serve as the offices for our Foundation. This required an esthetically pleasing environment that appropriately represents the kind of support provided by the Foundation. The result is offices-including a conference room-that are sleek, contemporary and a good background for the art in this area-exactly what we wanted.

Emersion’s team possesses the expertise, experience, insight, vision and problem-solving skills needed to help companies make important space decisions by assembling thorough quantitative data that provides critical information regarding current and projected space needs. By making sure a company has comprehensively articulated their space needs, Emersion insures that every future step of the space procurement and design process is built on a solid foundation of accurate assumptions and requirements.    

But Jim went beyond our requirements. His concept for the building honored its history which originally housed a company that manufactured cigar boxes as well as a variety of other light industries. He designed a new stair tower to clearly announce the “front” of the building, which originally had been its back, walls separating office spaces that honored the integrity of the original building, and even a color scheme that made the outside of the building fit well into the community but still give it distinction. The building has won a number of architectural awards, but just as important, it functions smoothly, engaging our students, their caregivers, our staff and teachers.