Adam Spagnolo named CEO, John Sullivan and Gable Clarke named co-Presidents, Al Spagnolo elevated to Chairman

SGA – an award-winning architecture, design and planning firm specializing in life sciences, corporate and academic design – announced today an internal transition of ownership and expansion of its leadership team. The firm will now be led by equal majority owners: President of Architecture John Sullivan, AIA; President of Interior Design Gable Clarke, NCIDQ, LEED® AP, Certified Generations Trainer; and CEO Adam Spagnolo. Former SGA President and Founding Partner Al Spagnolo, AIA, NCARB will move to the role of Chairman and Founding Partners Bill Gisness, AIA, BSA, and Jeff Tompkins, IIDA, LEED® AP, will transition from the firm. Michael Schroeder, CCM, will remain a minority partner.

SGA has experienced tremendous growth in recent years, more than doubling the staff in its Boston and New York offices to over 130 professionals. The firm has 15 million sq. ft. of active projects as clients have relied on SGA’s unique ability to deliver flexible, tech-forward design and sustainable, state-of-the-art facilities that foster collaboration and breed innovation. Continually at the forefront of its field, SGA has designed innovation campuses, emerging life sciences clusters, R&D accelerators, high-performance sustainable buildings, complex mixed-use developments, dynamic, brand-rich work environments, and campus life facilities for the nation’s leading developers, owners, academic institutions and users of real estate.

“Under the new leadership, SGA will continue the transformational work that has established us as one of the most trusted architecture and design firms,” stated Chairman Al Spagnolo. “Our recent growth is a credit to the work of Gable, John, Adam, and the rest of our talented team. They are taking SGA to heights that Jeff, Bill, and I could not have dreamed of when we started the firm in 1991.”

CEO Adam Spagnolo will lead and oversee the business of the practice including overall fiscal responsibilities and firm-wide operations. Adam will lean on his many years of organizational leadership in multiple industries including retail, architecture and design. For the past seven years he has modernized SGA’s business practices, opened the firm’s New York City office and managed its exponential growth.

John Sullivan will serve as SGA’s President of Architecture. For 17 years he has led the firm’s many large-scale projects in the commercial, technology, life-sciences, and academic markets and often plays a major role in master planning, conceptual design, and the public approvals process. Sullivan will lead the firm’s robust architecture practice focusing on design leadership and client management.

President of Interior Design Gable Clarke has earned many prestigious honors and awards during her 20-plus year career, including 18 at SGA. She has been the driving force behind the expansion of the firm’s interior design practice and is an ambassador throughout the market. In addition to leading numerous interior design commissions and overseeing the Science and Technology discipline, Clarke will manage the firm’s human resources department.

“John, Gable and I are honored to lead SGA and this exceptional company into a new era,” said Adam Spagnolo. “In the role of CEO, I am here to serve the leadership team and our practice to ensure they have all of the tools needed to continue delivering industry-leading, tech-forward projects. SGA’s position as an innovator and trusted advisor to clients is a testament to the leadership and expertise of our founding partners Al Spagnolo, Jeff Tompkins, and Bill Gisness  – we will continue to build upon the trusted and highly-regarded reputation they worked tirelessly to create.”

In addition to Sullivan, Clarke, and Adam Spagnolo becoming equal majority owners, SGA has named five new principals and seven directors. Matthew Fickett, AIA, CPCH, LEED®, Joe Mamayek, AIA, LEED® AP, Brooks Slocum, AIA, Brian Slozak, RA, and Eric Svahn, AIA, NCARB and have all been elevated to Principal. Scott Barnholt, AIA, Caroline Bergin, IIDA, NCIDQ, WELL® AP, David Enriquez, LEED® AP BD+C, Bill Fleming, Marc Gabriel, LEED® AP BD+C, NCARB, Jessica Randolph, AIA, NCARB, Walker Shanklin, AIA, and Amanda Vicari, NCIDQ have all been promoted to Director. The firm will remain headquartered in Boston and CEO Adam Spagnolo will work out of their New York office.

Located at 101 South Street in Somerville, MA, the 289,000-square-foot building is now home to four Flagship Pioneering-founded companies.

SGA, a national firm whose work spans architecture, interior design, planning, branded environments, and virtual design and construction, today announced that the first purpose-built, Class-A lab building in Somerville, MA, designed by the Boston and New York City-based architecture firm, recently celebrated its grand opening.

The nine-story, 289,000-square-foot Class-A lab building is part of the Boynton Yards, a 1.8-million-square-foot, mixed-use life sciences and cultural community, which is being developed by a joint venture between DLJ Real Estate Capital Partners (DLJ), Leggat McCall Properties (LMP) and Deutsche Finance America (DFA).

Designed by architects SGA and Hashim Sarkis Studios, the building was conceived with flexibility and sustainability in mind for emerging life sciences and technology companies. Each floor has 35,000 square feet of column-free floor plates surrounding the building’s core, offering tenants flexibility to grow and redesign their space to meet the needs of their workforce. The building will achieve LEED Gold and WiredScore Platinum certifications, a testament to the sustainable and highly efficient design approach.

“This is truly a world-class, state-of-the-art Life Sciences, Lab and R&D building. We’ve enjoyed working on this, the first purpose-built lab building in the area,” said SGA Partner John Sullivan, AIA. “We also enjoyed working with the development team as well as the general contractor, Shawmut Design and Construction, and other partners.”

Officials from these companies were joined by the City of Somerville and Flagship Pioneering companies to cut the opening ribbon on 101 South Street on Thursday, May 5, 2022. The building was pre-leased prior to completion to Flagship Pioneering, a bioplatform innovation company headquartered in Cambridge, to meet critical growth needs for its companies Tessera Therapeutics, Laronde, Cellarity, and Generate Biomedicines. These tenants occupy 280,000 square feet on eight floors of the building.

The first of four master-planned life sciences buildings, 101 South Street offers best-in-class, high-efficiency infrastructure where companies can imagine and grow. The nine-story, 289,000-square-foot building offers state-of-the-art R&D lab/office space, a fitness center, bike amenities, four levels of below-grade parking, and on-site retail offerings. A ground-floor conference center, as well as with Arts and Creative Enterprise space (ACE) within the building and centered in the “Hive” at 561 Windsor Street, are available for use by tenants and the Somerville community. Coming this summer, Firefly and Portico Brewery will open, serving food and beverages.

“Usually when we hold a ribbon-cutting, we’re celebrating one new great thing, like a library renovation or a new monument. But the opening of 101 South Street reflects how civic leadership, a community-driven development process, and private investment can also work together to advance multiple community goals at once,” said Somerville Mayor Katjana Ballantyne. “Not only will this project establish a vital new anchor for life sciences in our region, it will bring with it jobs, innovation, new tax revenues, leading-edge sustainable construction, new open space, contributions to our affordable housing and jobs trusts funds, and ultimately the Boynton Yards project area will also support new housing and artist and maker space creation as well. That’s a lot of items on our checklist, and I applaud everyone that helped us get here.”

John Fenton, Managing Partner at DLJ Real Estate Capital Partners added: “It’s hard to believe that in the 1800s, this was an unsustainable industrial site where Somerville and Cambridge immigrants worked in meatpacking factories and brickyards, often facing low wages and substandard lodging. And now we stand here with the top scientists and researchers in the world who have chosen Somerville and Boynton Yards as their new home for cutting-edge, life-saving work.”

“Boynton Yards is the first Class-A, mixed-use building to serve the growing need for life science lab space near Kendall Square and the greater Cambridge area,” said Rob Dickey, Executive Vice President at Leggat McCall Properties. “We’re pioneering a progressively built environment that brings the community inside the orbit of where life-changing discoveries are taking place every day.”