SMPS SFBAC Sponsor Spotlight: McCullough
Recently I had a chance to touch base with Mahalakshmi Balachandran, Senior Associate at McCullough, and ask her a few questions about her firm, which is one of our Golden Gate sponsors.
Tell us about your firm and services.
McCullough provides award-winning landscape architecture, urban design, and environmental planning services to local and international clients from our offices in San Diego and Northern California. We are a Woman-Owned Small Business and certified by the State of California Department of General Services as a Small Business Enterprise (SBE). McCullough holds versatile experience in multiple project delivery methods, including design-build and multi-prime for civic, facility, education, hospitality, entertainment, parks and open spaces, commercial, retail, mixed-use/multifamily, senior living, and affordable housing projects. Through close partnerships with our clients, we develop dynamic, user-oriented designs that promote community, sustainability, diversity, conservation, and a deeper connection with nature.
How many years have you been in business?
David McCullough formed McCullough Landscape Architecture as a sole proprietorship in 1999. His wife and partner, Catherine McCullough joined the business in 2001 and became Chief Executive Officer and President in 2002. We are celebrating 24 years in business this year!
Tell us about some notable projects.
A few of our notable projects include…
Yuba City Apartments, Yuba City, CA
From the initial discussion, the design intent was to establish the inherent connection that celebrates the ethos of the existing site while transforming into the future. In response to this, the site is designed as a combination of modern aesthetic with undertones of the rural landscape.
McCullough’s design is influenced by the context of the site and depicted through the aesthetics of the materiality and plant selection. To highlight the entry of the site, landscape design proposed to capitalize existing industrial equipment, thereby creating an iconic arrival. The vision of site amenities and furnishings is proposed to be designed with restored natural materials.This approach positively renews the decaying elements rather than being a blight.
The landscape mimics farmed wetlands through walkways and outdoor gathering spaces while landscape clearly buffers the edges for outdoor activities. The parking areas are softened by rows of trees along the buildings. Multiple pockets of social spaces between the buildings dramatically contrast with the orthogonal nature of the main programmed amenity space/pool area near the leasing office. This increases the opportunities for residents to interact.
Aligned with the city’s mandate for a 20% Conservation Goal, the plant material is selected from these three distinctive categories: California Natives, Wildlife Attracting, and low-Maintenance Gardens. Yuba City Apartments is currently in entitlement phase. Now in 2023, we are thrilled to continue to further this design and see this story transform into reality.
Mesa College Commons Café + Bookstore / San Diego, CA
Through the strategic master planning process, College leadership determined a central campus hub was needed to help meet its main objective—encourage social engagement and academic commitment of its diverse student population. As part of the San Diego CCD Master Plan, the Mesa College Commons facility, including a new Café and Bookstore, is encompassed by two new courtyards, one dedicated to outdoor dining and another for students being picked up from a loop road “Kiss and Ride” pull out. This courtyard surrounds a small café and is intended to provide a safe, serene environment for students to wait for a ride or pass the time before their next class. Targeting LEED Silver certification and keeping with the District’s Green Building Policy, we selected native, drought-tolerant plants throughout and designed an organic rooftop kitchen garden with a cistern irrigation system for the second-floor culinary program. The remaining gardens are fed by the HVAC condensate water from the facilities cooling systems – a first for community college campuses in San Diego. All irrigation water comes from the site drawing no supplemental water for the city’s domestic water supply. This project was a ULI Healthy Places Award Winner.
Jefferson La Mesa, La Mesa, CA
Jefferson La Mesa is a 4.77-acre luxury housing development located in the heart of the city of La Mesa. This contemporary garden-style community will add life to an old, abandoned lot that once housed an auto repair business. The multi-level apartments will offer live-work units and will be enhanced by a myriad of amenities. The development is a short walk from the La Mesa Boulevard trolley station, nestled between El Cajon Boulevard and University Avenue along Baltimore Drive. Within close proximity to the bustling La Mesa downtown village and a quick commute to downtown San Diego, home to multiple job and entertainment centers, this new development brings a renewed spirit to this thriving community.
Alexandria Real Estate Equities HQ, Farmer & The Seahorse, La Jolla, CA
This project, on the iconic Torrey Pines bluff, is the site of Alexandria Real Estate Equities’ San Diego corporate headquarters. The headquarters is nestled into a slope, ringed by the regionally native Torrey Pines. In early summer, it is often blanketed by fog. Upon arrival to the property, one encounters a bold explosion of flowering desert plants, thickly planted in angular, rugged gravel. The garden features a large event lawn surrounded by tall wispy grasses, flanked on one side by an arroyo with whispering sycamores and cottonwoods.
The on-site restaurant, Farmer & The Seahorse, is a popular dining location for corporate executives as well as families to gather and spend the day, and it features indoor and outdoor spaces for conferences, special events, entertainment, games, and live music. The garden features a large event lawn surrounded by tall wispy grasses, flanked on one side by an arroyo with whispering sycamores and cottonwoods. Large patios transition guests from outdoors to the building’s entrance, which features glass doors that slide open and allow guests to move freely from the bar area to the patios and fire pit. Adjacent office spaces make the patios a convenient spot for outdoor meetings or business gatherings. The fluid interplay between indoors and outdoors as well as the diverse activation of these spaces make it engaging and functional for many types of events.
What differentiates your firm in terms of approach, talent, tools, and values?
We are a group of curious dreamers influencing space by a mindful practice that merges context and creative passion with grit, soul, and style. We believe each landscape unveils a unique narrative that embodies creativity, diversity, discovery, and conservation. We serve our users with designs rooted in empathy, community, and the human spirit engaged in nature.
For over 20 years, McCullough has been committed to close partnerships with clients, thereby providing unique creative solutions to the challenges that clients face in the built environment. We are active community members who understand the valuable components that make up an environment and how they affect the culture of a community. Our team of “placemakers” are committed to the true heart of each site, exploring the greatest creative possibilities for each project, and strengthening connections to surrounding styles, culture, functionality, and sustainability.
Committed to preserving environmental integrity in our work, many of our projects have obtained LEED Silver certification or better. Our North Coastal Health and Human Services design-build project for the County of San Diego achieved LEED Platinum certification and has become the 8th facility to achieve Zero Net Energy certification in California.
How long have you been a sponsor of SMPS?
McCullough has been a proud sponsor of the SMPS SFBAC chapter for three consecutive years since 2020, and the SMPS San Diego chapter for more than 10 years.
What are some of the memorable or key events of SMPS that your firm has been involved with?
President/CEO/CMO Catherine McCullough, CPSM, has been involved with SMPS for more than 20 years and earned her CPSM designation in 2006. She has served many roles on the Society Board of Directors:
- Society Director-at-Large (2018-2020)
- San Diego Chapter Past President (2015-2016)
- Current Board of Directors for the Pacific Regional Conference (2021-2023)
- Pacific Regional Conference Planning Committee (2017-2023)
- Current Chair of Lessons in Leadership mentor program for the San Diego Chapter
- Authored articles for The Marketer
- Presented as a panelist at past regional conferences (PRC and SRC)
I (Mahalakshmi “Maha” Balachandran) became a member of SMPS in 2018. The first event I attended was the 2018 PRC in Napa, California. I have served on the Membership Committee for the SFBAC chapter since 2019 and have been Co-Chair of the Buddy Program from 2020-2022. Additionally, I was part of the planning committee for the chapter Holiday Party and Annual Business Meeting in 2021. I hosted Motivational Monday for the chapter in 2020 and wrote both a preview and recap of the 2022 Pacific Regional Conference for The Shortlist.
McCullough was the lanyard sponsor for the 2022 and 2023 Pacific Regional Conference and sponsored Build Business when it was hosted in San Diego in 2018. Also, McCullough was the sponsor of the Annual Golf Tournament benefitting the Monarch School in 2019 through SMPS San Diego.
Tina Barni Aday is the Marketing Director at Lea & Braze Engineering. She writes for the Shortlist and is on the SMPS SF Communications Committee. She can be reached at [email protected].
