Interior & Branding

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt's offices at One Pierce Place in Itasca, Illinois, are a four-floor office tenant improvement of roughly 100,000 rentable square feet, designed by The Jenkins Group: the first floor and the ninth, tenth and eleventh floors of an existing high-rise building. The project began with a space program that assigned the publisher's departments to floors and sized their workstations, offices, work rooms, print and copy areas, and conference and training rooms. It then removed the previous tenant's ceilings, partitions, flooring and wallcovering and replaced them with a consistent set of finishes, including wood-look vinyl plank flooring at reception and elevator lobbies, wallcovering in the lobbies and larger conference rooms, and glass sidelights at offices and conference rooms.

The project was set up for pricing by the landlord, Hamilton Partners. The Jenkins Group prepared the plans and a design narrative that defined the building standards, and Hamilton Partners invited four general contractors to bid on that package. Mechanical, electrical, fire protection, fire alarm and plumbing were delivered as design-build subcontractor work, with the contractors verifying existing conditions and providing engineered drawings for review and permit. The firm also worked through permit comments with the Village of Itasca and asked the International Code Council for an interpretation on the egress requirements at the full-floor elevator lobbies, then reviewed submittals and samples during construction, including paint and wallcovering samples, plastic laminate, lighting fixtures, glass door hardware and a 3form logo sample. The tenant improvement was completed in 2015, with the firm's punch list and final finish documentation dated that summer and fall.