Inside View: Wendy Thompson of Suntide Commercial Realty

Director of special projects at Suntide Commercial Realty

Over more than two decades in commercial real estate, Wendy Thompson has collaborated on all kinds of "green" initiatives, including recycling and waste diversion programs at large retail centers.

As director of special projects at St. Paul-based Suntide Commercial Realty, her latest endeavor included renovating the lobby at the Broadway Place East office building in northeast Minneapolis. For this project, Thompson received an award for excellence in environmental sustainability from the Minnesota Commercial Real Estate Women (MNCREW).

Thompson, 56, also led recent lobby renovations at Suntide's Broadway Place West and Broadway Ridge buildings and collaborated on Suntide's green initiative programs at its Court International building in St. Paul, which has reduced energy consumption by 40 percent.

Before joining Suntide, Thompson was general manager at the Shoppes at Arbor Lakes in Maple Grove.

Q: Why undertake the renovations of the three lobbies at the Broadway campus?

A: We have some larger tenants leaving and when you're attracting new potential tenants, one important area to upgrade is the lobby. You want to make it attractive to potential tenants and retain existing tenants as well. We more than anything wanted to bring them to life and make them more user-friendly.

A: We converted what used to be very beautiful lobbies, but they were definitely from the 1980s, and updated them with fresh color palettes and contemporary furnishings. We added free Wi-Fi and collaborative work areas with high table tops and bar stools, low soft seating areas, and stations to charge your laptops and cellphones. The space is actually being used now. Tenants are using it as an extension of their office. We have soft dividers that separate the areas so you have a little bit of privacy.

Q: Talk about MNCREW's sustainability award for Broadway Place East.

A: The lobby was filled with marble and it was beautiful, but it wasn't just on the floor. It was on the walls, the planters. It was everywhere. So rather than remove all of that and replace it with drywall, we were able to cover the existing marble walls with a product called Architectural Fusions. With it, you can make things look stone or wood or metallic or whatever look you're going for. We picked surfaces that were complementary to the existing marble that we wanted to keep on the floor. By using these fusions, we were able to save over 72,000 pounds of construction waste from the landfill.