FEEDING BUSINESS, FEEDING SOULS

The next time you want to check out some contemporary art, you might want to skip the museum and head instead for a local office park.

Glen, Smith & Glen, a local developer of office parks and mixed-use communities, is deploying custom-made art to improve "the quality of life" for tenants in its local projects, said Kenneth Smith, the company's president and managing partner.

The display is especially substantial at The Park at Spanish Ridge, an office complex near the Las Vegas Beltway and Durango Drive in southwestern Las Vegas.

Nearly a dozen major pieces of outdoor art, some commissioned especially for the park, dot the 250,000-square-foot first phase of the office complex.

There's a mosaic wall that incorporates imagery of Las Vegas, the surrounding desert and the buildings at The Park at Spanish Ridge. There's a metal sculpture of a woman's dress with a heart at its center. And the 30-foot "Tribal Figment," all curves and undulating metal, punctuates the office park's entrance.

Smith said the company emphasizes art inside its office complexes to enrich the work life of tenants.

"People spend a significant portion of their lives in an office park," Smith said. "It's at least eight hours a day, five days a week. That's a hefty chunk of your life -- probably more time than you spend at home on nonsleeping activities. Life happens in an office environment, so we want to provide a depth and an inspiration as strong as they can be. If you hearken back to all the great environments and places that people really enjoy, they have a combination of good architecture, nature and art."

Commissioned art is so important at Glen, Smith & Glen that the development company sets aside a line item in its budgets specifically for such purchases. That's rare among developers, most of whom jumble in art purchases with extraneous expenditures.

"Everyone carries a 'miscellaneous' line item -- you know, trash cans, ash trays and art," Smith said.

At Glen, Smith & Glen, art expenses per project can run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, but the investment is a fraction of the overall cost to develop a project, Smith said. The Park at Spanish Ridge's first phase, for example, cost $53 million to build out. Company executives believe art expenditures are a small price to pay for a feature that helps their office parks stand out in the market.

No tenant has ever said he's moving into The Park at Spanish Ridge specifically because of the sculptures, but Smith said the works contribute to an atmosphere of high-end professionalism that attracts smaller businesses seeking an upscale environment.

It was the office park's location near the Las Vegas Beltway, rather than the artwork, that drew Tang Industries to The Park at Spanish Ridge in May 2006. Now that the steel distributor and scrap-metal broker is ensconced in its 9,000-square-foot headquarters there, com-pany controller Kurt Swanson said, he's found the artwork enhances the lunchtime strolls he takes around the complex.

"It makes it a little more pleasant," said Swanson, whose office is near the mosaic wall. "When I'm out for a walk to clear my mind a little bit, it's a lot nicer walking through a nicely landscaped environment, and the artwork adds a little bit."

Ronald Smith, vice president for research and executive director of urban-sustainability initiatives at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, said art can add to a positive workplace setting.

"People want to work in really inviting environments," said Ronald Smith, who's not related to Kenneth Smith. "Plenty of studies show the linkage between the good use of aesthetics, including art, and the fact that people want to be at the office. Absentee rates go down. All other things including management and the quality of a job being equal, good aesthetics can make absentee rates go down."

Carefully considered and commissioned art can also advance a company's brand, Ronald Smith said. Businesspeople worldwide recognize the charging-bull sculpture in front of the New York Stock Exchange, for example. Closer to home, one look at the statues in front of Caesars Palace will remind people they're in Las Vegas.

"The sculpture becomes instantly associated with the business itself," Ronald Smith said.

Executives at Glen, Smith & Glen are commissioning sculptures for other office complexes in the company portfolio, including The Park at Northpointe in North Las Vegas and The Park at Warm Springs near McCarran International Airport. They're also searching out art for the public spaces in the first phase of the company's Sullivan Square, a 16.5-acre community with high-rise condominiums, lofts, brownstones and shops in southwest Las Vegas. They're looking in particular for local artists, and they've tapped two artists based in downtown's Arts District to make commissioned pieces for the second phase of The Park at Spanish Ridge.

"Part of supporting the arts as a business is not only buying art and raising public awareness, but supporting it on a local level," Kenneth Smith said.

That's a philosophy Ronald Smith said other developers should embrace.

"I really wish more businesses would consider the functions of art for the building community, and for enhancing our social and cultural sustainability," he said. "Here we are in Las Vegas, trying to build a community and envision some kind of common future for all of us. When people sit and watch art, and talk to each other about art, it all adds to the total social climate of the community."

This story first appeared in the Business Press. Jennifer Robison writes for the Business Press' sister publication, the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Jennifer Robison writes for the Business Press' sister publication, the Las Vegas Review-Journal. She can be reached at jrobison@reviewjournal.com or 380-4512.