Goodwyn, Mills & Cawood Inc.

Multi-disciplined firm relies on strong relationships

By Dana Crisson

The Alabama ties are strong at Goodwyn, Mills & Cawood Inc., a Montgomery-based firm offering architecture; interior design; transportation and geotechnical engineering; and civil, municipal and environmental engineering.

Don Mills, one of the firm’s founders, began his career in his father’s engineering business, Donald Mills Consulting Engineers, in Selma. Most of their clients were scattered throughout small towns - Lincoln, Demopolis, York - in west Alabama.

His friend, George Goodwyn, operated his own engineering business, Goodwyn Engineering Co., in Montgomery. For 10 years the firms worked together as a joint venture on many projects, until they formally merged in 1975.

When Steve Cawood, a former employee of Goodwyn and Mills Consulting Engineers and owner of his own engineering company in South Carolina, returned to Montgomery in 1985, Goodwyn, Mills and Cawood Inc. was formed. GM&C became a fully multidisciplined firm a year later when architect Bill Wallace came on board.

“We saw the opportunity to combine a multitude of professional services under one roof, a concept that wasn’t as prevalent in the South as it was in the North or West,” Wallace says. Over the years, landscape architecture, transportation engineering and environmental engineering were added to the menu of services.

Wallace adds that his decision to affiliate with GM&C was an easy one.

“I looked at firms in Tampa and other large cities throughout the South, but I grew up in Enterprise, and I wanted to raise my family here in Alabama,” he says. “The image of our state has changed, thanks to the hard work of many good politicians. Our state leaders have done an outstanding job with industrial recruitment, and I have been able to work on many exciting projects here.”

The firm designed and provided landscape architectural services for the new Ross Bridge Renaissance Golf Resort hotel and conference center in Hoover, Ala. The complex includes a 240,000-sq-ft hotel with 260 guest rooms, 700-seat ballroom, indoor pool and gym and an 8,194-yd Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail course, the third longest golf course in the world.

GM&C has worked with the city of Montgomery on the Montgomery Zoo for more than 15 years, including the recent addition of the $1.5 million elephant exhibit. The firm also provided planning, architectural and engineering services for Montgomery’s new Colonial BancGroup office building complex, including a 200,000-sq-ft office building and adjacent parking deck for up to 380 vehicles.

Revitalization is another important aspect of the firm’s work. The city of Greenville, which wanted to preserve the heart of the community, hired GM&C for a downtown revitalization project that included sidewalk reconstruction, street paving, decorative “period” lighting, extensive landscape enhancements and renovations to the Historic Train Depot.

Another notable project is the Jenkins Brick Co.’s Jordan Plant in Moody, Ala. The $56 million manufacturing facility, completed in late 2006 and encompassing a 160-acre site, is the largest U.S. brick manufacturing plant constructed at one time, and it is one of the world’s most energy- and labor-efficient brick production facilities.

This project was unique because it was the first time a major U.S. manufacturing facility, one of the largest of its kind in the nation, has been built in proximity to a landfill specifically to use the landfill methane gas as fuel. The new plant uses the landfill gas to fuel its brick kilns, satisfying 40% of the plant’s energy needs. Over the next 10 years, projections estimate that the landfill will be able to supply 100% of the plant’s energy.

The Jenkins Brick Manufacturing Facility was named the 2006 Project of the Year by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Landfill Methane Outreach program. The project also received the Overall Engineering Design Award from the Alabama Chapter of the National Association of Industrial and Office Properties.

GM&C currently has offices in Birmingham, Mobile, Andalusia, Vernon, Eufaula and Huntsville. In addition to serving Alabama, the firm has also opened an office in Crestview, Fla., and Wallace says it wants to expand further into the Florida panhandle.