Building to Fit

HSL Construction Services Sees the Community Landscape

By Jay Gonzales

It’s not lost on HSL Properties that what it builds – apartments, hotels or anything else that comes its way – has expectations that come not only from within but from the community where it has been building for 50 years.

Those expectations encompass more than the quality of the product. They carry the responsibility of leaving a lasting legacy, not only for the company but for the community.

“If we want to be part of a great community, we’ve got to act like a great community,” said Mike Censky, executive VP of HSL Construction Services, the construction arm within HSL Properties formed 20 years ago. “We don’t do things haphazardly.

“We give sound, intelligent advice on construction and marketplace when it comes to value. We didn’t get to the top of the mountain without being able to look down the road and see what’s coming as well.”

As a separate business entity under the umbrella of HSL Properties, HSL Construction Services serves only one client. It builds for HSL and no one else. There are outside investors in HSL projects and properties. But what is built is solely from HSL’s short- and long-term vision.

“I think there’s a lot of vision that comes into an area and the larger impact on the community,” said Danny Casselberry, director of construction at HSL Construction Services. “We also take into consideration the history of that area. What does the local architecture look like? All those things go into creating the right space for the community.”

Censky cites Encantada Tucson National, a 368-unit apartment development at 8323 N. Shannon Road, as a specific example of how much surroundings impact what HSL builds. Encantada now has seven sites in its line of luxury apartments in Tucson. There are three in Phoenix.

Encantada Tucson National, which opened in 2016, is across the street from the entrance to the historic Tucson National development that includes the Omni resort and spa and the golf club with its long history of hosting professional golf tournaments.

“Each project in each location is specifically looked at and designed to fit that community,” Censky said. “We didn’t go in there with a product that looked different than its surroundings.

“When you start dividing Tucson into different areas, we’re responsible for reporting (to HSL management) what we see in those areas, give them our viewpoint, give them what we think it should look like.”

And then they build it.

One of the attributes of the construction services team and all of the business entities within HSL, said President Omar Mireles, is it understands itself, it understands the market and the community, and focuses on that.

“We stick to what we know and that’s where we have the most success,” Mireles said. “While we might see good opportunities here and there in some other lines of business, our focus is always going to be on what we know, and that gets solidified every time we do a deal.”

Inherent in all of that, is the relationships that HSL has built over the years and will continue to build into the future, Censky said.

“One thing that I learned from Mr. Lopez is it’s about the relationships,” Censky said of HSL Founder Humberto Lopez. “Something we’ve done better than most is we foster those relationships, through thick or thin, through the good times and the bad times. We’re with basically the same group of people, not only in our team, but the same subcontractors.

“Keeping that tradition going forward, so that we’re good stewards of the community, so that we can look people in the eye and say, ‘Yes, we spend our money locally,’ is very important to us.”

Casselberry added: “By building and fostering these relationships and creating a community of subcontractors, they are able to get better at what they’re doing. The evolution over the last 20 years has been singularly to those points − building those relationships with those subcontractors, refining our product, and making it better based on real resident and community feedback.”

Pictured above from left – Mike Censky, President, HSL Construction Services; Danny Casselberry, Executive Vice President, HSL Construction Services. Photo by Brent G. Mathis

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