The 18,000-sq-ft, two-story HUB East includes multiple classrooms, community rooms and administrative spaces, while the 33,000-sq-ft HUB West includes space for medical care, tutoring and mentoring services and retail space.

Photo courtesy Capitol Photography

The project was financed through donations, but the use of restrictive tax credits meant a lengthy lending process, and over a three- to four-month period Choate financed the project itself to keep it moving and on schedule.

Supplemental manpower was brought in from Atlanta, and Choate leveraged its virtual design and construction tools to find and resolve conflicts ahead of construction.

Ian Mercier, president and CEO of the Medical College of Georgia Foundation and a founding member for the HUB Augusta Collective, said in a letter that the team had to navigate being pulled in many different directions by more than 50 various stakeholders and was able to manage the added complexity arising from New Market Tax Credits, which required an extra layer of legal and financial oversight and resulted in more than $6 million in project funding.

“They also achieved success within a timeline that was already very aggressive despite the myriad of workforce, supply chain and cost challenges brought on by the COVID pandemic,” Mercier said, thanking the Choate crew for turning the HUB Augusta Collaborative’s “dream into a living center that will serve its surrounding and critically underserved communities for decades.”