S3 Builders Can’t Leave Woodbury Campus

At S3 Builders, a strong company culture based on a common college experience has brought success that includes major assignments from Walt Disney Co., Comcast’s NBCU and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. The Sun Valley general contractor has only 10 full-time employees, but projects are coming so fast, the firm plans to open new offices in Los Angeles and San Diego in 2019. “The bulk of our clients are campus owners,” said founder J. Marc Rapisardi, referring to both business and academic complexes. S3 is collaborating on several projects with SOA (Studio of Architecture), including a new layout with incoming medical groups at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in L.A. The firm also works with Wolcott Architecture on a pair of Burbank contracts – a 35,000-square-foot interior project at Disney and 20 smaller projects at NBC. It’s tenant improvements that Rapisardi said has become crucial to his business. “T.I. is our bread and butter,” he said. What makes S3 Builders unusual is that its founder and core staff were educated at Woodbury University. In fact, the Burbank-based academic institution provided work that sustained the construction firm through the bottom of the Great Recession. Woodbury roots After earning architecture degree at Woodbury, Rapisardi started S3 Builders in 2004 and then began hiring from his alma mater. Except for one outlier employee, S3’s entire team is made up of Woodbury alumni. Vice President John Epperly, a 10 percent partner in the firm who joined in 2008, has a master’s in architecture. Assistant Project Manager Johana Rodriguez, Director of Operations Carol Monroy and Assistant Superintendent Jason Sanabria earned their respective bachelor’s of architecture at the Burbank campus, while Accounts Manager Josie Mora has a bachelor’s in business and management. Even the company’s name has roots at the San Fernando Valley university; an acronym for “Studio 3,” a three-way work partnership in the architecture school that quickly fizzled out. Rapisardi had designed the logo for the program and revived it while working towards a contractor’s license. “With the dissolution of Studio 3 and my affinity for its logo (the one we still use today at S3), I decided to place ‘S3 Builders’ on the application and so began another venture,” Rapisardi recalled. Woodbury University President Emeritus Kenneth Nielsen headed the college when Rapisardi and Epperly attended the school. “All have dreams of becoming the next Frank Gehry or Frank Lloyd Wright, but you only get one of those in a century. We still want them to have the dream,” he told the Business Journal. Nielsen said architects soon realize that the bulk of the workload is unglamorous, a concept S3 is well aware of. “We’re a service company that essentially designs a product,” Rapisardi said. “It boils down to our service.” After Rapisardi graduated from Woodbury University, the school remained a constant in his life. If it wasn’t for his alma mater, his firm would have succumbed to the recession. “We had three jobs (at Woodbury) that probably really kept us afloat,” Rapisardi said. Looking back, Rapisardi identified 2006 as S3’s greatest year. “We were flourishing,” he said. Then came the Great Recession, forcing S3 to downsize. “In 2007, I bought a house and a year later it foreclosed,” S3’s founder recalled. “The economy slowed to the point where we took a $900 contract to paint a wall. We saw so many companies bigger than ours close their doors in 2008 and 2009.” That same year, S3 embarked on reworking 2,500 square feet of unused outdoor space at Woodbury University’s library. “This was the first of many projects we would build for the school,” Rapisardi said. At Woodbury, Rapisardi found a mentor figure in Lou Naidorf, who for 40 years worked for Welton Becket and who, at 24, designed the iconic Capitol Records building. Naidorf served as dean of Woodbury’s School of Architecture and Design from 1990 to 2000. “It was a wonderful thing for me,” Naidorf, who turns 90 in August, told the Business Journal. “A pissant little place with a bedraggled bunch of kids; limited spaces, no facilities. It was a chance to do something with no money, no support, no possibility of success. Yet three years later, against all odds, the department was accredited. “We were considered a model program,” Naidoff said. “When we got accredited, one member on the accreditation team cried.” Naidorf quickly sensed that Rapisardi was special. “If you have a son, (Marc’s) the kind of son you want,” Naidorf said. “Marc’s problem was he had plenty of creative ideas. My job was to edit them.” At the time, Nielsen’s wife, Rose Nielsen, served as Library Association president. “Rose wanted to build the exterior space into an outdoor patio for the students to read and study,” Rapisardi remembered. “The estimates for the project were all coming in over budget, Rose went to (then-director of Facilities) Jerry Tracy, asking if he knew of a ‘more affordable’ contractor.” Tracy forwarded S3’s contact information. “He did an exquisite job, his design decisions were sound,” Naidorf said of Rapisardi’s courtyard. “He takes prudent risks.” That assignment led to many more, including in 2011, when the university secured a grant to start a film school. However, the biggest and most complex project for Woodbury was the 2012 repositioning of the campus’s front gateway. The university’s president at the time, Luis Calingo, had cited safety concerns as the impetus for the project, which addressed traffic light and sidewalk issues at Glenoaks Boulevard and Cohasset Street. But repositioning the entry way opened a worm-can’s worth of problems. Rapisardi said, only half-jokingly, that S3 had to deal with “15 different agencies, 15 different permits” because this project straddled the border of Los Angeles and Burbank. “You couldn’t get anyone to agree,” he said. To install the street light, Burbank required that Woodbury move the gate 30 feet, aligning it with Cohasset. The project also demanded the intact move of four massive 90-year-old columns, recalled Rapisardi. “The heaviest of the columns was a 19,000-pound lift.” Rebuilding Ultimately, Rapisardi felt his alumni-freighted firm had an insider advantage. “Not only did we know the (college), we knew high-level people at the university,” Rapisardi said. “Those relationships were helpful.” The team also took pride in giving back to their alma mater. “It felt so rewarding to be able to come back and give back to our university,” Monroy said. In total, S3 has completed 40 contracts for Woodbury, including a student center and rebuilt basketball court. During the economic recovery, it has expanded from educational projects to tenant improvements and creative offices. “We’ve definitely become a different type of company now,” Rapisardi continued. “We’ve learned about solvency and managing a budget.” Currently, S3 Builders has over 200,000 square feet of projects under contract in the area for clients such as Walt Disney Co. in Burbank, Comcast’s NBC Universal in Studio City, Abbot Laboratories in Sylmar and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.