Sara Hayes: The creative facilitator
Sara Hayes of Hayes Strategy stands in front of one of the many murals at the new Ithaca Downtown Conference Center that feature area lakes and waterfalls.
Tompkins Weekly | Sept 25 - Oct 1Vol. 19, No. 39Sara Hayes, this month’s Hometown Hero, was excited but also nervous about her significant aesthetic contributions to the Ithaca Downtown Conference Center. “Ithaca is very opinionated,” said Hayes, president and owner of Hayes Strategy. “For the last two years, I’ve been dreading the building opening and people not liking what it looked like, but I’m really glad that it opened and got good feedback.”
The main objective of Hayes Strategy is to successfully manage capital projects on time and on budget, while allowing clients to continue to successfully manage their organizations during the process. The conference center is just one of the latest of many local projects Hayes has worked on.
Recently, Hayes Strategy contributed to the renovation efforts of The Dean, an apartment building in Ithaca for which Hayes received a Preservation Award by Historic Ithaca last week, and the list goes on.
“I have had the pleasure of working with Sara Hayes of Hayes Strategy on several projects, including the Tompkins Center for History & Culture, the Chamber’s relocation project at 124 Brindley Street, and the Ithaca Downtown Conference Center,” said Tompkins Chamber President Jennifer Tavares. “Sarah has always brought professionalism, excellent budgeting and project management skills and a keen eye for design to each project she has worked on. The community is fortunate that Sara is so dedicated to serving area nonprofits, economic and community development projects.”
For the Ithaca Downtown Conference Center, Hayes oversaw all of the design and construction, keeping the project on schedule and working with the contractor and the architect on the design selection, including details like the carpet colors and plants.
Suzanne Smith Jablonski, executive director of Downtown Ithaca Local Development Corporation (LDC), said that Hayes’ role in the conference center project predates her own involvement by a couple of years.
“Sara was involved in the project since before the formation of the LDC, when it was a steering committee team getting the vision off the ground,” Smith Jablonski said. “She was part of that group and instrumental to the project for many years.”
“Sara is an exceptional professional,” she added. “She is smart and savvy and skilled at solving problems. Sara made sure every detail was attended to and somehow was able to keep the big picture of our program at the forefront of everyone’s minds. … She really is managing and directing the project from a very detailed level all the way up to making sure that the project is achieving all its aims.”
Hayes consulted on the design with the conference center’s interior architect, and it was her idea to incorporate large photographs of the area’s many waterfalls as murals throughout the building.
“The conference center was not going to serve just the local community but the whole country, and we were trying to figure out how to brand the building in a way that said ‘Ithaca,’ and the waterfalls and gorges came to mind as something that was timeless. They don’t get outdated,” Hayes said.
“Almost everyone who has had a chance to visit commented on them as one of the features that makes the center so beautiful,” said Smith Jablonski.
Hayes also worked on the Namgyal Monastery Dalai Lama Library and Learning Center, which she said was “the opportunity of a lifetime.”
The library opened last year, and Hayes vividly remembers the installation of one of the major design elements that made a huge impact: the statue of the Dalai Lama in the courtyard.
“We put the statue in the plaza with the crane, and it was all bubble wrapped and everything,” she said, adding it was shipped all the way across the country from California.
“We were trying to set it up on the pedestal, and when we did, everyone got goosebumps,” she said. “It just towers over you.”
The Dalai Lama project highlighted the importance of communication, Hayes said. Though she does not speak Tibetan, Hayes found herself facilitating productive conversations, as she does in most of her endeavors.
“It was a case where the client speaks almost no English and is from a different culture, and the board of directors were mostly American and needed someone to act on their behalf, specifically to protect them financially, because the architect works for themselves, the general contractor works for themselves,” she said. “There were some communications breakdowns, but I could help to make sure that communication was flowing between groups.” She also helped with the town of Ithaca site approval process.
Hayes is originally from Syracuse and lived in Florida for 14 years before moving to the Ithaca area for a job as a construction project manager at Cornell University. She founded Hayes Strategy eight years ago. She found that Tompkins County and the surrounding area offers plenty of clientele, and she wanted to stay close to her family. “And Ithaca — it’s gorgeous here,” she said, “and just a great place to live. You always think you need to be in a big city to start a company, but there’s so much construction here.”
With 20 years of prior experience in the construction industry, Hayes is well versed in the language of development and design. Owners can be intimidated if they are not familiar with the world of construction, and Hayes helps to translate everything so the owner can understand and make smart choices that benefit their organization.
Hayes is proud to be certified as a New York State Women-Owned Business. She said she is excited to see more and more women-owned businesses popping up in this region of the state.
Some of Hayes’ proudest moments have been watching nonprofits bring their projects to fruition. Over the last few years, she has worked on a residential treatment and outpatient facility renovation for the Alcohol and Drug Council of Tompkins County and the Ithaca Community Childcare Center’s addition and renovation to its existing facility, to name just a couple of the area projects she had a hand in.
“Every project has been amazing to be a part of,” Hayes said. Her contributions to these projects are often vital to keeping the project moving forward and on budget.
“Around the county, you see projects start and then pause because the funding is not in place or design slows down, because no one is at the helm kind of driving the project,” Hayes said. “But once these organizations get these projects, they need to get them done to make them successful; it’s imperative that they get them done on time and on budget.”
It can detract from an organization’s ability to pursue its mission if it is financially overburdened by its projects. “If [projects] are not managed well, then the organization has financial stress at the end of the job,” Hayes said.
As her business continues to grow, Hayes said she is grateful to her one employee, Jocelyn Mohmand, saying that hiring Mohmand was one of the best decisions she has made in recent years. Mohmand feels equally warmly toward Hayes.
“She is just a truly genuine individual — hardworking and completely humble,” Mohmand said. “She’s a woman in the construction industry, which is something special in and of itself, but she totally takes the backseat allowing her projects and ‘bigger beings’ to shine.”