Pam Sessions: A Pioneer for New Urbanism in Atlanta

Atlanta Real Estate Forum Radio

Pam Sessions, president of Hedgewood Homes, joins the Atlanta Real Estate Forum Radio podcast to discuss her professional experience in design, homebuilding and construction. Sessions joins host Carol Morgan as the 11th installment of the Legends of Real Estate series. A graduate of the University of Georgia, Sessions earned a degree in fine arts and moved on to pursue a career in art and photography. With her then-boyfriend (now husband) Don Donnelly being a home builder at Brighton Homes, Sessions became interested in the home building industry. After having no luck trying to help some friends find a home in the area, Sessions decided to use the knowledge she gained from the sidelines to invest in rental property. Sessions built two rental houses and fell in love with the homebuilding process. For three years, Sessions built on her own before joining forces with her husband in 1985 to create Hedgewood Homes – offering development and homebuilding services. Sessions said, “My husband and I have always had an interest in houses!” Still learning the ropes within the industry, Sessions knew she wanted to build strong customer relationships. In a time when buyers had little say in the building process, Sessions began to provide sit-down meetings with customers to learn what they were looking for in their new homes. Sessions said, “I worked 12 hours a day, seven days a week for seven years perfecting and working to learn.” Meeting with customers every weekend, Sessions had back-to-back meetings with several customers to design their dream homes. Sessions built her business to the point where she could not handle it alone. She and her husband decided to create a business together, developing neighborhoods. Donnelly’s former employer believed in the duo and funded their first development, Highland Park in Fulton County. Becoming a design-driven company, Hedgewood Homes focused heavily on how neighborhoods work for families. Wanting to provide families with an environment promoting freedom and spontaneity, Sessions and Donnelly took inspiration from Florida’s Seaside community. Sessions said, “When we took our two children to Seaside, the light bulb went off – it was remembering how we grew up. We had so much freedom that brought responsibility and enabled us to grow into adults.” The couple assembled farms on either side of their property to begin land planning for a new development. Hedgewood Homes hired Andres Duany with DPZ CoDesign, who designed several Florida projects, such as Seaside and Rosemary Beach, to start the conceptual plan. Local planners came in the help finish the project that featured a village and YMCA in walkable proximity to the middle and high schools. Starting in the late eighties, Hedgewood Homes has survived multiple recessions, including the Great Recession. Despite losing employees and half of its business, the development company remained afloat through returns, pay-outs and construction permanent loans. Since lending was not available, Sessions and her team used cash to build a limited amount of homes. When the market started to normalize, Hedgewood Homes was in better shape than most competitors because of the construction permanent loans assisting the continuation of the building process. Sessions said, “At that time, we had a company of a hundred employees, 13 neighborhoods, we were building 350 to 400 homes a year and the valve just shut off. Overnight, we went from a hundred employees to three and it was really hard.” Hedgewood Homes changed its business model after coming out of the Great Recession, causing the team to step back and focus on what matters most to the company – design, community and customers. The development company and its team members moved into the city to be closer to the customer and to allow the design aspect to thrive in an urbanized space. Sessions said, “We intentionally changed after the recession.”