2007 Economic Impact Awards Architecture Honoree: Butler, Rosenbury & Partners Inc.

Looking at the size and success of Springfield architecture firm Butler, Rosenbury & Partners Inc., it’s hard to imagine the company’s humble beginnings.

Founder Geoffrey Butler began in 1978, working with “an electric typewriter, a calculator and a telephone” from his father-in-law’s dining room table.

Of course, that wasn’t what Butler had envisioned, either – he had planned to work in his father’s Springfield firm after graduating from college.

“In 1971, the same year I went away to architecture school, he died in a plane crash,” Butler said. “And while I was away at school that first year, the firm basically ran out of business because he wasn’t there.”

So he went to Plan B: opening his own firm.

After working for several years as an architect with one client – developer Jim Morris – Butler in 1984 added Tim Rosenbury to the firm.

Rosenbury became a partner in 1986, the same year that Morris got out of the developing business.

“1986 was one of our worst years,” Rosenbury said. “It forced us to either get right or get out. We weren’t sure which way we were going to go.”

The break came with the company’s first project for developer John Q. Hammons: the federal courthouse, 222 N. John Q. Hammons Parkway.

The project showed the firm’s versatility, and growth began. The pair began adding staff, and the company quickly outgrew the space it had rented in the Galleria since 1986.

“Suddenly this space that was designed for 12 (architects), three years after we moved in … had 20 people in it,” Rosenbury said. “So that’s when we moved downtown to the Missouri State University Alumni Center building.”

The design firm made one of its largest expenditures in 1985, spending $75,000 – 25 percent of gross revenues for that year – on a computer-aided design system, one of the first in the city.

“It was slow as Christmas compared to today and cost 10 times as much as one today would,” Rosenbury said. “But it was one of those business risks that Geoffrey is pretty good at taking – a calculated risk.”

The risks continue today.

The firm opened an office in Phoenix last year, run by partner Doug Jackson, to allow easier access to potential business in the West, and an operation in China to tap into the rapid growth in that market.

“If five years ago, you’d have said I’d be in China, I’d have said you were nuts,” Butler said. “It’s about taking a measured risk, and then working it hard.”

Now the firm is looking at the next generation of design: building information modeling, which allows architects to create three-dimensional computer models that can be updated as design changes are made.

The company also has plans, at some point in the future, to open additional offices in the Southeast and in Texas.

All of the changes in the company are designed to help the company survive well into the future.

“When my father died, his firm basically lasted a year,” Butler said. “Everything we’ve done in 29 years has been about building a firm that will survive any of us.

“This has become more than just our firm; it’s everybody’s firm. We hope (our employees) grow personally, professionally and financially here – and not have to go anywhere else.”

Butler, Rosenbury & Partners Inc.

Address: 319 N. Main Ave., Ste. 200, Springfield, MO 65806

Phone: (417) 865-6100

Web site: www.brpae.com

Employees: 89

2006 Revenues: $9.8 million

Information accurate at the time of the honor.