Butler, Rosenbury partner joins Matt Miller venture

Last edited 2:22 p.m., June 27, 2013

After 23 years with Butler, Rosenbury & Partners Inc., Bruce Adib-Yazdi has joined developer Matt Miller to work in a leadership role with The Vecino Group of companies. Though no longer an employee with Butler, Rosenbury & Partners, Adib-Yazdi has retained his ownership interest in the firm.

Adib-Yazdi is initially charged with managing two Missouri Housing Development Commission-funded projects for The Vecino Group - The Frisco at the Landmark building downtown and Freedom Place in St. Louis - and the Sky Eleven redevelopment project for the downtown Woodruff building, owned by Miller and Tim Roth. Adib-Yazdi also is working to assess the viability of future projects for Miller's ownership interests.

"My role is essentially to manage the design process and the construction process, make sure they're working together and to make sure the project comes in on time, on schedule, on budget with the quality we initially envisioned for the project," Adib-Yazdi said.

Adib-Yazdi started April 1 as president of Vecino Design Build LLC, as well as project manager of other companies owned in part or full by Miller. Vecino Design Build was formed in 2011 as the design and construction management arm for projects owned by The Vecino Group or other projects owned or co-owned by Miller.

“Looking back, we are not quite sure how we did this without him," Vecino Group CEO Miller said in a news release. “In a very short time, Bruce has proven extremely valuable. To have a professional of his credentials and experience on our team really raises us to a new level.”

Calling his split from Butler, Rosenbury & Partners an amicable departure, Adib-Yazdi said he remains a partner - with about an 11 percent ownership interest - but was no longer an employee as of March 31.

He said his decision to to leave the practice stemmed from a desire to get back into project management work, rather than the sizable amount of architecture work he performed in recent years at Butler, Rosenbury & Partners.

"My strengths are in dealing with problems, tough projects, planning, strategizing and team building, doing all those things that relate to the bigger picture of the work, not the actual architecture work itself," Adib-Yazdi said. "The architecture work was never really my strength, but in the last few years, I had to revert back and actually do some of the work I might have done a while back.

"I was using my key strengths about 30 percent of the time; in my new role, I'm using my key strengths about 110 percent of the time."[[In-content Ad]]