Gaskin Hill Norcross makes name change

This historic year is being marked by another subtle name change – the firm’s 18th modification, according to Business Manager Jean Stoops.

“Traditionally, the firm has always reflected in its name the principal owners,” said Charles Hill, president and principal owner. “At this juncture in the firm’s history, the present name of Gaskin Hill Norcross is being dropped, and we are going to the initials GHN Architects/Engineers. That lets us have branding so that people can recognize us for a long time.”

Gaskin Hill Norcross has been in use since 1998. The firm was founded nearly 70 years earlier by Frank Erhart, an architect from Little Rock. He was joined shortly after by Howard Eichenbaum, also from Little Rock, and John Rauch, of Marshfield.

“We have done work in the Springfield area since the 1950s,” Hill said. “Some of our earliest projects here include the Frank Lyon Building, which was done in the 1950s, and the IBM Building, which is now a private office building.”

Engineering services were added in the 1960s.

While Springfield-area clients comprised a significant portion of the firm’s business, they became even more vested in the area when they acquired Springfield firm Harold A. Casey and Associates in 1981.

Industry in flux

As GHN mulls its own future, Hill said that the entire field of architecture and engineering is in flux.

“With the advent of changing technologies, these fields are changing very quickly,” Hill said. “Years ago, typically the practice was that the architects and engineers design the project, the contractor builds it, and then the owner moves in. But many times today we are partnered with the builder from the beginning in what is called design/ build.”

Design/ build firms continue to gain a greater percentage of the design and construction market, and Hill expects the trend to continue.

Hill views this change with skepticism because it removes the architect from their traditional role of working as the client’s agent.

This leaves GHN to concentrate on its particular niche. In addition to its architecture and engineering services, the firm also offers master planning – primarily for college and medical campuses – and interior design.

Hill said that his firm’s work is not characterized by any one look, but rather by the process through which it produces the end product.

Hill and his peers aim to eliminate complications during the building process by doing extensive research before it begins.

“A lot of the time a client will come and say, ‘I need a building to do such and such.’ But they really haven’t thought about the elements inside of the building, the kind of work spaces they need, so we start by asking them a lot of questions to help them determine what those needs are,” he said.

Stoops added that it is helpful to both the client and the architect if this analysis takes place before the client purchases the property on which they plan to build.

“People often don’t contact an architect soon enough because they think of architects as just designing pretty buildings,” she said. “They don’t realize all of the research that goes into a building before that, which addresses concerns such as whether the building they will need is even going to fit on the property they buy.”

GHN has served Southwest Baptist University for 30 years, according to C. Pat Taylor, president of the university. In the past five years SBU has spent $27 million on campus construction, including the $13.2 million Ken and Jane Meyer Sports and Wellness Center completed in 2005 and the $3.1 million Jester Learning and Performance Center completed in 2001.

“I have worked with Charles Hill and Joe Vejraska a lot over the past few years, and I have been very impressed,” Taylor said. “Not only are they very good architects, but they understand what we are trying to do. They understand that as a Christian university we don’t have tons of money and we operate on a budget. Our mission is to serve students, and they design buildings that serve the welfare of the students we have here,” he said.

In addition to the newer projects, older GHN projects such as the Mabee Chapel (1980) are still in active service at SBU as well.

Special projects

While GHN’s traditional specialty may be characterized as institutional – the bulk of the firm’s work has been governmental, medical or in the field of higher education – Hill said that some of his favorite projects have been completely outside of the norm for the firm.

“My number one favorite project was a Synagogue we designed in Rock Island, Illinois. That was so interesting. I had never done anything like that. Second to that is the Jordan Valley Ice Park, on which we were associate architects with Ankeny-Kell Architects working as the primary architects,” he said.

“What made that so much fun was not only had we never done anything like that before, but an ice park in southwest Missouri was something we’ve never had before. Beside that, it was a great opportunity to get out and learn how to ice skate.”

Other recent projects include the Hutchens HPER building and Olin Library at Drury University, a new municipal building in St. Robert, master planning and expansion of the Ozarks Medical Center in West Plains, the new fire and police station in southwest Springfield, renovations and additions to Reliable Toyota and BMW in Springfield and a new police station in Aurora.