Mix of downtown design firms changes

“There’s a lot of energy downtown,” said Alan Bates, owner and president of Bates & Associates Inc., an architectural firm getting ready to move to Springfield’s center city.

“Architects and engineers enjoy the energy of revitalizing a downtown area, by the nature of what we do.”

Bates closed June 21 on his firm’s new location, 431 W. Walnut. He partnered with Curtis Jared of CRW Properties Inc. to buy the nearly 100-year-old building from the Salvation Army for $450,000.

The Salvation Army continues to look for a new location.

Bates will relocate his 10 employees from their current location, 1006 N. Cedarbrook, to the two-story building and occupy the western one-third of the 21,000-square foot-structure. Bates paid $150,000 for his portion.

But Bates is just the latest architect to settle downtown, a place ripe with architecture and engineering tradition. In fact, his father, Warren Bates Jr., in 1973 founded the company in Missouri State University’s Kenneth E. Meyer Alumni Center at 300 S. Jefferson, before the firm moved northeast.

“Firms have been downtown forever,” said Geoffrey Butler, CEO of architectural and engineering firm Butler, Rosenbury & Partners Inc. “Downtown Springfield has always been a home for professionals.”

Butler, whose firm was also located in the MSU alumni center before it moved in March to another downtown location, 319 N. Main, said architects and engineers began migrating out of center city in the 1970s. However, he said, other parts of town just didn’t provide the same character old downtown did, and that’s why the firms came back.

“You can put a metal building on the south side of town. It’s just not much fun,” said Butler, who in partnership with partner Tim Rosenbury and developer Scott Tillman redeveloped the former Universal Paint building. It had been vacant for about 10 years. Other architecture firms stationed downtown include Hagerman New Urbanism, which opened Aug. 27, 2004, in a 6,000-square-foot location at 122 Park Central Square after Jerry Hagerman and his son Bo, left what is now Pellham Phillips Architects, and Jack Ball & Associates Architects PC, which has been in a 4,400-square-foot office at 444 S. Campbell since Nov. 14, 2002.

Chris Ball, president of Jack Ball & Associates, said downtown inspires architects.

“The creativity comes from the new and unique opportunity for architects to generate modern, contemporary programs within a historic fabric,” Ball said.

It’s not just about creativity and fun, though. Butler and Bates both said architects and engineers working downtown enjoy practical advantages over their dispersed brethren, such as proximity to governmental resources and other businesses.

But that proximity comes with a price. Turning downtown buildings, many in poor condition, into attractive and functional offices has not been a cheap endeavor. Butler’s recent move amounted to a $3.25 million project, while Bates and Jared will spend around $1.2 million to refurbish their new digs.

Butler said having to gut an old building, which is often what new owners have to do, to make it work, is worthwhile if the building was solidly constructed at inception.

“This building is solid as hell,” said Butler about his current office. “It’s concrete and brick, but it had just been underutilized and abandoned.”

He said U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development loans and tax breaks for refurbishing historic buildings made his move economically feasible.

As popular as downtown is with design firms, indications seem to point to the exit of one architecture and engineering firm from downtown Springfield.

Jason Graf, through one of his companies, Paragon Global LLC, is under contract to buy Warren & Goodin Engineers-Architects PC’s building at 420 South Ave., for an undisclosed amount. Graf said he plans to close on the property in November, but it may take a while for him to do something with it.

Windsor Warren, president of Warren & Goodin, said he has up to six months to find a new home for his business, which could simply move to a different downtown space, but he hasn’t started looking since details of the deal with Graf are still being finalized.

Meanwhile, Graf said he’s not ready to release his plans for the building.

“I’m really trying to keep the deal under wraps,” Graf said, “because we’re going to be doing something that’s not being done down there right now.”

According to Butler, firms will continue to move in and out of downtown offices, but downtown remains a powerful draw to architects who want to preserve history.

“Take it and make something neat out of it, everybody likes it,” said Butler about refurbishing old buildings. “It kind of gets them all juiced up.”