A strong year for architecture firms may or may not presage more development and construction in the not-too-distant future, but it definitely altered the upper echelons of the Business Journal’s list of top local shops ranked according to OC office billings for 12 months ended June 30.
Architects Orange is the new No. 1 with about $61 million by that metric, up 20%; it jumped two spots from last year, leapfrogging No. 2 LPA Inc. and No. 3 Ware Malcomb, both in Irvine.
Like trying to find that baseball under an Angels’ helmet between innings, however, the contest was close.
Last year, LPA was tops at a bit above $65 million; it reported a 9% decline to $60 million this year; Ware Malcomb a year ago was next at about $53 million; it grew 11% to $59 million.
17 Up
Robust growth was seen among many entries on the list: 17 of 29 ranked architecture houses grew by at least double-digit percentages.
Five of the 17 grew by more than 30%; another six, including Ware Malcomb, posted increases in the 20% range.
Two architecture firms didn’t crack double digits, but still posted single-digit growth.
Nine declined; one did not submit data and is a Business Journal estimate.
The 29 architecture firms that hit the Business Journal’s baseline of at least $4 million in local billings grew more than 8% on the year, to a total of $499 million.
Bigger Dogs
The biggest percentage hike, 167%, came from the former Irvine-based gkkworks, bought by CannonDesign last year in April. At the time, it was Cannon’s fourth buy in less than a year and grew the New York multinational house in Denver and the West Coast.
It has two dozen offices overall and companywide billings of $233 million, good for the No. 8 spot.
A spokesperson said via email, Cannon had “done work in Orange County for years.” The acquisition, “strengthened our ability to provide fully integrated design and construction services” in architecture and engineering.
Columbus, Ohio-based WD Partners closes out the list at No. 29, but it posted the second-best growth as a percentage, rising more than 69% to $4.2 million.
A spokesperson said via email some of that growth is bookkeeping: “several clients were assigned [or] transferred to Irvine” and the company changed how it tracked architecture and engineering, but they did hire locally this last year.
No. 23 Architecture Design Collaborative in Laguna Hills grew 45% to $7 million; President Craig Chinn in an email said growth came from collaboration “with our clients across multiple disciplines” including design, interior design, construction documents and admin, as well as “environmental graphics”—design activity that can involve a future landscape and visual elements of a space.
A spokesperson for No. 24 Carlile Coatsworth said via email its 46% growth to more than $6 million is from larger projects and geographic growth. Its sole office in Irvine had more projects in Northern California, Oregon, Washington, and Texas.
Dreams to Reality
While architecture firms on the list saw a bump in work last year, the Business Journal’s engineering firm list (see story, page 28) shows even more growth—13.6%—and several firms in triple-digit mode.
Both lists suggest a robust pipeline of work for construction firms and others in the industry going forward, although there’s some room for caution, company officials note.
“A lot of projects never get built,” Architects Orange founder Jack Selman told the Business Journal. Reasons range from financing to approvals; others might get done but go through several visions (see related story, page 22).
AO’s recent growth involves buying an office and industrial architecture firm 18 months ago. It now has 10 studios including all the usual suspects and some more exotic: parking structures and landscape design.
“We’re doing all of them,” Selman said.
One result is more mixed-use work.
“Instead of a $20 million shopping center, you’re doing an $80 million project,” said AO Partner Rob Budetti, who oversees a lot of the firm’s commercial work. “The number of projects over $150 million went up substantially” the last few years.
AO mixed-use work includes the Fig, near the Los Angeles Coliseum, and the Vine at the Gateway in El Monte.
