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P R O F I L E
From left, Meril Gerstenmaier and Dan Gerstenmaier, owners of HG, and HG partner Charlene Harper.
When bigger is not better Virginia landscape architecture firm was acquired by a much larger engineering outfit from North Carolina, and big and small didn’t mesh.
By RICHARD MASSEY Managing Editor
architecture of H&G with the design and engineer- ing focus of Stewart. All signs pointed to a happy union: H&G achieved its ownership transition, and Stewart gained a foothold in Richmond, a market it had coveted for several years. But the merger didn’t last long. This June, the firms parted ways. H&G has since rebranded itself as HG , and Stew- art, still keen on the Richmond market, in Septem- ber is opening an office in the Edgeworth Building in the city’s trendy Shockoe Bottom district. The big question is, what went wrong? Why did the merger go sideways in less than two years? Meril Gerstenmaier, who with her husband, Dave, owns HG, says the merger took her firm way out of its comfort zone. “It became evident early on – in the first six months – that we could better serve our clients going back to being a small operation,” Gerstenmaier says. “Our clients liked us the way we were.”
T he owners of what was then called H&G Land- scape Architects in Richmond, Virginia, were searching for a succession plan, or some form of ownership transition, when North Carolina-based engineering firm Stewart , looking to expand its footprint in the Commonwealth, came calling. “It became evident early on – in the first six months – that we could better serve our clients going back to being a small operation. Our clients liked us the way we were.” After a period of “dating,” in which the firms sized up the proposition of a merger, they hashed out an agreement, and beginning in January 2015, the merger moved forward in Richmond with the marketing moniker Stewart/HG. The firm combined the bread-and-butter landscape
George Stanziale, President, Stewart
Patrick Pettit, VP and CMO, Stewart
THE ZWEIG LETTER August 15, 201
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