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tle firms

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From left to right, Geoff Prentiss, Tom Lenchek, and Dan Wickline, principals and cofounders, prentiss + balance + wickline Architects

The River Bank House, by prentiss + balance + wickline Architects.

there is about 6.7 million square feet of office space under construction, with most of it set to deliver by next year. Gregg Percich, a principal and founder at Jackson | Main Architecture , has worked in the Seattle market since 1985. He says the upsurge in design and development is not just big, but perhaps even bigger than what happened before the Great Recession, when Seattle, in response to the emer- gence of Microsoft Corp., shed its regional identity for a na- tional profile. “I don’t have the numbers, but it feels like it is,” Percich says. His firm is the result of the January 2015 merger of two established firms – Stricker Cato Murphy Architects and PKJB Architectural Group . The new firm, with 48 people housed in a 19th century, seismically retrofitted building in Pioneer Square, is a midsized firm that’s well-positioned in the Seattle market. “Both groups came in with so much work, we’re just letting our clients know, and they’re accepting it,” Percich says. “Clients keep coming to us with work, and we keep saying, ‘Yes.’” Percich described the merger between the two firms as “be- yond my expectations,” noting that three of the five found- ing partners had been friends for 15 years, that the M&A conversation had happened several times, and that the firms shared similar philosophies.

The outcome is a bigger firmwith faster delivery and a broad- er menu of services. Jackson | Main’s wheelhouse is multi- family residential, self-storage, Mission Critical – switching stations and generator yards – and large corporate clients. “Another challenge we had, and still have, is developing our new standards using all the new technology and abilities that our young staff bring to the office.” While the new firm has made a seamless transition in terms of its relationship with clients, an ongoing test is taking place within the firm. “Another challenge we had, and still have, is developing our new standards using all the new technology and abilities that our young staff bring to the office,” Percich says, refer- ring to things like Slack instead of email, cutting edge soft- ware and cloud-based technology. “They learned it in school and they like to keep using it.” Seattle has alternately been the fastest growing, or one of the fastest growing, cities in the United States for the last five years. The Seattle Office of Planning and Community Development reports that the population grew by around

See SEATTLE, page 8

ay 30, 2016, ISSUE 1154

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