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PROFILE
A greater value: Dan Rowe President of TreanorHL (Lawrence, KS), a full-service architectural firm with a purpose of creating places and experiences that make people’s lives better.
By LIISA ANDREASSEN Correspondent
R owe gives a good deal of indirect credit to his mother for leading him down the architecture career path. His interest was first piqued when he was around 12 and she taught him to scale drawings from books or magazines and how to then transfer them to sewing patterns. He drew everything from T-shirt decals to yearbook photos and sold them to his classmates. “I made a good living for a sixth grader in the ‘70s,” he jokes. “The point is, my drawing skills and aptitude for math made it clear that architecture was the right fit for me.” It was that initial experience that set him up with the philosophy that architecture is much more than building design. It’s about understanding people, mapping things out, and sculpting clay into structure. “The individuals who use a building and the clients who pay for it often have different needs and interests,” he says. “Creating a place that meets all of their expectations is a wonderfully challenging puzzle and I still can’t believe I get paid to do it.” POINTS OF PRIDE. Having been president since 2009, Rowe
says he’s very proud of the architecture work the company has accomplished that out-kicked their coverage for a firm their size – including the $350 million restoration of the Kansas Capital Building to 12 LEED Platinum buildings for student housing in Qatar. He’s also pleased to have assembled teams from diverse backgrounds across the country to function as one firm, and proud of the firm’s growth from a small company to a nationwide one of more than 150 people. In 2024, leadership is focused on achieving organic growth of about 10 percent by year end. They’re also studying some modest acquisitions to increase this number strategically in a couple geographies. “We’ve had very good luck with both areas over the years – including single-digit voluntary turnover and recruiting in key hires and new grads,” Rowe says. He adds that the energy of new graduates has always been
See A GREATER VALUE, page 10
THE ZWEIG LETTER JUNE 10, 2024, ISSUE 1541
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