August 26, 2025 • 50 mins
Brian Cassidy shares insights into his early career and his role at CCBG Architects, delving into the company's culture and its impact on Downtown Phoenix's transformation. He discusses lean operations, management strategies, and the evolution of Roosevelt Row, alongside investment strategies for downtown revitalization. The conversation touches on marketing, hiring, and the Phoenix Community Alliance's influence. Brian addresses urban development challenges, affordable housing, and community advocacy, highlighting historical renovations and infrastructure issues. He explores remote work's effect on work-life balance, future city planning, and technology's role in architecture, including AI, automation, and the significance of CAD and 3D modeling.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
When we first moved into Roosevelt, we justrenovated a building, and then we leased it
(00:05):
from a family that owned a square block ofdowntown.
And it was fun.
And we got a lot of attention, and a lot ofpeople were saying, no.
That's a pretty cool office space you have.
You know?
I'm interested in doing the same thing.
And then after about ten years of practicing inRoosevelt, we got an opportunity with a friend
of ours who we've done other renovation workwith to actually build a new building in the
(00:28):
warehouse district.
And that's what we ended up doing.
And we asked that gentleman, Mark Abramowitz.
We said, Mark, we'd be interested in doingthis, but we'd like to be part owners of the
building also.
Would you consider that?
And he said, yes.
He sure would.
So that's what we did.
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Today's guest is Brian Cassidy, the presidentand CEO of CCBG Architects and chairperson of
(01:57):
the Phoenix Warehouse District Council.
He's a graduate from Arizona State UniversityCollege of Architecture.
Brian joined CCBG in 1981 and became presidentin 1988.
Over his forty plus year career, he has led thedesign and construction of churches, civic
spaces, and urban developments across theSouthwest and beyond.
(02:18):
Brian is a past president of both the AIACentral Arizona and AIA Arizona and received
the AIA Arizona Architects Medal in 2014, whichis the highest honor bestowed by the chapter.
He holds memberships in the ArchitecturalInstitute of British Columbia and NCARB, and
the Interfaith Forum on Religion, Art, andArchitecture.
(02:41):
He's deeply engaged in his community.
Brian sits on boards for the Phoenix CommunityAlliance, Downtown Phoenix CBC, and Downtown
YMCA.
And with all that said, Brian, welcome to theshow.
Oh, thanks, guys.
Great to be here.
I had to hold myself back because every time wehave somebody that is from ASU, I almost always
say go devils right afterwards.
(03:02):
So now I have to say it now to make it evenmore known, go devils.
So, yes, that's All season starting.
I know.
It's exciting.
I'm very excited.
I'll be at the first game, which is on thethirtieth.
So I gotta watch the game TV.
Yeah.
Awesome.
So I said a bunch of nice things, but tell usthe true origin story.
How'd you get in the architecture?
And then tell us about CCBG.
(03:24):
Well, I when I was a young boy, probably eightyears old, my parents worked with an architect
to design their home.
And I was just fascinated by the process, theconstruction.
And to be honest with you, when you're an eightyear old, you probably don't know the
difference between a builder and an architect.
But I liked it all, and I decided that yearthat I wanna be an architect.
(03:46):
Know, fifty nine years later,
I'm still doing it.
That's the That's awesome.
Yeah.
And then I ended up, graduated from ASU quite awhile ago, and I was offered a job at this same
firm.
I was the new guy.
Firm used to hire one ASU grad every year and Iwas the lucky grad that year.
(04:09):
So I've started and worked my way up to amanaging partner and still here.
Pretty much one job on my resume as an adult.
Yeah.
I was talking to somebody the other day andthey they'd asked about resume stuff and I'm
same thing where I've been at spot for so long.
Like, I don't this is not my expertise.
(04:29):
I don't bunch jobs.
So to your you and you even more so than that,what does mean to have a longevity at one place
that long?
Like, one what what what do you see as thatdoes for culture as well as what do you see as
a new people start its firm?
Well, you know, I started here, you know, backin the eighties.
I think every architecture grad eventually feltthey were gonna end up in California.
(04:51):
It was kind of the natural path, you know, keepmoving west.
But I didn't.
Worked with some great people that I had somegood mentoring when I was a young architect.
And I stayed here.
And about thirty five years ago, we got veryinterested in Downtown Phoenix.
Phoenix had just hit rock bottom.
There was not much going on down here.
(05:12):
A lot of people worked downtown, but they justfled downtown in the evening and so forth.
So a handful of us were passionate enough tobelieve that we could stand for downtown to
reinvent itself and become a world class city.
So that's kind of been our personal missionstatement and and my personal mission statement
ever since, is to let's roll up our sleeves andadvocate for rebuilding the city and make it
(05:37):
truly a world class city.
So that's why I stayed with the firm, and weeventually moved the firm downtown about thirty
three years ago.
It actually took two years to find a place wecould move into because there wasn't much
available that even the real estate ownersactually wanted to renovate a building.
They they really weren't that interested.
Didn't think downtown was a valuable place, butbut now it is.
(05:58):
We're happy we did it, and we're still a bigpart of what's going on down here.
And every day, I wanna get up and make it abetter place.
So So that's great.
It's awesome.
I mean, it's changed a little bit since, youknow, thirty something years ago, and the
actual boom I mean, might wanna describe whatit looked like back then versus today because
(06:20):
Well I've been there.
And
I would I would say Downtown Phoenix is unique,and it is our of our major US cities, we have
the youngest downtown, period, in the entireUnited States.
It's also the only major arid, you know, desertenvironment downtown.
And our downtown was just destroyed by the postWorld War two suburban sprawl free you know,
(06:43):
the the bending of the freeway system that cameas, you know, a reaction to how Hitler moved
troops around Germany that in the autobahn, gotadopted by Eisenhower to literally let's
connect the major US cities with three waysystem.
And that's was great for the country, but itwas terrible for Phoenix because everybody
(07:03):
moved out of downtown, and a lot of greatbuildings just sat vacant and decayed for many
for several generations from that perspective.
So that's why we said we can renovate thesebuildings.
Other cities had already done it.
And if you want a model of what Phoenix lookslike or it's gonna look like, you know, go to
Denver, go to San Diego, go to Salt Lake City,go to the Kansas City cities like that that
(07:27):
have already reinvented themselves, thatperspective.
So we decided, let's be part of that.
We know it's gonna happen.
Let's ride those coattails and advocate for,you know, doing it well.
So that's where we're at at this point.
You obviously, both advocacy as well as thefirm itself have massive impact in that area.
(07:48):
Let's talk about the firm first.
What is the firm doing?
What makes the firm unique in regards tocreating that impact?
Right now,
we're at 26 architects and interior designerswhere he brought what we call a very lean model
where the anti corporate firm, it's work hard,play hard.
Everybody here works on projects most of theday.
(08:09):
I'm the only one that has any sort of businessor administrative role at the office itself.
So that's unique for the scale of the work thatwe're doing from that perspective.
But what it does is we we create this modelthat our clients get to work with a handful of
architects, at least anywhere from two to fivepeople on a project.
And we keep that team together for thecontinuity of the projects, for basically the
(08:33):
confidence of our clients to understand why howwe got from point a to point b from that
perspective.
And that model of a business is working.
And so if it's not broke, we're not gonna fixit anytime soon.
So we're still running that lean overheadmodel.
And if you can't tell, I'm sitting at the frontdesk and I manage practice from the front desk
(08:53):
because this is where I sit now.
I've sat here for fifteen years and have joinedevery minute of it.
That's a very unique, maybe only managingpartner that I know that sits at the front
desk.
Which is, that to me, it's very impressive.
One, how you are able to manage at such a leanamount without having the admin overhead.
(09:18):
How does, how does that even work?
I think most 25 plus person architects,architecture firms would say, how can you even
do that?
How is it possible?
Well, I think we dared ourself to make it workfrom that perspective.
The reality is we have really good talentedpeople, people anywhere from a year out of
school to thirty five, forty year veterandesigners and technicians here.
(09:42):
And we let the teams focus on leading theprojects and running them on the day to day and
taking them into the construction phases fromthat perspective.
And my partner, Paul and I, we're bothdesigners.
He is a 100% working on projects.
I'm more like 50% of my normal month, let'ssay, is directly working on projects.
(10:02):
So I spend half a day on average runningbusiness and half a day having fun working
within the business from that perspective.
So it just is continuing to work for us.
And again, it's unique.
And, again, I sit at the front desk because wehave a three story office building.
Somebody's gotta sit down here, meet greatpeople, and keep an eye on all our stuff.
(10:26):
So I just learned to love it being right at thestreet.
I'm right on the street corner of the warehousedistrict.
So and just watching it slowly reinvent itself.
It's been fun.
Know, it was it
wasn't always like that.
When you first moved in so when we talked abouttalked a while back ago, it was very different.
Can you describe what it was?
And then your a little bit of your vision?
(10:48):
Because what you described, you know, when youinitially kind of moved in, because I think
it's on I think it's Roosevelt or RooseveltRow.
Yeah.
So can you talk a little bit about that?
Yeah.
We moved in onto Roosevelt Row thirty threeyears ago.
And believe it or not, there was no artistcommunity yet.
There's almost nothing going on in Roosevelt.
(11:09):
But it seemed like a safer part to kind ofplant a flag in downtown to open up.
You have to move our practice from the Biltmorearea into the downtown area.
And we literally had to walk five blocks to getto the first restaurant.
You know, look at it today.
Walk about half a block and you have three orfour options.
It's changed dramatically.
(11:29):
Really exciting place up on on that end ofdowntown.
But we we came down here as designers saying,it's gonna happen.
Let's be part of it.
Let's enjoy the ride from that perspective.
And we basically went all in on downtown as adesign.
It's not all we do, but it's been a big pieceof our sort of our culture was advocating for
(11:52):
this area.
When I said earlier that in the suburban sprawland the proliferation and improvements in air
conditioning and freeways led to just ahorizontal city that kept sprawling, sprawling.
It was easy to build on the periphery and itwas a little bit harder to build in the core of
the city.
So a lot of the buildings, we lost half of thegreat buildings that used to exist in our
(12:15):
downtown.
They just sort of fell apart or decayed and ormany people that own those buildings found out
that if they tore their building down, theirproperty taxes would also get reduced.
And so unfortunately, we lost a lot of projectsto the demolition wall because of that
phenomenon.
And you can't replace some of the contextualbuildings that we used to have from that
(12:37):
perspective.
And the other reason we're down here is notonly are we the youngest urban poor in The
United States of a major city, but we're themost underdeveloped in Tulsa.
So I'm looking out, I see a lot of parkinglots.
They're not gonna be here forever.
People are interested in coming in and doinginfill work and creating that really vibrant,
(12:59):
you know, walkable city that I think a lot ofpeople wanna have.
So the firm putting its money where its mouthis, what does that actually mean?
Why don't you give us some context to what youguys are doing?
Oh, when we first moved into Roosevelt, we justrenovated a building, and then we leased from a
family that owned a square block of downtown.
And it was fun.
And we got a lot of attention, and a lot ofpeople were saying, no.
(13:22):
That's a pretty cool office space you have.
You know?
I'm interested in doing the same thing.
And then after about ten years of practicing inRoosevelt, we got an opportunity with a friend
of ours who we've done other renovation workwith to actually build a new building in the
warehouse district.
And that's what we ended up doing.
And we asked that gentleman, Mark Abramowitz,we said, Mark, we'd be interested in doing
(13:46):
this, but we'd like to be part owners of thebuilding also.
Would you consider that?
And he said, yes, he sure would.
So that's what we did.
Built a building that fit our practice on acorner in the warehouse district, and we made
that commitment that, you know, we weren'tgonna just preach downtown.
We are gonna invest in downtown.
And and it it's been great for our practice.
(14:07):
It's been a great recruitment vehicle fortalent to come in and work at our firm.
It's showing that downtown has a future, thatit can be done.
You can insert small buildings and they canlook good.
They can be functional, and they can alsoperform financially.
And so it's kind of a, you know, a test case.
(14:27):
So that's how we started doing it.
And then downtown became valuable startingabout fifteen years ago.
We talked about Roosevelt Road.
For years, nobody built any new housing indowntown, twenty plus years.
And then starting about twelve, thirteen yearsago, a handful of developers focused on
Roosevelt said, can we put more housing at thehigher density into this area?
(14:50):
And in my opinion, that is when that workstarted to go in, that is what turned Roosevelt
Row around into a point where it's really got alot of cool vibe and great walkability and a
mix of new buildings and a handful of small,mostly houses that have been renovated into
food and beverage operation, some of the retailperspective.
(15:11):
So I think the answer to the question was weput our money where our mouth was to show that
you could do these projects.
They could be successful.
And that some of these old buildings can berenovated if our clients can buy them at the
right price and not overpay for thatperspective.
So we demonstrated that if you find an oldbuilding, you gotta identify how you can make
(15:32):
it work from a zoning and a life safetyperspective so you can legally occupy it, maybe
change the use.
And then we advise our clients on don't paymore than this because you'll never get your
investment to work in the end from thatperspective.
So that was, again, a showcase model of how torenovate some of the work down here.
And then a couple other things we've been we'vebeen hyper focused on downtown, and I chair the
(15:57):
warehouse sister council, which we formed aboutten and a half years ago.
And we help brand this district of downtown,and we actually help recruit businesses to come
take a look, look at the buildings that areavailable, properties that are available, and
sort of guide them as to what is the processand the timing that might take to actually
(16:18):
renovate or build a new infill project.
How do you since there's not the admin side,how do you go about you mentioned hiring.
How do go about hiring or how do you go aboutaccounting, marketing, all these other things?
We a lot of our marketing and businessdevelopment is based on building up a network,
happy clients, and happy advocates, and happyengineers and contractors that we work with.
(16:41):
I mean, that the architecture, engineering,construction, real estate community is really
vast in this state, and it's also also Phoenixis a big little town, and a lot of people know
everybody.
And, you know, if you start doing good work,you get noticed.
Rather than toot our horn a lot, we try tocontinue to do the good work.
(17:01):
And that, you know, for us, it's working.
Maybe we'd be bigger if we had moreadministrative staff people, but we like the
scale we're at right now.
It seems to work for us in our culture, kind ofthe work hard, play hard, anti corporate look
of a of a front.
That makes sense.
If you are so the marketing and businessdevelopment makes sense to me.
(17:24):
If we just do great work, we make greatrelationships, we will get more work.
That totally makes sense.
What about the you know, when it comes tohiring?
Like, are you is that part of that 50% of yourdays?
It's I I have to do the
recruitment I I interviewed two new potentialcandidates just today just this morning
already.
So we're always looking for talent.
(17:45):
I I think any good design firm, anybody that'sin the creative world always has their ear to
the ground looking for talent from thatperspective.
Sometimes when you find the talent and youdon't have the work, you take them on.
You take them anyway because you know thatthey've got great potential and they're gonna
be a good fit in your firm.
Sometimes you're just need help outright fromthat perspective.
(18:06):
So right now, we're busy.
We're looking to get a little bit bigger butnot grow too fast, and we're looking for
talent.
And I've got two great candidates today.
So I'm really excited.
They're both coming back for second meetingsnext week to meet more of the team here.
So so it's a good story.
Nice.
Okay.
That makes sense.
(18:29):
So I know that you're part of the PCA.
Why don't you so why don't you tell thelisteners what the PCA is?
Because that'll then I think that conversationwill turn into something that we have not
talked about, which is advocacy.
So why don't you talk about the PCA first andhow you got involved in what it is, etcetera?
(18:49):
PCA stands for the Phoenix Community Alliance.
It is a advocacy group in downtown thatbasically does so much good and so much info
sharing of what is happening in downtown.
So Phoenix Community Alliance is mostly aprivate group of individuals.
We have some public partners.
(19:09):
The city of Phoenix is a major partner in it,APS, the Diamondbacks, the Suns, and so forth.
But there's also about 320 private companymembers of which we're one of those, And that
also includes a handful of just privateindividuals that are basically passionate about
Downtown Phoenix.
Vishay has been around, I'm guessing, thirtyplus years now.
(19:33):
They are by far the most influential group ofpeople that help try to make sure that downtown
grows and it's healthy and it's diverse andfocusing on business retention, recruiting the
companies to come down here.
Clear it up, there's an entire committee on thequality of schools around downtown, and it's
phenomenal.
There's a lot of schools, private, charter, youknow, everything from k to a high schools and
(20:00):
colleges in and around downtown.
And the quality of education out here isfabulous.
And it's kind of something a lot of people werejust not paying attention to or unaware of from
that perspective.
There's also a subcommittee that's focusing onhelping them with a lot of the homeless issues
and some of those challenges that, obviously,every major city is having its share of
(20:20):
homeless issues are not always the same inevery city.
But, you know, having some passion for thesetypes of people trying to help them point them
in the right direction and and advocate formore affordable housing to be built in in the
city in general.
Not not just downtown, but the city of Phoenixin general.
And and PCA has a separate group, the CDC, theCommunity Development Corporation, which I'm
(20:43):
also on that board.
And it is a group of people that haveexperience developing housing for the most
part, either they're architects or real estatedevelopers, they're general contractors that
build housing and or they're lenders thatunderstand the financing mechanisms that are
available for affordable housing.
And that's just what our board is now doing ison a pro bono basis doing the front end legwork
(21:09):
to identify parcels that could be redevelopedor raw land that could be developed into
affordable housing and help determine what youcan and can't do under current zoning and then
publicize it.
Talk some of these properties are owned by thecity of Phoenix, and we're doing some of the
legwork for their housing departments.
We're getting on a handful of initiatives thatare in downtown and just trying to build the
(21:34):
housing stock here because every major city inthis country has a critical housing shortage
right now for lots of reasons.
We can't solve them on one podcast, but there'sjust not enough housing.
And what we do have is too expensive for a lotof people, and there's a a really high barrier
right now for people to get into housing.
So and then I always say we don't havebasements to live in here like other parts of
(21:56):
the country.
So it's hard to live in your parents basementbecause they don't have one here.
That's very true.
Coming from Chicago and well-being in Chicago,a basement's just part of life.
That's just that's part of everything.
In Phoenix, we don't we don't have basements.
So so advocacy, obviously, there's a drivebecause there's a passion for it.
There's a love for the city.
There's a love for seeing the growth.
(22:18):
What is that what does that turn into, and howdoes that help the firm?
Well, we help recruit companies to come take alook at downtown, especially, like, in the
warehouse.
I'm kinda hyper focused on the WarehouseDistrict the last ten years.
Not only are we officing here, but we I kindapound the pavement almost every day to see
what's going on and understand the patterns.
(22:38):
We now have light rail coming through theWarehouse District as of about eight weeks ago,
and that will be a development game changerover the next generation to attract more
development that's more transit oriented,meaning, you know, higher density, lower park
projects that are mixed use, hopefully, andhave the ability to come right into the core
(22:59):
downtown by using the existing trap air transitnow that's available from that perspective.
So that's one of the tools.
A lot of times, you know, the WarehouseDistrict has all these old, cool, and unique
contextual buildings that you really couldn'treplicate anymore in today's world.
A lot of brick and timber and steel structuresthat just have, you know, this unique sort of
(23:20):
charm to them.
And when when we see these and people areinterested in them, again, we try to help
advise them on how what you may have to do andmaybe what you don't have to do to get them
legal to occupy from that perspective.
And the older a building is, the morechallenges you have to fix.
And a lot of these old buildings really don'thave they're not air conditioned.
(23:42):
They don't have plumbing that works, and it's aand it's a heavy tenant improvement.
It's what we call heavy TI, what they take fromthat perspective.
But if you could show somebody the vision andexplain to them how you do it, how long it
might take, how much it might cost, then thethe ones that are hearty and passionate about
(24:02):
it will take take them on.
Those that are looking for a quick flip of abuilding will probably say that's that's not
for me.
This is not gonna work for for their businessmodel.
But a lot of people wanna do it.
We have these great buildings down here.
COVID sort of crushed our tech community downhere.
We had a really thriving tech community movinginto these buildings.
(24:23):
And then with COVID, a lot of those samebusiness owners realized that they could
successfully work remotely.
And a lot of those big companies that were downhere no longer have a real estate footprint in
downtown.
They're more remote.
And they're healthy companies, and they'vegrown through COVID and are doing really well.
They just don't have a downtown presenceanymore, which is kind of a shame in that
(24:47):
perspective.
So we got a stock of great old buildings downhere that we're hoping to find tenant interest
to repopulate them.
They've been renovated.
They're in great condition.
Could move in, you know, at short notice.
But right now their, you know, occupancy iskinda low in this area for office.
There are some exceptions.
(25:08):
You said something, and I I feel silly that Idon't actually know this answer yet.
But you said like, you know, old buildings,like we can't recreate them.
And I understand like you can't go back in timeto recreate them, but like, is it just too
expensive to use the same materials?
Like what what's the rationale of like, whycan't I build a building that is similar in
(25:30):
design and and material that a building thatwas built, say, forty years ago or fifty years
ago, and then obviously bring it up to code ofwhatever needs to be done?
Like, why why can't we do that?
Why is that impossible?
It's not impossible.
It's just expensive.
So I'll just give you one good example.
A lot of the older buildings here built in theearly nineteen hundreds through the nineteen
(25:53):
forties actually made of brick.
So the the entire walls on the perimeter of thebuilding are two or three courses deep of
brick, and they're not reinforced.
So they don't have structurally, they don'thave lateral stability that that the new
building coach require, but they have thischarm, and they have brick on both the inside
and outside surfaces.
(26:14):
To replicate that in brick today would beprohibitively expensive and so forth.
And every contractor to say, you don't wanna dothis.
It's too expensive.
But if you could buy a building for 20¢ on thedollar, let's say, and you have room and time
to renovate that building, then you can exposethat brick.
(26:35):
You can have the charm.
You know, the roof structures quite often werejust open wood trusses or steel trusses, and
they were tall.
So the the average warehouse volume in thisarea has anywhere from 12 to 20 foot high
ceilings.
And, you know, as opposed to a new officebuilding that might have a nine foot high
(26:56):
ceiling with a, you know, a dropped acousticalceiling kind of boring lighting.
So we have these great volumes.
We have this character.
We have this great relationship that a lot ofthe buildings are built right to the sidewalk,
and they're very urban, and they're and they'revery transparent.
And we're just trying to take advantage of thekind of the original design, clean them up,
(27:18):
make them pass the muster of all the buildingcodes and some of the zoning restrictions that
now apply that did in the old days and makethem usable.
The most sustainable thing you can do inarchitecture is clean up and fix a building
rather than tear it down and replace it.
I mean, that totally makes sense.
I mean, billing code gets updated all the time.
Everything because of fire, new new theory onaround fire, fire codes, etcetera.
(27:43):
Yep.
But then, you've got environmental, andespecially in Phoenix, you've got heat issues
that you have to deal with.
Back in the forties, they weren't reallythinking about air conditioning.
Oh, power
HVAC.
The in the day.
Yeah.
As an example, one of the renovations we didright near my office about eight years ago,
(28:04):
great brick building, and, it was built in1931.
And when we went in for plan review to renovatethe structure and stabilize it, the the the
building officials wanted us to insulate theinside of the bricks so we'll have a higher
thermal performance.
We're thinking that would just kill thecharacter of this building.
(28:27):
So we look for a more creative way ofaddressing that with the city and with historic
preservation.
And historic preservation came to the table andhelped us negotiate a solution where such as if
you put a building on the historic register,you have to maintain kind of the original
texture and fabric and materials of thebuilding.
(28:48):
Covering them up or taking out perfectlyfunctioning historic windows in order to put
insulated glass in them violates the HPguidelines.
So what department convinced the other that youshouldn't make them replace the windows and
insulated cover up period correct?
And that's how we said it.
(29:09):
So city came to their own rescue in that case.
So and it's a great outcome, and we've got agreat tenant in the building right next door to
us here.
And it's one of the thriving tech companiesthat's working in the Warehouse District.
That's just one of many stories we've had overthe years.
So Very interesting.
Yeah.
Let me tell you one other story about that samebuilding.
Go ahead.
(29:29):
Their building goes from the alley to thestreet to the railroad and to another building
on its foresight.
So the building covers every square inch oftheir real estate, and they had no solution to
put a transformer in so they could get enoughelectricity to air condition the building.
So we found a way to work with Citi and APS toput some of the electrical infrastructure,
(29:54):
meaning the transformers, not on theirproperty, but out in what's called city right
away.
It took some arc twisting, but they finallyagreed that that was the only solution to power
this building.
And then a second one, same challenge.
They have nowhere to throw their trash on-sitebecause they used up every square inch to have
a trash dumpster.
So we made them an offer, which is prettysimple.
(30:17):
I said, I'll share mine with you if the citywill approve it, and they did.
So we just have the trash picked up more often.
You know?
Simple solution.
They'd cost anybody anything.
Or they could just be like New York and throwit all on the street.
Right.
Just throw it out.
Problem here is nobody would pick it up likethey do in New York and London and other major
cities where they don't have any choice but tobring the trash out to the street side.
(30:39):
To mention the stink.
Ugh.
Those mornings.
Yeah.
Mm-mm.
Mm-mm.
You mentioned the tech industry going moreremote.
What about what's the feel, at CCBG aboutremote work?
Well, we we did a bit of remote during earlyCOVID until we realized the world was not gonna
end and people were gonna move forward and dotheir projects.
So we brought the people back.
(31:00):
Our studio is rather spacious.
We're not sitting on top of one another.
That was by choice when we first designed itfrom that perspective.
But we're in the creative world.
We feel that being together, collaboratingdaily in the same room is better than
collaborating over Zoom calls and text messagesand emails and such.
(31:24):
And we have people, for certain reasons, haveto work remote for a while, for family reasons
and so forth.
But we pretty much want everybody in hereworking together, collaborating.
Young people get the insight of working withside by side with veterans when they're in the
same room rather than, you know, electronicallyconnected.
(31:46):
So I think it's a great advantage for forteamwork and collaborative effort, and that's
what most design studios are.
They're very collaborative.
So we're better together then.
You get pushback from the younger generationsabout working from home or from new parents,
like work working from home.
Bit.
You know?
(32:07):
And part of it is some of the youngestemployees that are in their piece came out of
college.
Let's say, everybody here went to college.
They came out of college during COVID, and thatwas the norm.
If they got hired, they likely spent a few daysin the office, and they were sent home with a
laptop, and they worked remote.
And that's all they knew at the time.
(32:28):
We're we're trying to teach those people orgive them the fundamental lessons that to
collaborate together and to get away from yourhome, get into a work environment, sometimes a
lot more healthy than sitting at your diningroom table for eight hours a day.
And then you hit the end of the day, thenyou're still sitting at your dining room table.
(32:50):
Work better.
Chris,
there's there's also something to be said aboutyour spaces.
Right?
So if you, you know, especially as a youngerprofessional, generally, they're they're not
rolling in the cash.
So if you don't have that big of a space, a bigbig place, it's like, well, I have to use one
room for multiple things.
(33:10):
It's adding your workspace in there as well canbecome very challenging.
And especially as you mentioned, the creativemind, sometimes new spaces are just part of the
answer.
And then the second part of your question,Will, was, you know, what about people that
have family issues and so forth like that?
You know, we all have families.
We all have issues like that.
You know, go take care of family first.
(33:31):
You know, that's always been our philosophy.
I I encourage my people, those that have kids,they have a game, if they have a recital or
their kids in a ballet, I say go do it, becauseyou don't get it back.
Though, you don't get that event back ever.
It's gone.
But you can always make up your work afterhours or on the weekend or whatever.
So I encourage my people.
(33:52):
Their kids are in a game.
Go watch them play.
I mean, I did it when my kid was young.
I was a boss.
I guess I could do it.
But I didn't miss any of his games.
I still got feel like I got my work done.
I think it makes for a healthy balance of life.
Yeah.
It's that true work life balance.
Some people think that's a bad term.
(34:12):
Other people think that that's part of what weneed to be doing.
But in any regard, is you are working, you areliving your life.
And if you can get some form of balance andwhatever that means to a person, that usually
turns out to be a better mental state.
Yeah.
And we do we do encourage our employees, youknow, if I wouldn't enjoy an hour commute every
way to go to work.
(34:32):
So we sort of encourage them, live closer tothe office.
I think to me, that's just a natural thing.
And some people camp for various reasons andhave long commute, but I'd rather spend more
time with my family or more time working thansitting in my car stuck in traffic.
Oh, yeah.
Like like like the New York or LA or Chicagoproblems that we have go go go eight miles and
(34:58):
you're stuck in traffic for forty five minutesto an hour.
So we have a handful of employees that couldwalk or ride their bike to work.
Some do.
Some take light rail at times.
Sometimes you gotta go somewhere during the dayand you need your car.
You know, that's out of Phoenix, we're prettycar centric still.
But we are making improvements in our masstransit options here.
That's super cool that the light rail is in theWarehouse District.
(35:20):
When I was at school at ASU, that was when thelight rail came about.
That was the start of it, and it's wild to seenow all of the places that it is now than it
wasn't when I graduated.
Yep.
And it makes a difference in the way the citydevelops.
It doesn't happen overnight, but it's a longterm transition for the better, my words.
(35:42):
So the next phase of city planning, you sit onthe you're the chair at PCA for city planning
and development committee.
You know, what what are the next plans for thecity planning and development?
Well, you know, again, the city center planningdevelopment is one of eight subcommittees
(36:04):
within Phoenix Community Alliance, and ourfocus is on what is going to happen in our
city.
That's you know, we have a separate group thatfocuses on transit and education and homeless
issues and and public art, but our focus is onthe building the built environment, what's
gonna happen next and so forth.
And so what we have seen is you gotta realizegoing back to remember, for those old enough,
(36:28):
back in 02/2008, 02/2009, US kinda went over acliff and went into a major real recession
driven by real estate and driven by poorbanking habits.
Loose landing statuses, you know, took theentire world down to one knee financially, all
because of US federal banking policy.
(36:50):
And it took years to recover.
During that boom of work that ended in 02/2008,nobody really built an apartment unit in
Downtown Phoenix.
If you can imagine, was that seventeen yearsago?
Didn't build any apartments in our downtown.
Since then, starting about ten years ago,there's been 8,500 new units built, and there's
(37:12):
a handful of high rises that are currentlyunder construction that are all rental housing.
None of them are affordable.
They're all mark what we call market ratehousing from that perspective.
Right now, there's not gonna be another bigwave for a year or more of high rise work
coming out of the ground because interest ratesare high.
(37:33):
Our construction loans are 7% for our clients.
That's a generational high in borrowing money.
And these projects are marginal best right nowbecause of high costs and still labor shortage
and high interest rates.
What you see under construction will finish,and you probably won't see a lot of new tower
cranes for another half year or more, but itwill happen.
(37:56):
And I've always said what downtown needed waspeople.
It was the missing ingredient in our downtownwas people, not just living, but gain a live
work horse, but play is one of our motto.
The the the things that, you know, that have abalance in your life from that perspective.
So that's kind of the result of a lot of peopleadvocating for rebuilding the city, and it's
(38:17):
gonna happen.
It's gonna be generations of regrowth in thisarea.
And the Warehouse District just happens to bethe most underdeveloped part of the most
underdeveloped new urban core in The UnitedStates.
So it's a natural, you're gonna see a lot ofthings happening down here in the next ten
years.
That's why we're here.
That's great.
What about technology?
(38:38):
What technologies are you using at Princeton?
Well, we we use all the same technologies, anydesign firm, all the various CAD and Revit
programs, rendering programs, and so forth.
You know, we communicate with clients throughvirtual calls all the time and and they have
their purpose.
We'd rather have face to face meetings, butsome of our clients don't live here.
(38:59):
Some of them are on a trip or on vacation orworking remote temporarily.
A virtual call to be the sole means ofcommunicating in our world.
But, you know, we do three d printing up studymodels that we can just turn the printer on and
go eat lunch.
And when you come back, hopefully, you got whatyou programmed, got printed on a three d
printer and, you know, you don't have to sitand do it the old fashioned way.
(39:21):
So the ability to communicate is improved withtechnology.
The softwares, though they are getting verycomplex, and we're finding younger architects
are better at the software, and the olderarchitects aren't as good and have to learn it
from that perspective.
But the old architects are the veterans whoknow how to design and build buildings and do
(39:43):
the technical aspects.
And the young people have to learn that.
They they know the software, but they can'talways use the software to design a building
that you can actually build, and the client'sactually gonna like and can afford to build.
So tech the technology's, like everybody, it'sevolving all the time, constant.
And if you don't keep up with it, you're gonnaget left behind.
(40:04):
What about AI or automation?
Is you you know, you don't have any adminstaff, so therefore, there are things that you
are automating.
Hey.
There's a couple software programs that do whatwe
call yield study planning, which is when youplan a site.
And, you know, I did one a couple months ago,and I did a solution based on everything I a
(40:25):
site that I've driven by for thirty years, knowit really well, and then we got a chance to
work on it.
And so I did an idea, and then I had AI work onthe same requirements.
And AI developed 18 concepts in about twentyminutes.
It's really impressive.
There were 18 of them, but about 15 of them
(40:47):
were not by.
And none of
them took into context the site itself, thehistory of the area.
It was just physical modeling.
And none of them got quite to the efficiency wewere able to do the old fashioned way of just
designing it.
But I got 18 ideas and could use pieces of 18that were viable and use that as it's like a
(41:11):
test.
It's like a back test of what we do.
So they're getting really good.
Every year, these AI planning tools are justgetting faster and and more accurate from that
perspective.
So they are you know, they have a place in ourworld, and they will forever.
So more for idea generation than actual Yeah.
(41:31):
Yeah.
The wheel I have used it is to back check someof our initial thinking to see if it's still
valid, see if they can't reinvent the wheel ora better mousetrap from that perspective.
And and their solutions will create a 10 pagereport.
I mean, literally created 18 solutions with 10page report in about twenty minutes.
(41:54):
You know?
I can't work that fast.
You know?
But can't, but it was helpful.
It's just to get it's like getting a secondopinion and a third and fourth opinion.
So one other question, know, something I'veI've kind of been wondering.
Back when you first started versus today, thevolume of work, right, sort of the we'll call
(42:15):
it productivity measure.
You know, if you're just keeping at a verysimilar amount of people, you did grow, but if
you're keeping at a similar amount of people,how much has the work increased?
Right?
I would say, you know, I started in a pencil,pen, and eraser era because there wasn't CAD
programs, and there were no real personalcomputers left.
(42:37):
You know, they hadn't really been invented yet.
We didn't even have fax machines when Istarted.
A lot of people young people go, what's a faxmachine?
Well, you know, I don't wanna talk about that,but we had we had to
have one.
It's a robot that does not sounds like it gotmurdered to connect to the Internet.
Yes.
Yeah.
Three PO is what it is.
I don't know.
But some of the doctor's offices still usethem.
Don't understand that, but but we don't.
(43:00):
But what I can tell you is with technology,we're probably able to produce twice two to
three times as much work with the same numberof people now that we could forty years ago in
our profession.
So I'd say the architecture and engineeringcommunities have benefited significantly from
technology and stuff.
(43:21):
But I'd say on the construction side, everybuilding we do is unique.
It is gonna be built one time on a specificsite with a with a team players that'll never
be assembled together, meaning the owner andthe architecture and engineering members and
all the builder and all their subcontractorsand all the building officials and planners and
(43:43):
building inspectors.
That group of people will never ever worktogether on another building again ever,
especially on that site.
Construction industry has not kept up, in myopinion, with the technology race that's going
on in this world, and we need to see use of ourlimited number of construction workers in this
in this country.
(44:03):
We have a shortage of workers.
They are also aging out over time, and a largepercentage of people working in the
construction trades are gonna retire in thenext ten years to a point where it's gonna it's
going to force construction to get a little bitmore regimented, a little bit more into
prefabricating where they can, where it makessense, and then build on-site where it makes
(44:28):
sense from that perspective.
You're not seeing a whole lot of that yet inthe construction world, but they're gonna have
to adopt.
Other parts of the world are doing it.
Asia's doing it from that perspective.
So I I think one of the great efficiencieswe're gonna see in building is gonna come from
the construction side of the equation, not somuch from the design side.
I think the design already adapted.
(44:50):
It's it's it's gonna be taking construction andturning into manufacturing fabrication, modular
pieces or otherwise.
Well, they can build the same or better amountof work in a different environment with less
waste and more quality control and so forth andmore, you know, management of the delivery of
parts of a building rather than just havingworkers show up and stack a lumber rides and
(45:15):
they start framing the building up.
There's other ways to do it.
And until more of the construction tradesembrace it, you're not gonna see it.
It's faster than ought to.
But there's gonna be a there's definitely aneed for it.
We need to be able to build faster.
We don't necessarily have to build lessexpensively, but we need to build faster in
this country.
We need to permit work faster so that projectscan get to market faster also.
(45:40):
That'll help on the price.
You know, we have a housing crisis in The US,and you could lower the price to help, but you
can shorten the time.
Both help.
But either increasing time and increasing costdoesn't help.
It's actually a good point because if they wereable to be faster, theoretically, their margins
should go up.
Right?
Obviously, there's an investment that has tohappen before that.
(46:02):
But overarching, if you just kept the samepricing, but you did it faster, that means the
labor the cost of labor, which is such a hugecomponent, would be to your advantage.
So that makes sense.
And if you prefab more components, a facilitythat's prefabbing parts of a building, a worker
can be cross trained and work on severaltraits.
(46:24):
They could do metal framing.
They could do drywall.
They can install cabinets into prefab modulesand so forth.
You can use the same person.
Right now, the the way the trades work, you'rea plumber or you're an electrician, you're a
framer, or you're you're flooring, you'respecialists.
And we we need more generalists in the subtrades, I think, and more flexibility and sort
(46:47):
of agility.
Man, I feel like
those that take.
I love that take too.
I feel like those are fighting words for someof the trades out there, but, you know, I'm I'm
gonna leave it I'm gonna leave it as is becauseI think we're running out of time here.
So, Justin, I think we've got, we need to askour last question.
You wanna take it away?
Absolutely.
We love to ask this question, Brian.
(47:08):
We ask it to everybody.
So if you could go back twenty years, whatadvice would you
give yourself?
The one thing I purposely didn't do in mypractice was learn to use CAD and three d
modeling.
And I told myself I didn't wanna get distractedby doing that, earlier in my career.
Looking back, I wish I got a little better atit.
(47:29):
I I can tell you I have, and I'm exaggeratingwhen I tell you this, I have less than ten
minutes experience working on CAD programs,
less than ten minutes in my life.
Very fortunate that I'm a partner in a law in,you in a firm here.
Otherwise, I might not be employed anywhere inthat respect.
But I I do wish I could jump into these three dmodels and help more than I can critique them.
(47:55):
I just can't manipulate them.
So that's maybe the one regret.
But that's it.
That's about it.
You know, I every day I get up and wanna comein and do this.
I haven't missed a day yet as an adult, notone.
Well, that's awesome.
That's amazing.
I love that.
Sure the listeners also enjoy the honesty,which is good across the board.
(48:15):
So if people wanna get ahold of you, Brian,what's the best way for them to do that?
Oh, the best way, yeah, you
can call the office, our main number, phonestill works, (602) 258-2211.
CCBG Architects, our website has a lot ofinformation about the work we've done and
people that work here and kind of the historyof the firms.
(48:35):
Ccbgarchitects.com.
You know, it's a long one, but pretty easy tofigure out.
Or just stop by.
I'm sitting, as you know, front desk, lookingout at the street corner, and people come in
all the time and just ask questions.
Some people come in because somebody sent themto us from that perspective, and that's one of
the reasons I love sitting here.
(48:56):
We're always we're always available.
That's true.
Just come on in.
Walk on in, Brian will be there for you.
Come on Yeah.
And, you know, we're just trying to help createa world class city because we think Phoenix has
the bones, and and I I think it has the passionto do it.
And people love living here for a reason.
It's not just that it's affordable.
It's not not as affordable as we used to be,but we are still affordable compared to some of
(49:21):
our cities that we benchmark with.
But it's a great story, and people wanna livehere, and the economy is really diverse,
getting better and better.
The built environment has to keep up with thegrowth.
Awesome.
This was a ton of fun.
You and Will had a good time.
I hope you had a good time, bro.
Oh, always enjoy you guys.
Awesome.
(49:41):
And for our listeners, I hope you had the besttime.
And until next time.
Adios.
Adios.
Thanks for listening to Building Scale.
To help us reach even more people, please sharethis episode with a friend, colleague, or on
social media.
Remember, the three pillars of scaling abusiness are people, process, and technology.
(50:02):
And our mission is to help the AEC industryprotect itself by making technology easy.
So if you think your company's technologypillar could use some improvement, book a call
with us to see how we can help maximize your ITcybersecurity strategy.
Just go to buildingscale.net/help.
(50:25):
And until next time.
Keep building scale.
When we first moved into Roosevelt, we justrenovated a building, and then we leased it
(00:05):
from a family that owned a square block ofdowntown.
And it was fun.
And we got a lot of attention, and a lot ofpeople were saying, no.
That's a pretty cool office space you have.
You know?
I'm interested in doing the same thing.
And then after about ten years of practicing inRoosevelt, we got an opportunity with a friend
of ours who we've done other renovation workwith to actually build a new building in the
(00:28):
warehouse district.
And that's what we ended up doing.
And we asked that gentleman, Mark Abramowitz.
We said, Mark, we'd be interested in doingthis, but we'd like to be part owners of the
building also.
Would you consider that?
And he said, yes.
He sure would.
So that's what we did.
Have you ever wondered
how successful architecture, engineering, andconstruction companies scale their business?
(00:53):
Or have you ever wanted guidance on how to getmore growth, wealth, and freedom from your AEC
company?
Well, then you are in luck.
Hi.
I'm Will Forret.
And I'm Justin Nagel, and we're your podcasthosts.
We interview successful AEC business leaders tolearn how they use people, process, and
technology to scale their businesses.
So sit back and get ready to learn from theindustry's best.
(01:16):
This is
Building scale.
Hey, listeners.
It's Will here.
Our mission is to help the AAC industry protectitself by making technology easy.
If you've ever listened to our show, then youknow that the three pillars of scaling a
business are people, process, and technology.
(01:36):
So if you suspect technology is your weak link,then book a call with us to see where we can
help maximize your company's IT andcybersecurity strategy.
Just go to buildingscale.net/help.
Today's guest is Brian Cassidy, the presidentand CEO of CCBG Architects and chairperson of
(01:57):
the Phoenix Warehouse District Council.
He's a graduate from Arizona State UniversityCollege of Architecture.
Brian joined CCBG in 1981 and became presidentin 1988.
Over his forty plus year career, he has led thedesign and construction of churches, civic
spaces, and urban developments across theSouthwest and beyond.
(02:18):
Brian is a past president of both the AIACentral Arizona and AIA Arizona and received
the AIA Arizona Architects Medal in 2014, whichis the highest honor bestowed by the chapter.
He holds memberships in the ArchitecturalInstitute of British Columbia and NCARB, and
the Interfaith Forum on Religion, Art, andArchitecture.
(02:41):
He's deeply engaged in his community.
Brian sits on boards for the Phoenix CommunityAlliance, Downtown Phoenix CBC, and Downtown
YMCA.
And with all that said, Brian, welcome to theshow.
Oh, thanks, guys.
Great to be here.
I had to hold myself back because every time wehave somebody that is from ASU, I almost always
say go devils right afterwards.
(03:02):
So now I have to say it now to make it evenmore known, go devils.
So, yes, that's All season starting.
I know.
It's exciting.
I'm very excited.
I'll be at the first game, which is on thethirtieth.
So I gotta watch the game TV.
Yeah.
Awesome.
So I said a bunch of nice things, but tell usthe true origin story.
How'd you get in the architecture?
And then tell us about CCBG.
(03:24):
Well, I when I was a young boy, probably eightyears old, my parents worked with an architect
to design their home.
And I was just fascinated by the process, theconstruction.
And to be honest with you, when you're an eightyear old, you probably don't know the
difference between a builder and an architect.
But I liked it all, and I decided that yearthat I wanna be an architect.
(03:46):
Know, fifty nine years later,
I'm still doing it.
That's the That's awesome.
Yeah.
And then I ended up, graduated from ASU quite awhile ago, and I was offered a job at this same
firm.
I was the new guy.
Firm used to hire one ASU grad every year and Iwas the lucky grad that year.
(04:09):
So I've started and worked my way up to amanaging partner and still here.
Pretty much one job on my resume as an adult.
Yeah.
I was talking to somebody the other day andthey they'd asked about resume stuff and I'm
same thing where I've been at spot for so long.
Like, I don't this is not my expertise.
(04:29):
I don't bunch jobs.
So to your you and you even more so than that,what does mean to have a longevity at one place
that long?
Like, one what what what do you see as thatdoes for culture as well as what do you see as
a new people start its firm?
Well, you know, I started here, you know, backin the eighties.
I think every architecture grad eventually feltthey were gonna end up in California.
(04:51):
It was kind of the natural path, you know, keepmoving west.
But I didn't.
Worked with some great people that I had somegood mentoring when I was a young architect.
And I stayed here.
And about thirty five years ago, we got veryinterested in Downtown Phoenix.
Phoenix had just hit rock bottom.
There was not much going on down here.
(05:12):
A lot of people worked downtown, but they justfled downtown in the evening and so forth.
So a handful of us were passionate enough tobelieve that we could stand for downtown to
reinvent itself and become a world class city.
So that's kind of been our personal missionstatement and and my personal mission statement
ever since, is to let's roll up our sleeves andadvocate for rebuilding the city and make it
(05:37):
truly a world class city.
So that's why I stayed with the firm, and weeventually moved the firm downtown about thirty
three years ago.
It actually took two years to find a place wecould move into because there wasn't much
available that even the real estate ownersactually wanted to renovate a building.
They they really weren't that interested.
Didn't think downtown was a valuable place, butbut now it is.
(05:58):
We're happy we did it, and we're still a bigpart of what's going on down here.
And every day, I wanna get up and make it abetter place.
So So that's great.
It's awesome.
I mean, it's changed a little bit since, youknow, thirty something years ago, and the
actual boom I mean, might wanna describe whatit looked like back then versus today because
(06:20):
Well I've been there.
And
I would I would say Downtown Phoenix is unique,and it is our of our major US cities, we have
the youngest downtown, period, in the entireUnited States.
It's also the only major arid, you know, desertenvironment downtown.
And our downtown was just destroyed by the postWorld War two suburban sprawl free you know,
(06:43):
the the bending of the freeway system that cameas, you know, a reaction to how Hitler moved
troops around Germany that in the autobahn, gotadopted by Eisenhower to literally let's
connect the major US cities with three waysystem.
And that's was great for the country, but itwas terrible for Phoenix because everybody
(07:03):
moved out of downtown, and a lot of greatbuildings just sat vacant and decayed for many
for several generations from that perspective.
So that's why we said we can renovate thesebuildings.
Other cities had already done it.
And if you want a model of what Phoenix lookslike or it's gonna look like, you know, go to
Denver, go to San Diego, go to Salt Lake City,go to the Kansas City cities like that that
(07:27):
have already reinvented themselves, thatperspective.
So we decided, let's be part of that.
We know it's gonna happen.
Let's ride those coattails and advocate for,you know, doing it well.
So that's where we're at at this point.
You obviously, both advocacy as well as thefirm itself have massive impact in that area.
(07:48):
Let's talk about the firm first.
What is the firm doing?
What makes the firm unique in regards tocreating that impact?
Right now,
we're at 26 architects and interior designerswhere he brought what we call a very lean model
where the anti corporate firm, it's work hard,play hard.
Everybody here works on projects most of theday.
(08:09):
I'm the only one that has any sort of businessor administrative role at the office itself.
So that's unique for the scale of the work thatwe're doing from that perspective.
But what it does is we we create this modelthat our clients get to work with a handful of
architects, at least anywhere from two to fivepeople on a project.
And we keep that team together for thecontinuity of the projects, for basically the
(08:33):
confidence of our clients to understand why howwe got from point a to point b from that
perspective.
And that model of a business is working.
And so if it's not broke, we're not gonna fixit anytime soon.
So we're still running that lean overheadmodel.
And if you can't tell, I'm sitting at the frontdesk and I manage practice from the front desk
(08:53):
because this is where I sit now.
I've sat here for fifteen years and have joinedevery minute of it.
That's a very unique, maybe only managingpartner that I know that sits at the front
desk.
Which is, that to me, it's very impressive.
One, how you are able to manage at such a leanamount without having the admin overhead.
(09:18):
How does, how does that even work?
I think most 25 plus person architects,architecture firms would say, how can you even
do that?
How is it possible?
Well, I think we dared ourself to make it workfrom that perspective.
The reality is we have really good talentedpeople, people anywhere from a year out of
school to thirty five, forty year veterandesigners and technicians here.
(09:42):
And we let the teams focus on leading theprojects and running them on the day to day and
taking them into the construction phases fromthat perspective.
And my partner, Paul and I, we're bothdesigners.
He is a 100% working on projects.
I'm more like 50% of my normal month, let'ssay, is directly working on projects.
(10:02):
So I spend half a day on average runningbusiness and half a day having fun working
within the business from that perspective.
So it just is continuing to work for us.
And again, it's unique.
And, again, I sit at the front desk because wehave a three story office building.
Somebody's gotta sit down here, meet greatpeople, and keep an eye on all our stuff.
(10:26):
So I just learned to love it being right at thestreet.
I'm right on the street corner of the warehousedistrict.
So and just watching it slowly reinvent itself.
It's been fun.
Know, it was it
wasn't always like that.
When you first moved in so when we talked abouttalked a while back ago, it was very different.
Can you describe what it was?
And then your a little bit of your vision?
(10:48):
Because what you described, you know, when youinitially kind of moved in, because I think
it's on I think it's Roosevelt or RooseveltRow.
Yeah.
So can you talk a little bit about that?
Yeah.
We moved in onto Roosevelt Row thirty threeyears ago.
And believe it or not, there was no artistcommunity yet.
There's almost nothing going on in Roosevelt.
(11:09):
But it seemed like a safer part to kind ofplant a flag in downtown to open up.
You have to move our practice from the Biltmorearea into the downtown area.
And we literally had to walk five blocks to getto the first restaurant.
You know, look at it today.
Walk about half a block and you have three orfour options.
It's changed dramatically.
(11:29):
Really exciting place up on on that end ofdowntown.
But we we came down here as designers saying,it's gonna happen.
Let's be part of it.
Let's enjoy the ride from that perspective.
And we basically went all in on downtown as adesign.
It's not all we do, but it's been a big pieceof our sort of our culture was advocating for
(11:52):
this area.
When I said earlier that in the suburban sprawland the proliferation and improvements in air
conditioning and freeways led to just ahorizontal city that kept sprawling, sprawling.
It was easy to build on the periphery and itwas a little bit harder to build in the core of
the city.
So a lot of the buildings, we lost half of thegreat buildings that used to exist in our
(12:15):
downtown.
They just sort of fell apart or decayed and ormany people that own those buildings found out
that if they tore their building down, theirproperty taxes would also get reduced.
And so unfortunately, we lost a lot of projectsto the demolition wall because of that
phenomenon.
And you can't replace some of the contextualbuildings that we used to have from that
(12:37):
perspective.
And the other reason we're down here is notonly are we the youngest urban poor in The
United States of a major city, but we're themost underdeveloped in Tulsa.
So I'm looking out, I see a lot of parkinglots.
They're not gonna be here forever.
People are interested in coming in and doinginfill work and creating that really vibrant,
(12:59):
you know, walkable city that I think a lot ofpeople wanna have.
So the firm putting its money where its mouthis, what does that actually mean?
Why don't you give us some context to what youguys are doing?
Oh, when we first moved into Roosevelt, we justrenovated a building, and then we leased from a
family that owned a square block of downtown.
And it was fun.
And we got a lot of attention, and a lot ofpeople were saying, no.
(13:22):
That's a pretty cool office space you have.
You know?
I'm interested in doing the same thing.
And then after about ten years of practicing inRoosevelt, we got an opportunity with a friend
of ours who we've done other renovation workwith to actually build a new building in the
warehouse district.
And that's what we ended up doing.
And we asked that gentleman, Mark Abramowitz,we said, Mark, we'd be interested in doing
(13:46):
this, but we'd like to be part owners of thebuilding also.
Would you consider that?
And he said, yes, he sure would.
So that's what we did.
Built a building that fit our practice on acorner in the warehouse district, and we made
that commitment that, you know, we weren'tgonna just preach downtown.
We are gonna invest in downtown.
And and it it's been great for our practice.
(14:07):
It's been a great recruitment vehicle fortalent to come in and work at our firm.
It's showing that downtown has a future, thatit can be done.
You can insert small buildings and they canlook good.
They can be functional, and they can alsoperform financially.
And so it's kind of a, you know, a test case.
(14:27):
So that's how we started doing it.
And then downtown became valuable startingabout fifteen years ago.
We talked about Roosevelt Road.
For years, nobody built any new housing indowntown, twenty plus years.
And then starting about twelve, thirteen yearsago, a handful of developers focused on
Roosevelt said, can we put more housing at thehigher density into this area?
(14:50):
And in my opinion, that is when that workstarted to go in, that is what turned Roosevelt
Row around into a point where it's really got alot of cool vibe and great walkability and a
mix of new buildings and a handful of small,mostly houses that have been renovated into
food and beverage operation, some of the retailperspective.
(15:11):
So I think the answer to the question was weput our money where our mouth was to show that
you could do these projects.
They could be successful.
And that some of these old buildings can berenovated if our clients can buy them at the
right price and not overpay for thatperspective.
So we demonstrated that if you find an oldbuilding, you gotta identify how you can make
(15:32):
it work from a zoning and a life safetyperspective so you can legally occupy it, maybe
change the use.
And then we advise our clients on don't paymore than this because you'll never get your
investment to work in the end from thatperspective.
So that was, again, a showcase model of how torenovate some of the work down here.
And then a couple other things we've been we'vebeen hyper focused on downtown, and I chair the
(15:57):
warehouse sister council, which we formed aboutten and a half years ago.
And we help brand this district of downtown,and we actually help recruit businesses to come
take a look, look at the buildings that areavailable, properties that are available, and
sort of guide them as to what is the processand the timing that might take to actually
(16:18):
renovate or build a new infill project.
How do you since there's not the admin side,how do you go about you mentioned hiring.
How do go about hiring or how do you go aboutaccounting, marketing, all these other things?
We a lot of our marketing and businessdevelopment is based on building up a network,
happy clients, and happy advocates, and happyengineers and contractors that we work with.
(16:41):
I mean, that the architecture, engineering,construction, real estate community is really
vast in this state, and it's also also Phoenixis a big little town, and a lot of people know
everybody.
And, you know, if you start doing good work,you get noticed.
Rather than toot our horn a lot, we try tocontinue to do the good work.
(17:01):
And that, you know, for us, it's working.
Maybe we'd be bigger if we had moreadministrative staff people, but we like the
scale we're at right now.
It seems to work for us in our culture, kind ofthe work hard, play hard, anti corporate look
of a of a front.
That makes sense.
If you are so the marketing and businessdevelopment makes sense to me.
(17:24):
If we just do great work, we make greatrelationships, we will get more work.
That totally makes sense.
What about the you know, when it comes tohiring?
Like, are you is that part of that 50% of yourdays?
It's I I have to do the
recruitment I I interviewed two new potentialcandidates just today just this morning
already.
So we're always looking for talent.
(17:45):
I I think any good design firm, anybody that'sin the creative world always has their ear to
the ground looking for talent from thatperspective.
Sometimes when you find the talent and youdon't have the work, you take them on.
You take them anyway because you know thatthey've got great potential and they're gonna
be a good fit in your firm.
Sometimes you're just need help outright fromthat perspective.
(18:06):
So right now, we're busy.
We're looking to get a little bit bigger butnot grow too fast, and we're looking for
talent.
And I've got two great candidates today.
So I'm really excited.
They're both coming back for second meetingsnext week to meet more of the team here.
So so it's a good story.
Nice.
Okay.
That makes sense.
(18:29):
So I know that you're part of the PCA.
Why don't you so why don't you tell thelisteners what the PCA is?
Because that'll then I think that conversationwill turn into something that we have not
talked about, which is advocacy.
So why don't you talk about the PCA first andhow you got involved in what it is, etcetera?
(18:49):
PCA stands for the Phoenix Community Alliance.
It is a advocacy group in downtown thatbasically does so much good and so much info
sharing of what is happening in downtown.
So Phoenix Community Alliance is mostly aprivate group of individuals.
We have some public partners.
(19:09):
The city of Phoenix is a major partner in it,APS, the Diamondbacks, the Suns, and so forth.
But there's also about 320 private companymembers of which we're one of those, And that
also includes a handful of just privateindividuals that are basically passionate about
Downtown Phoenix.
Vishay has been around, I'm guessing, thirtyplus years now.
(19:33):
They are by far the most influential group ofpeople that help try to make sure that downtown
grows and it's healthy and it's diverse andfocusing on business retention, recruiting the
companies to come down here.
Clear it up, there's an entire committee on thequality of schools around downtown, and it's
phenomenal.
There's a lot of schools, private, charter, youknow, everything from k to a high schools and
(20:00):
colleges in and around downtown.
And the quality of education out here isfabulous.
And it's kind of something a lot of people werejust not paying attention to or unaware of from
that perspective.
There's also a subcommittee that's focusing onhelping them with a lot of the homeless issues
and some of those challenges that, obviously,every major city is having its share of
(20:20):
homeless issues are not always the same inevery city.
But, you know, having some passion for thesetypes of people trying to help them point them
in the right direction and and advocate formore affordable housing to be built in in the
city in general.
Not not just downtown, but the city of Phoenixin general.
And and PCA has a separate group, the CDC, theCommunity Development Corporation, which I'm
(20:43):
also on that board.
And it is a group of people that haveexperience developing housing for the most
part, either they're architects or real estatedevelopers, they're general contractors that
build housing and or they're lenders thatunderstand the financing mechanisms that are
available for affordable housing.
And that's just what our board is now doing ison a pro bono basis doing the front end legwork
(21:09):
to identify parcels that could be redevelopedor raw land that could be developed into
affordable housing and help determine what youcan and can't do under current zoning and then
publicize it.
Talk some of these properties are owned by thecity of Phoenix, and we're doing some of the
legwork for their housing departments.
We're getting on a handful of initiatives thatare in downtown and just trying to build the
(21:34):
housing stock here because every major city inthis country has a critical housing shortage
right now for lots of reasons.
We can't solve them on one podcast, but there'sjust not enough housing.
And what we do have is too expensive for a lotof people, and there's a a really high barrier
right now for people to get into housing.
So and then I always say we don't havebasements to live in here like other parts of
(21:56):
the country.
So it's hard to live in your parents basementbecause they don't have one here.
That's very true.
Coming from Chicago and well-being in Chicago,a basement's just part of life.
That's just that's part of everything.
In Phoenix, we don't we don't have basements.
So so advocacy, obviously, there's a drivebecause there's a passion for it.
There's a love for the city.
There's a love for seeing the growth.
(22:18):
What is that what does that turn into, and howdoes that help the firm?
Well, we help recruit companies to come take alook at downtown, especially, like, in the
warehouse.
I'm kinda hyper focused on the WarehouseDistrict the last ten years.
Not only are we officing here, but we I kindapound the pavement almost every day to see
what's going on and understand the patterns.
(22:38):
We now have light rail coming through theWarehouse District as of about eight weeks ago,
and that will be a development game changerover the next generation to attract more
development that's more transit oriented,meaning, you know, higher density, lower park
projects that are mixed use, hopefully, andhave the ability to come right into the core
(22:59):
downtown by using the existing trap air transitnow that's available from that perspective.
So that's one of the tools.
A lot of times, you know, the WarehouseDistrict has all these old, cool, and unique
contextual buildings that you really couldn'treplicate anymore in today's world.
A lot of brick and timber and steel structuresthat just have, you know, this unique sort of
(23:20):
charm to them.
And when when we see these and people areinterested in them, again, we try to help
advise them on how what you may have to do andmaybe what you don't have to do to get them
legal to occupy from that perspective.
And the older a building is, the morechallenges you have to fix.
And a lot of these old buildings really don'thave they're not air conditioned.
(23:42):
They don't have plumbing that works, and it's aand it's a heavy tenant improvement.
It's what we call heavy TI, what they take fromthat perspective.
But if you could show somebody the vision andexplain to them how you do it, how long it
might take, how much it might cost, then thethe ones that are hearty and passionate about
(24:02):
it will take take them on.
Those that are looking for a quick flip of abuilding will probably say that's that's not
for me.
This is not gonna work for for their businessmodel.
But a lot of people wanna do it.
We have these great buildings down here.
COVID sort of crushed our tech community downhere.
We had a really thriving tech community movinginto these buildings.
(24:23):
And then with COVID, a lot of those samebusiness owners realized that they could
successfully work remotely.
And a lot of those big companies that were downhere no longer have a real estate footprint in
downtown.
They're more remote.
And they're healthy companies, and they'vegrown through COVID and are doing really well.
They just don't have a downtown presenceanymore, which is kind of a shame in that
(24:47):
perspective.
So we got a stock of great old buildings downhere that we're hoping to find tenant interest
to repopulate them.
They've been renovated.
They're in great condition.
Could move in, you know, at short notice.
But right now their, you know, occupancy iskinda low in this area for office.
There are some exceptions.
(25:08):
You said something, and I I feel silly that Idon't actually know this answer yet.
But you said like, you know, old buildings,like we can't recreate them.
And I understand like you can't go back in timeto recreate them, but like, is it just too
expensive to use the same materials?
Like what what's the rationale of like, whycan't I build a building that is similar in
(25:30):
design and and material that a building thatwas built, say, forty years ago or fifty years
ago, and then obviously bring it up to code ofwhatever needs to be done?
Like, why why can't we do that?
Why is that impossible?
It's not impossible.
It's just expensive.
So I'll just give you one good example.
A lot of the older buildings here built in theearly nineteen hundreds through the nineteen
(25:53):
forties actually made of brick.
So the the entire walls on the perimeter of thebuilding are two or three courses deep of
brick, and they're not reinforced.
So they don't have structurally, they don'thave lateral stability that that the new
building coach require, but they have thischarm, and they have brick on both the inside
and outside surfaces.
(26:14):
To replicate that in brick today would beprohibitively expensive and so forth.
And every contractor to say, you don't wanna dothis.
It's too expensive.
But if you could buy a building for 20¢ on thedollar, let's say, and you have room and time
to renovate that building, then you can exposethat brick.
(26:35):
You can have the charm.
You know, the roof structures quite often werejust open wood trusses or steel trusses, and
they were tall.
So the the average warehouse volume in thisarea has anywhere from 12 to 20 foot high
ceilings.
And, you know, as opposed to a new officebuilding that might have a nine foot high
(26:56):
ceiling with a, you know, a dropped acousticalceiling kind of boring lighting.
So we have these great volumes.
We have this character.
We have this great relationship that a lot ofthe buildings are built right to the sidewalk,
and they're very urban, and they're and they'revery transparent.
And we're just trying to take advantage of thekind of the original design, clean them up,
(27:18):
make them pass the muster of all the buildingcodes and some of the zoning restrictions that
now apply that did in the old days and makethem usable.
The most sustainable thing you can do inarchitecture is clean up and fix a building
rather than tear it down and replace it.
I mean, that totally makes sense.
I mean, billing code gets updated all the time.
Everything because of fire, new new theory onaround fire, fire codes, etcetera.
(27:43):
Yep.
But then, you've got environmental, andespecially in Phoenix, you've got heat issues
that you have to deal with.
Back in the forties, they weren't reallythinking about air conditioning.
Oh, power
HVAC.
The in the day.
Yeah.
As an example, one of the renovations we didright near my office about eight years ago,
(28:04):
great brick building, and, it was built in1931.
And when we went in for plan review to renovatethe structure and stabilize it, the the the
building officials wanted us to insulate theinside of the bricks so we'll have a higher
thermal performance.
We're thinking that would just kill thecharacter of this building.
(28:27):
So we look for a more creative way ofaddressing that with the city and with historic
preservation.
And historic preservation came to the table andhelped us negotiate a solution where such as if
you put a building on the historic register,you have to maintain kind of the original
texture and fabric and materials of thebuilding.
(28:48):
Covering them up or taking out perfectlyfunctioning historic windows in order to put
insulated glass in them violates the HPguidelines.
So what department convinced the other that youshouldn't make them replace the windows and
insulated cover up period correct?
And that's how we said it.
(29:09):
So city came to their own rescue in that case.
So and it's a great outcome, and we've got agreat tenant in the building right next door to
us here.
And it's one of the thriving tech companiesthat's working in the Warehouse District.
That's just one of many stories we've had overthe years.
So Very interesting.
Yeah.
Let me tell you one other story about that samebuilding.
Go ahead.
(29:29):
Their building goes from the alley to thestreet to the railroad and to another building
on its foresight.
So the building covers every square inch oftheir real estate, and they had no solution to
put a transformer in so they could get enoughelectricity to air condition the building.
So we found a way to work with Citi and APS toput some of the electrical infrastructure,
(29:54):
meaning the transformers, not on theirproperty, but out in what's called city right
away.
It took some arc twisting, but they finallyagreed that that was the only solution to power
this building.
And then a second one, same challenge.
They have nowhere to throw their trash on-sitebecause they used up every square inch to have
a trash dumpster.
So we made them an offer, which is prettysimple.
(30:17):
I said, I'll share mine with you if the citywill approve it, and they did.
So we just have the trash picked up more often.
You know?
Simple solution.
They'd cost anybody anything.
Or they could just be like New York and throwit all on the street.
Right.
Just throw it out.
Problem here is nobody would pick it up likethey do in New York and London and other major
cities where they don't have any choice but tobring the trash out to the street side.
(30:39):
To mention the stink.
Ugh.
Those mornings.
Yeah.
Mm-mm.
Mm-mm.
You mentioned the tech industry going moreremote.
What about what's the feel, at CCBG aboutremote work?
Well, we we did a bit of remote during earlyCOVID until we realized the world was not gonna
end and people were gonna move forward and dotheir projects.
So we brought the people back.
(31:00):
Our studio is rather spacious.
We're not sitting on top of one another.
That was by choice when we first designed itfrom that perspective.
But we're in the creative world.
We feel that being together, collaboratingdaily in the same room is better than
collaborating over Zoom calls and text messagesand emails and such.
(31:24):
And we have people, for certain reasons, haveto work remote for a while, for family reasons
and so forth.
But we pretty much want everybody in hereworking together, collaborating.
Young people get the insight of working withside by side with veterans when they're in the
same room rather than, you know, electronicallyconnected.
(31:46):
So I think it's a great advantage for forteamwork and collaborative effort, and that's
what most design studios are.
They're very collaborative.
So we're better together then.
You get pushback from the younger generationsabout working from home or from new parents,
like work working from home.
Bit.
You know?
(32:07):
And part of it is some of the youngestemployees that are in their piece came out of
college.
Let's say, everybody here went to college.
They came out of college during COVID, and thatwas the norm.
If they got hired, they likely spent a few daysin the office, and they were sent home with a
laptop, and they worked remote.
And that's all they knew at the time.
(32:28):
We're we're trying to teach those people orgive them the fundamental lessons that to
collaborate together and to get away from yourhome, get into a work environment, sometimes a
lot more healthy than sitting at your diningroom table for eight hours a day.
And then you hit the end of the day, thenyou're still sitting at your dining room table.
(32:50):
Work better.
Chris,
there's there's also something to be said aboutyour spaces.
Right?
So if you, you know, especially as a youngerprofessional, generally, they're they're not
rolling in the cash.
So if you don't have that big of a space, a bigbig place, it's like, well, I have to use one
room for multiple things.
(33:10):
It's adding your workspace in there as well canbecome very challenging.
And especially as you mentioned, the creativemind, sometimes new spaces are just part of the
answer.
And then the second part of your question,Will, was, you know, what about people that
have family issues and so forth like that?
You know, we all have families.
We all have issues like that.
You know, go take care of family first.
(33:31):
You know, that's always been our philosophy.
I I encourage my people, those that have kids,they have a game, if they have a recital or
their kids in a ballet, I say go do it, becauseyou don't get it back.
Though, you don't get that event back ever.
It's gone.
But you can always make up your work afterhours or on the weekend or whatever.
So I encourage my people.
(33:52):
Their kids are in a game.
Go watch them play.
I mean, I did it when my kid was young.
I was a boss.
I guess I could do it.
But I didn't miss any of his games.
I still got feel like I got my work done.
I think it makes for a healthy balance of life.
Yeah.
It's that true work life balance.
Some people think that's a bad term.
(34:12):
Other people think that that's part of what weneed to be doing.
But in any regard, is you are working, you areliving your life.
And if you can get some form of balance andwhatever that means to a person, that usually
turns out to be a better mental state.
Yeah.
And we do we do encourage our employees, youknow, if I wouldn't enjoy an hour commute every
way to go to work.
(34:32):
So we sort of encourage them, live closer tothe office.
I think to me, that's just a natural thing.
And some people camp for various reasons andhave long commute, but I'd rather spend more
time with my family or more time working thansitting in my car stuck in traffic.
Oh, yeah.
Like like like the New York or LA or Chicagoproblems that we have go go go eight miles and
(34:58):
you're stuck in traffic for forty five minutesto an hour.
So we have a handful of employees that couldwalk or ride their bike to work.
Some do.
Some take light rail at times.
Sometimes you gotta go somewhere during the dayand you need your car.
You know, that's out of Phoenix, we're prettycar centric still.
But we are making improvements in our masstransit options here.
That's super cool that the light rail is in theWarehouse District.
(35:20):
When I was at school at ASU, that was when thelight rail came about.
That was the start of it, and it's wild to seenow all of the places that it is now than it
wasn't when I graduated.
Yep.
And it makes a difference in the way the citydevelops.
It doesn't happen overnight, but it's a longterm transition for the better, my words.
(35:42):
So the next phase of city planning, you sit onthe you're the chair at PCA for city planning
and development committee.
You know, what what are the next plans for thecity planning and development?
Well, you know, again, the city center planningdevelopment is one of eight subcommittees
(36:04):
within Phoenix Community Alliance, and ourfocus is on what is going to happen in our
city.
That's you know, we have a separate group thatfocuses on transit and education and homeless
issues and and public art, but our focus is onthe building the built environment, what's
gonna happen next and so forth.
And so what we have seen is you gotta realizegoing back to remember, for those old enough,
(36:28):
back in 02/2008, 02/2009, US kinda went over acliff and went into a major real recession
driven by real estate and driven by poorbanking habits.
Loose landing statuses, you know, took theentire world down to one knee financially, all
because of US federal banking policy.
(36:50):
And it took years to recover.
During that boom of work that ended in 02/2008,nobody really built an apartment unit in
Downtown Phoenix.
If you can imagine, was that seventeen yearsago?
Didn't build any apartments in our downtown.
Since then, starting about ten years ago,there's been 8,500 new units built, and there's
(37:12):
a handful of high rises that are currentlyunder construction that are all rental housing.
None of them are affordable.
They're all mark what we call market ratehousing from that perspective.
Right now, there's not gonna be another bigwave for a year or more of high rise work
coming out of the ground because interest ratesare high.
(37:33):
Our construction loans are 7% for our clients.
That's a generational high in borrowing money.
And these projects are marginal best right nowbecause of high costs and still labor shortage
and high interest rates.
What you see under construction will finish,and you probably won't see a lot of new tower
cranes for another half year or more, but itwill happen.
(37:56):
And I've always said what downtown needed waspeople.
It was the missing ingredient in our downtownwas people, not just living, but gain a live
work horse, but play is one of our motto.
The the the things that, you know, that have abalance in your life from that perspective.
So that's kind of the result of a lot of peopleadvocating for rebuilding the city, and it's
(38:17):
gonna happen.
It's gonna be generations of regrowth in thisarea.
And the Warehouse District just happens to bethe most underdeveloped part of the most
underdeveloped new urban core in The UnitedStates.
So it's a natural, you're gonna see a lot ofthings happening down here in the next ten
years.
That's why we're here.
That's great.
What about technology?
(38:38):
What technologies are you using at Princeton?
Well, we we use all the same technologies, anydesign firm, all the various CAD and Revit
programs, rendering programs, and so forth.
You know, we communicate with clients throughvirtual calls all the time and and they have
their purpose.
We'd rather have face to face meetings, butsome of our clients don't live here.
(38:59):
Some of them are on a trip or on vacation orworking remote temporarily.
A virtual call to be the sole means ofcommunicating in our world.
But, you know, we do three d printing up studymodels that we can just turn the printer on and
go eat lunch.
And when you come back, hopefully, you got whatyou programmed, got printed on a three d
printer and, you know, you don't have to sitand do it the old fashioned way.
(39:21):
So the ability to communicate is improved withtechnology.
The softwares, though they are getting verycomplex, and we're finding younger architects
are better at the software, and the olderarchitects aren't as good and have to learn it
from that perspective.
But the old architects are the veterans whoknow how to design and build buildings and do
(39:43):
the technical aspects.
And the young people have to learn that.
They they know the software, but they can'talways use the software to design a building
that you can actually build, and the client'sactually gonna like and can afford to build.
So tech the technology's, like everybody, it'sevolving all the time, constant.
And if you don't keep up with it, you're gonnaget left behind.
(40:04):
What about AI or automation?
Is you you know, you don't have any adminstaff, so therefore, there are things that you
are automating.
Hey.
There's a couple software programs that do whatwe
call yield study planning, which is when youplan a site.
And, you know, I did one a couple months ago,and I did a solution based on everything I a
(40:25):
site that I've driven by for thirty years, knowit really well, and then we got a chance to
work on it.
And so I did an idea, and then I had AI work onthe same requirements.
And AI developed 18 concepts in about twentyminutes.
It's really impressive.
There were 18 of them, but about 15 of them
(40:47):
were not by.
And none of
them took into context the site itself, thehistory of the area.
It was just physical modeling.
And none of them got quite to the efficiency wewere able to do the old fashioned way of just
designing it.
But I got 18 ideas and could use pieces of 18that were viable and use that as it's like a
(41:11):
test.
It's like a back test of what we do.
So they're getting really good.
Every year, these AI planning tools are justgetting faster and and more accurate from that
perspective.
So they are you know, they have a place in ourworld, and they will forever.
So more for idea generation than actual Yeah.
(41:31):
Yeah.
The wheel I have used it is to back check someof our initial thinking to see if it's still
valid, see if they can't reinvent the wheel ora better mousetrap from that perspective.
And and their solutions will create a 10 pagereport.
I mean, literally created 18 solutions with 10page report in about twenty minutes.
(41:54):
You know?
I can't work that fast.
You know?
But can't, but it was helpful.
It's just to get it's like getting a secondopinion and a third and fourth opinion.
So one other question, know, something I'veI've kind of been wondering.
Back when you first started versus today, thevolume of work, right, sort of the we'll call
(42:15):
it productivity measure.
You know, if you're just keeping at a verysimilar amount of people, you did grow, but if
you're keeping at a similar amount of people,how much has the work increased?
Right?
I would say, you know, I started in a pencil,pen, and eraser era because there wasn't CAD
programs, and there were no real personalcomputers left.
(42:37):
You know, they hadn't really been invented yet.
We didn't even have fax machines when Istarted.
A lot of people young people go, what's a faxmachine?
Well, you know, I don't wanna talk about that,but we had we had to
have one.
It's a robot that does not sounds like it gotmurdered to connect to the Internet.
Yes.
Yeah.
Three PO is what it is.
I don't know.
But some of the doctor's offices still usethem.
Don't understand that, but but we don't.
(43:00):
But what I can tell you is with technology,we're probably able to produce twice two to
three times as much work with the same numberof people now that we could forty years ago in
our profession.
So I'd say the architecture and engineeringcommunities have benefited significantly from
technology and stuff.
(43:21):
But I'd say on the construction side, everybuilding we do is unique.
It is gonna be built one time on a specificsite with a with a team players that'll never
be assembled together, meaning the owner andthe architecture and engineering members and
all the builder and all their subcontractorsand all the building officials and planners and
(43:43):
building inspectors.
That group of people will never ever worktogether on another building again ever,
especially on that site.
Construction industry has not kept up, in myopinion, with the technology race that's going
on in this world, and we need to see use of ourlimited number of construction workers in this
in this country.
(44:03):
We have a shortage of workers.
They are also aging out over time, and a largepercentage of people working in the
construction trades are gonna retire in thenext ten years to a point where it's gonna it's
going to force construction to get a little bitmore regimented, a little bit more into
prefabricating where they can, where it makessense, and then build on-site where it makes
(44:28):
sense from that perspective.
You're not seeing a whole lot of that yet inthe construction world, but they're gonna have
to adopt.
Other parts of the world are doing it.
Asia's doing it from that perspective.
So I I think one of the great efficiencieswe're gonna see in building is gonna come from
the construction side of the equation, not somuch from the design side.
I think the design already adapted.
(44:50):
It's it's it's gonna be taking construction andturning into manufacturing fabrication, modular
pieces or otherwise.
Well, they can build the same or better amountof work in a different environment with less
waste and more quality control and so forth andmore, you know, management of the delivery of
parts of a building rather than just havingworkers show up and stack a lumber rides and
(45:15):
they start framing the building up.
There's other ways to do it.
And until more of the construction tradesembrace it, you're not gonna see it.
It's faster than ought to.
But there's gonna be a there's definitely aneed for it.
We need to be able to build faster.
We don't necessarily have to build lessexpensively, but we need to build faster in
this country.
We need to permit work faster so that projectscan get to market faster also.
(45:40):
That'll help on the price.
You know, we have a housing crisis in The US,and you could lower the price to help, but you
can shorten the time.
Both help.
But either increasing time and increasing costdoesn't help.
It's actually a good point because if they wereable to be faster, theoretically, their margins
should go up.
Right?
Obviously, there's an investment that has tohappen before that.
(46:02):
But overarching, if you just kept the samepricing, but you did it faster, that means the
labor the cost of labor, which is such a hugecomponent, would be to your advantage.
So that makes sense.
And if you prefab more components, a facilitythat's prefabbing parts of a building, a worker
can be cross trained and work on severaltraits.
(46:24):
They could do metal framing.
They could do drywall.
They can install cabinets into prefab modulesand so forth.
You can use the same person.
Right now, the the way the trades work, you'rea plumber or you're an electrician, you're a
framer, or you're you're flooring, you'respecialists.
And we we need more generalists in the subtrades, I think, and more flexibility and sort
(46:47):
of agility.
Man, I feel like
those that take.
I love that take too.
I feel like those are fighting words for someof the trades out there, but, you know, I'm I'm
gonna leave it I'm gonna leave it as is becauseI think we're running out of time here.
So, Justin, I think we've got, we need to askour last question.
You wanna take it away?
Absolutely.
We love to ask this question, Brian.
(47:08):
We ask it to everybody.
So if you could go back twenty years, whatadvice would you
give yourself?
The one thing I purposely didn't do in mypractice was learn to use CAD and three d
modeling.
And I told myself I didn't wanna get distractedby doing that, earlier in my career.
Looking back, I wish I got a little better atit.
(47:29):
I I can tell you I have, and I'm exaggeratingwhen I tell you this, I have less than ten
minutes experience working on CAD programs,
less than ten minutes in my life.
Very fortunate that I'm a partner in a law in,you in a firm here.
Otherwise, I might not be employed anywhere inthat respect.
But I I do wish I could jump into these three dmodels and help more than I can critique them.
(47:55):
I just can't manipulate them.
So that's maybe the one regret.
But that's it.
That's about it.
You know, I every day I get up and wanna comein and do this.
I haven't missed a day yet as an adult, notone.
Well, that's awesome.
That's amazing.
I love that.
Sure the listeners also enjoy the honesty,which is good across the board.
(48:15):
So if people wanna get ahold of you, Brian,what's the best way for them to do that?
Oh, the best way, yeah, you
can call the office, our main number, phonestill works, (602) 258-2211.
CCBG Architects, our website has a lot ofinformation about the work we've done and
people that work here and kind of the historyof the firms.
(48:35):
Ccbgarchitects.com.
You know, it's a long one, but pretty easy tofigure out.
Or just stop by.
I'm sitting, as you know, front desk, lookingout at the street corner, and people come in
all the time and just ask questions.
Some people come in because somebody sent themto us from that perspective, and that's one of
the reasons I love sitting here.
(48:56):
We're always we're always available.
That's true.
Just come on in.
Walk on in, Brian will be there for you.
Come on Yeah.
And, you know, we're just trying to help createa world class city because we think Phoenix has
the bones, and and I I think it has the passionto do it.
And people love living here for a reason.
It's not just that it's affordable.
It's not not as affordable as we used to be,but we are still affordable compared to some of
(49:21):
our cities that we benchmark with.
But it's a great story, and people wanna livehere, and the economy is really diverse,
getting better and better.
The built environment has to keep up with thegrowth.
Awesome.
This was a ton of fun.
You and Will had a good time.
I hope you had a good time, bro.
Oh, always enjoy you guys.
Awesome.
(49:41):
And for our listeners, I hope you had the besttime.
And until next time.
Adios.
Adios.
Thanks for listening to Building Scale.
To help us reach even more people, please sharethis episode with a friend, colleague, or on
social media.
Remember, the three pillars of scaling abusiness are people, process, and technology.
(50:02):
And our mission is to help the AEC industryprotect itself by making technology easy.
So if you think your company's technologypillar could use some improvement, book a call
with us to see how we can help maximize your ITcybersecurity strategy.
Just go to buildingscale.net/help.
(50:25):
And until next time.
Keep building scale.
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