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Spring is in full bloom so bring out the shorts, sandals and for some of you… the antihistamines. Spring tends to bring us a fresh outlook and it’s a great time for new beginnings! One exciting new beginning at R&A is the fresh face that is now a part of our architecture department — Luke Pesci.

I met with Luke to get a little insight into his personality and to see what it’s like to be a 21-year-old Lawrence Tech student working at Rich & Associates.

I met with Luke to get a little insight into his personality and to see what it’s like to be a 21-year-old Lawrence Tech student working at Rich & Associates. Luke started with R&A in January and serves as an architectural technician. He will graduate from Lawrence tech with a BS in Architecture in about 1-2 years. His least favorite thing about college is the time commitment it takes. He told me that his design classes are the most time-consuming. Instead, he’d much rather be outside playing pick-up soccer with some of his friends or dabbling in photography.

Growing up having been home schooled, his favorite thing about college is the social aspect of it. Although Luke had always been interested in design, it was when he turned 15 that he decided he wanted to be an architect. He even took architecture classes at Oakland Community College to be sure that architecture was the right fit for him. His favorite architect is Renzo Piano because of his ability blend architecture and engineering with interesting patterns. Not surprisingly, after being hired at Rich & Associates Luke was shocked to find out just how big of an impact that parking has on our society and even in architecture. He said he always found urban planning interesting, but never considered the effect that parking has on it. Right now Luke mostly works on production drawings at Rich & Associates but has also worked on 3-D models for R&A. Excited to see what Luke can bring Rich & Associates now and into the future!

Michigan Governor Celebrates the Wagner Place Ground Breaking in Dearborn

Abuzz in Dearborn

Today, I attended the ceremonial groundbreaking for Wagner Place. Wagner Place is a new urban environment offering new retail and office space. Everyone in attendance was abuzz about the new project, especially special guest Michigan Governor, Rick Snyder who spoke about the project with genuine enthusiasm. The renderings for the project displayed a ultra-modern urban collection of office and retail space. Any millennial would love to work at a campus like Wagner Place.

Ford is investing over $60 million dollars into the 150,000-sqaure-foot development. The Wagner Place Project is a part of transforming Ford’s workspaces into a modern corporate campus that will in return attract young professional talent to their company. The first floor of the development will be retail and restaurants, and the second floor will be office space to house about 600 Ford employees.

The City of Dearborn received $3 million in support from the Michigan Strategic Fund to construct a 373 spot parking structure near the development. Rich & Associates is proud to be chosen as the designer, architect and structural engineer for the Wagner Place Garage.

Breathing New Life Into Dearborn

At the groundbreaking, you could feel the energy that this kind of development brings a city. The City of Dearborn and Ford are taking major leaps to be a catalyst to breathe new life into the City of Dearborn. And it couldn’t be a better time to do that. With all the revitalization that is happening in Detroit, it’s a great time for other Metro Detroit cities to follow suit. Today I saw people determined to bring the people of Dearborn a city they can be excited about.