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Dietz & Company Architects Values Relationships

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Architecture

Personal Touch

Lee Morrissette says it’s rewarding to see the impact the firm’s completed projects have on the community.

Lee Morrissette says it’s rewarding to see the impact the firm’s completed projects have on the community.

 

As Kerry Dietz planned her transition away from day-to-day leadership of the architecture firm she launched four decades ago, she was on a site visit to one of the firm’s Boston-area projects with Lee Morrissette — now one of the company’s four principals — and he asked her about her vision for the firm after she steps away.

“She said, ‘well, I’ve always envisioned the firm as a place for people to have a career in architecture.’ I thought that was a really interesting perspective,” Morrissette told BusinessWest. “It’s wasn’t ‘we want to build this building’ or ‘we want to get that award or make a lot of money from this particular type of project,’ but rather, ‘we want to be a place for people to have a career, to be part of a community,’ which I think is really rewarding.

“That, for me, has really resonated. Since becoming a principal over the past five years, I’ve realized that, even though I do interviews with clients and try to get new work and take on that competitive process we do for public work — which is great — it’s occurred to me that clients hire architects as people, not really as companies.”

And that’s important, Morrissette added, considering the relationship aspect of this work.

“You get the company, with all the breadth of experience. But you’re really hiring an architect, a person, to work with,” he explained. “The fastest projects barely get done in a year, and the really big, complex ones go three, five, seven, sometimes 10 years. You’re building a long-term relationship with somebody, so it needs to be somebody you can actually work with, someone who has your back. It’s like having a friend with special expertise you can really tap into. Perhaps friend isn’t the right word, but it’s building a relationship.”

Those relationships have grown over the years, and so has the firm, which now boasts a team of 30, completely filling the space in Springfield Union Station it has occupied since 2017. It has also opened a second office in Cambridge.

“Architects don’t build anything; contractors build things. We just provide all of what they need to be able to do that. And over that year of construction, 18 months, whatever it is, it slowly comes to life for us.”

“The bread and butter for our firm has always been affordable public housing, and there are a lot more housing authorities in the eastern part of the state than in the western part of the state, so we found ourselves getting more work in Eastern Massachusetts,” Morrissette said, noting that three team members work at that satellite.

But staff growth isn’t the only goal, he noted. Professional development is critical, as evidenced by the company’s designation, since 2018, as an Emerging Professional Friendly Firm by the New England Components of the American Institute of Architects. That program acknowledges architecture firms that promote the advancement of emerging talent through professional development and personal growth opportunities.

“It’s like a stamp of approval that we have an established professional-development program that includes mentorship and study materials and support of emerging professionals on a regular basis,” he said.

But it’s not just younger team members who are immersed in a culture of learning. Morrissette spent several recent weekends studying for an exam to become a certified passive house consultant, a cutting-edge type of sustainable design that dramatically reduces the amount of energy a building consumes.

“I’ve taken 56 hours of training to do this. And I’m really lucky that I can participate in that lifelong learning, just like the new grads that join our office,” he told BusinessWest. “We’re all learning together, and I think it’s a cool profession to be in. There’s a lot of variety in what we do, and there’s a lot to explore.”

 

Market Diversification

Dietz, like many large, well-established firms, designs projects in a range of sectors, including commercial, education, housing, senior living, hospitality, municipal work, and more.

“It sounds kind of like investment strategy, but it’s very similar. We have our hospitality industry, which is fairly market-driven, and then we have our publicly funded work,” Morrissette said, noting that publicly funded projects tend to land in a few buckets, from schools to housing authorities to municipalities. “They all have different budget cycles and money sources, but we’re working with public money from the very local level all the way to the feds, and that’s a nice balance to have.”

The principals at the firm — architects Morrissette, Jason Newman, and Kevin Riordan and chief financial officer Tina Gloster — regularly strategize on what projects to pursue or types of work to emphasize, and each brings different experiences and expertise.

Dietz & Company designed the new Richard E. Neal Cybersecurity Center of Excellence in Springfield.

Dietz & Company designed the new Richard E. Neal Cybersecurity Center of Excellence in Springfield.

“The business side, for architects, can be challenging. We don’t go to business school; we go to design school. But when you’re a really good designer, you get a lot of work, and you find yourself running a company, and you find yourself having to make business decisions,” Morrissette said.

One of them is Dietz’s continued evolution as a leader in sustainable design, with one recent example being the Wilmington Senior Center, the firm’s first exposed mass timber project.

“Instead of the old timber — huge trees cut into big pieces, like the interior of mill buildings with huge timber frames and brick exteriors — mass timber is when you take a whole bunch of small pieces of wood and glue them together to make either columns or beams or floor blocks or wall blocks,” Morrissette explained.

“It’s a good sustainability story because it’s wood that’s pretty quickly grown because you’re growing little trees instead of big trees. It’s fairly renewable and reasonably fast-growing. It helps manage the forests. It also sequesters carbon into the building.”

But despite the excitement of new designs and industry innovations, the most gratifying part of any project is watching the final product emerge — and the impact it has on clients.

“Architects don’t build anything; contractors build things. We just provide all of what they need to be able to do that. And over that year of construction, 18 months, whatever it is, it slowly comes to life for us,” Morrissette told BusinessWest, using the senior center as an example. “Nothing is more rewarding than walking an owner or a client through a building and saying, ‘over here, remember we talked about what that café was going to be like? This is where the coffee is going to be. This is where that beautiful tile you picked out is going to go.’

“And then you get to the ribbon cutting, and they say, ‘I can’t believe we’re here.’ To see the building full of its occupants — not contractors or architects, but to actually see it full of its occupants, enjoying the space, playing pool in the rec room and doing yoga in the fitness studio and sitting down for a meal — yeah, that’s pretty cool.”

 

Handing It Over

Still president and board chairman of the firm, Dietz can take a lot of pride in the company and culture she has built, which also includes an employee ownership model launched in 2021. Morrissette is proud of the work, too, but it goes deeper than that.

“In truth, there’s something a little bit zen about it. We spend all this time in this building. We argue and collaborate with the contractors and the owners about details and budget. We advocate for it like it’s our baby. And then we just give to the owner — because it’s not our building. You have to get used to giving it up and walking away.

“But it’s very rewarding,” he added. “It is incredibly challenging and nuanced, and I’m always tested, but I’m really lucky that I get to do this on a daily basis.”

Cuts Plus

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Bernie Gelinas said his appointment book has been full
Coronavirus

Salon Owner Says He Missed the Relationships the Most

Bernie Gelinas said his appointment book has been full

Bernie Gelinas said his appointment book has been full, but he can’t see as many customers in one day as he used to because of strict sanitizing rules.

It may be a song lyric and a cliché, but for Bernie Gelinas, the waiting really was the hardest part.

“After we closed in March, it was hard because we really didn’t know what to expect — what the governor was going to say, and what we needed to do to reopen,” said Gelinas, owner of Cuts Plus, a small hair salon in South Hadley. “From that aspect, it was frustrating, so it was nice when he came out said they’re going to open us up.”

The nine-week closure was, in one sense, an opportunity to take on projects that had been back-burnered — a common story we’ve heard from other business owners deemed, fairly or unfairly, non-essential during the pandemic.

“While we were closed, we took advantage — we painted, we had some things done to the shop we wouldn’t have been able to do, kind of update it a little bit, because the shop is basically open six or seven days a week,” he explained. “We tried to use the time as effectively as we could.”

Gelinas wasn’t the only one affected, of course — three full-time stylists and two part-timers in his salon were out of work, too, and while he was able to access a tiny piece of the federal stimulus, it wasn’t nearly enough to make up for the lost weeks. So May 18 — the day Gov. Charlie Baker said salons could open the following Monday — was a good day.

“We got the news like everyone else,” he said. “We watched the governor’s press conference online. On our time off, I listened to his briefings every afternoon and tried to read into what he had to say. And when we learned we were going to reopen, we had a week to somewhat prepare.”

“The big test will be in three or four weeks, once we’re caught up, to see where business goes from there. We’ll see at that point how many clients we have back and how many are holding out. It’s a wait and see.”

And prepare he did. There’s no waiting area at Cuts Plus right now — the furniture is gone — because no one is allowed to wait; only one customer per stylist is allowed inside. The bathroom is closed off, too.

“We put reminders on the walls — that was part of the protocol, to post things to remind people to be aware of their surroundings; we complied with that,” he said. “And we took out the magazines and anything else that would encourage customers to touch things that other people touch. We realigned the shop as much as we could.”

Part of that realignment was moving one booth — typically used by one of the part-timers — to a different room, one normally used for nails, a service that salons can’t offer yet. “There’s more planning involved, more careful scheduling to have the minimum amount of people here,” he said — and keep as much distance between them as possible.

That doesn’t apply to the stylist and his or her customer, of course — no one’s cutting hair with six-foot-long scissors. That’s why everyone wears masks, and why Gelinas can’t trim facial hair, for the most part. He says working around the mask straps while trimming was an adjustment, especially since masks come in several different configurations, but he has adjusted.

When asked if he’s been busy, he offered a measured “yes, but no.”

Elaborating, he explained, “when we reopened, we had to spread people out — it takes longer in between customers to follow the protocol, which is fine because it’s for the safety of all. We’re always wiping down things, and every three to five haircuts, I’ve got to take everything out and sanitize the whole station. I sanitize the doorknobs throughout the day, wipe down any common areas, wipe down the tables.”

At the same time, a good deal of his customer base has been clamoring for haircuts after more than two months away, so his schedule has been packed.

“We’re trying to get people in and take care of them and get them back on track,” he told BusinessWest. “The big test will be in three or four weeks, once we’re caught up, to see where business goes from there. We’ll see at that point how many clients we have back and how many are holding out. It’s a wait and see.”

That’s because not everyone has called back, and older customers in particular may be hesitant to sit in the chair. “That’s perfectly sensible,” he noted.

That said, customers have been “phenomenal” when it comes to following the new guidelines. And they’ve made Gelinas consider what he was missing during the weeks when he couldn’t cut hair.

“The beauty of coming back to work is you realize all the relationships you build throughout the year. You miss those people, and when you finally see them and talk to them, you realize that’s what this business is all about — it’s not just giving haircuts, but more the one-on-one. It’s more than a professional relationship; it’s very personal. You kind of miss that.”

In fact, it made him realize that, when he eventually retires from his full schedule, he’ll still want to cut hair.

“So it was a learning experience for me also. Yes, we used those weeks as best as we could, to do different projects. But it was a mental project, too — to kind of answer the question of what the future will bring. It’s one of those things where you don’t miss it until it’s gone.”

—Joseph Bednar