Executive Q&A: SAA Design Group founder David Schreiber helps revitalize urban centers

Source: The Wisconsin State JournalJan.迷你倉 05--Growing up and working in rural central Wisconsin gave David Schreiber a good template for his future Madison-area career as a landscape architect, as well as a good idea of what he didn't want to be doing."I've always lived in the country," he said. "I sort of come from the earth in that regard. In high school, I was drawn to working for a landscape contractor. I dug my share of holes, so, as the saying goes, (I) admired the guy holding the plan. That kept me going in school, to become the guy that held the plan."Schreiber, 64, was among the state's first licensed landscape architects when he began a solo consulting practice shortly after graduating from UW-Madison in 1972. His 41-year career since then has made him one of the Upper Midwest's most experienced urban planning and design professionals, with a special focus on helping waterfront communities revive their downtown centers.In 1984, he founded Madison-based Schreiber Anderson Associates, renamed SAA Design Group starting in 2011 and offering urban planning, landscape architecture and civil engineering services.The company's urban renewal projects in Madison include project design for the redevelopment of the Allied Drive neighborhood, and the civil and landscape design for the 30,000-square-foot Atrium at the Villager Mall in the 2300 block of Park Street.The company also has done the roof gardens and other landscape elements at Monona Terrace, street reconstruction and other exterior work for the St. Mary's Hospital expansion and all the needed site work for Madison Area Technical College, going back to the mid-1980s and continuing into referendum-related construction improvements that finished up this year.Now almost 30 years old, the business continues to innovate with industry trends, Schreiber said. He cited the hiring this fall of Jacob Blue, a sustainability expert and national leader in the practice of ecological landscape architectural design, known as "ecotecture."Q. What are the important guiding principles of landscape architecture?A. We deal with the form of the land and the placement of objects on it that reflects the culture today and can help preserve the past. It's largely about what all design professionals think about: composition, color, light, climate, lots of factors. We would differentiate ourselves from the architect by dealing with everything outside the building.Q. How do urban planning and civil engineering, your firm's other two main services, fit in?A. Urban planning deals with the form of the downtown or urban center, or it could be at the neighborhood level, like Monroe Street or Schenk-Atwood in Madison. It's figuring out (the different elements) you see there today, (for example), the conversion of an old school into condominiums, the rising of the Edgewater, putting historic things in -- all of that is done with a plan, block by block.Civil engineering is the infrastructure of streets and sidewalks and curbs -- municipal infrastructure, and the underground as well, the storm sewers and water lines and sanitary sewers. We also would do stormwater engineering that's not underground (such as creating swales and retention ponds), and part of our engineering is also transportation design.Q. What was it like to start a company in a then-relatively new field like landscape architecture?A. It was a frontier. That's the way I looked at it. I saw all sorts of opportunities. You had major metropolitan areas that did not have landscape self storagerchitects practicing. There were gardeners and residential landscape contractor companies but corporations weren't seeking it, and the public sector wasn't seeking park work that couldn't be done by engineers or (traditional) architects. There were all sorts of opportunities to approach this professionally.Q. How did you initially fund your business -- from savings or investors or banks or family?A. Bank financing, and I had no experience or preparation for this. I had to learn by going from bank to bank, to figure out what they wanted and how to do it. It took me six trips to six different banks. Ultimately, a grandmotherly type had faith in me.Q. How did you handle the challenge of breaking through in those early years?A. My inspiration would come from landscape architecture magazines in which I could see things being practiced in more urbanized parts of the country that were much more inspirational design-wise.(What helped were) some ordinances being passed that required some aesthetic work (in business projects), like the planting of islands in parking lots. Strip centers were just coming into play, and some businesses were trying to find a new edge. As people started to develop these kinds of public spaces as part of the business, that was opening more doors.My goal was to put the landscape architect in control of these projects. I started approaching landscape architecture with the view that I and my employees could tackle everything outside the building, and (clients) could really just work with us to get their whole site designed. I think we've achieved that in many arenas today. We're not going to do skyscrapers, but we are going to lead economic development efforts in downtowns, that kind of work.Q. Can you describe what goes into an urban renewal project using a city you've worked for?A. We started doing work for the city of Beloit in 1990, so we have a 23-year history of work there. The project is known as the Beloit City Center, and it's roughly an area of 750 acres. It includes the traditional downtown and the high school and Beloit College and numerous major employers, all sandwiched across this 750 acres.And in the middle of it all is the Rock River. The vision was the river would lead the community back to its economic vitality and visibility as a leading community. The work along the river has incorporated continuous public open space throughout this corridor for bike trails, play areas, festival grounds and a tremendous amount of public art.Q. How do you define a successful project? How do you know you've done it right?A. I get to see people in it. When I start there are no people and when I get done, they're playing games or they're sitting on a bench or they're walking through an area. They're enjoying the outdoors and the public space, and that can be in a park or a downtown environment, on a street or at a festival.Q. What changes are coming in the industry?A. The design approach will be much more about building healthy places. Even when we do a building (exterior) for a corporation, we can be thinking about how the landscape can be healthier, how trails and walkways can be provided, how you can move from the building to the parking lot in a healthy way, how exterior stairways can become more exposed. Those are all components of a healthy place.Copyright: ___ (c)2014 The Wisconsin State Journal (Madison, Wis.) Visit The Wisconsin State Journal (Madison, Wis.) at .wisconsinstatejournal.com Distributed by MCT Information Services迷利倉