To succeed in architecture, a design team has to be multi-dimensional in terms of its commitment and skills. We have to provide clients with more than creative architectural concepts—we need to meet requirements for budgets, schedules, functionality, sustainability, life-cycle parameters, and much more.

For many of our projects these days, that also means helping our clients early on to ensure that projects go forward. Recently, we've supported a number of public-sector clients in Illinois with bond referendum and grant application assistance in order to secure funding for capital projects.

Building Trust

For Elgin Community College (ECC), where we've designed many buildings and facility upgrades over the years, we supported the college with its latest $178-million bond referendum for new construction. This will help the college carry out its ambitious and forward-thinking facilities master plan, with new buildings and improvements that will span the next several years and position the institution for future growth.

Dewberry's design for the expansion, renovation, and modernization of the ECC Student Resource Center and Library will create an inspirational and sustainable environment for students.

For the White Oak Library District, and more recently for the Richton Park Library District, we also helped with efforts to pass bond referendums—in White Oak, to develop a new facility and renovate two libraries, and in Richton Park, to build a new library. Residents in both of these communities understandably wanted details on how their public dollars would be spent, and to trust that proposed new construction and improvements represented sound expenditures that will bring value to their communities. Working closely with library administrators, we helped facilitate public workshops, generate feedback from residents, detail program needs carefully, and present design concepts to the public.

In Deerfield, we not only assisted the library system with its bond referendum for a new facility, we also helped administrators secure "Live and Learn" grant funding from the Illinois State Library. We assembled materials to qualify for the funding, and have ensured that the grant money was appropriately administered during construction.

Shovel-Ready

Currently, we're hard at work with eight additional clients who are also seeking grant money from the state. The Illinois Public Library Construction Act will provide as much as $50-million in funding for public libraries. We are working with these clients to prepare facility plans—communicating their visions for new facilities and much-needed renovations, and demonstrating the due diligence and preparation (zoning, property acquisition, surveying, soil testing, environmental assessments, etc.) that ensures that they are "shovel-ready" and eligible for these critical funds.

Much of what we practice today in terms of partnering with our clients wasn't covered in architecture school, but it's the extra mile we go in order to help them succeed. Next week, I'll talk about more about that "extra mileage," focusing on award-winning design.