Amenta Emma Says Construction Growing Healthily

Amenta Emma Architects, Hartford, Stamford, recession

HARTFORD After recessions, architects are like crocuses.

When developers, governments or nonprofits hire architects, it's what they call a leading economic indicator those contracts will result in workers in hard hats with paychecks many months or a year down the road.

Since any recession, no matter what its cause, leads to a pull back in new construction, months of sustained growth in architecture firms' billings is a concrete sign of business optimism and investment.

Bob Emma, one of the two founders of Amenta Emma Architects, said clients with vision start talking about projects two or three years ahead of when they think they can afford to build, and those conversations were happening as early as 2011 and 2012.

But Connecticut's past that now, he said. "All clients are suddenly asking: 'Can you be in the ground by June?' They recognize the market's back."

Emma said, "Everything looks very rosy for, let's say, two years."

About 30 percent of the firm's work is new buildings though roughly half of its revenue comes from these larger jobs and the rest is either interior design or additions. They are looking to hire two architectural designers with two to 10 years' experience now. Often, they find those candidates at other second-tier cities around the country, but sometimes they recruit a professional from Boston who is tired of big-city costs.

Amenta Emma has 36 employees, with eight of them in a Stamford satellite office established four years ago.

That office came about almost by accident. The firm had been doing a lobby redesign in Bridgeport, and a real estate broker suggested to the partners they should open an office in Stamford. He said the larger architecture firms in that region didn't treat these kinds of jobs as if they were important, Emma said. The Stamford office has grown from two to eight employees in four years.

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Amenta Emma Says Construction Growing Healthily