O.C. UPDATE : Designing Future Growth : Orange Architects See School Contract as Just a Start

ORANGE —  Only two years after coming together, Francis + Anderson, a small architecture firm, has been winning the big contracts seemingly out of its league and is poised to become a major player in Orange County’s competitive institutional construction industry.

The firm’s success was underscored last March when it was awarded a highly sought contract to design a $20-million Santa Ana school building that will be the first of its kind in the state.

“I think what it means is that we’ve achieved some short-term goals but by no means have we ‘made it,’ ” said Gladstone (Andy) Anderson. “We’re very happy with our position but it is something we want to build on.”

Despite the architects’ big win in Santa Ana, the Orange-based company has experienced plenty of growing pains. It has been particularly difficult for the firm, which gets 75% of its contracts from governments, to expand beyond the small school building niche where it has gained a foothold.

Anderson said the most important decisions the company has made in recent months have regarded how to remain in business at a time when the state is reducing its budget for new school construction. “We, like other architects, are diversifying our client pool and moving into new markets to keep our businesses going,” Anderson said.

To that end, Francis + Anderson is headquartered in Orange and has opened offices in San Francisco and Sacramento to explore opportunities in Northern California. It has bid on and won several major retail contracts, including remodeling interiors at five Sears Roebuck & Co. stores across the state.

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The partnership hit another milestone in the past year by winning its first university contract. Anderson explained that, while the firm specializes in designing schools, it has been difficult for the partners to land contracts with any of the state’s universities. After the Northridge earthquake, however, Francis + Anderson was hired for the 200,000-square-foot speech and drama building at Cal State Northridge.

Anderson said the pair were particularly happy to have landed the Cal State project after two years of unsuccessfully bidding on projects at the UC Irvine. “We were never optimistic about getting UC work because it is so competitive,” Anderson said. “Now I am not optimistic at all because of the recent political statements.”

In mid-January, the UC Board of Regents said it would consider a proposal by one of its members to dismantle its affirmative action program, which includes not only admission of minority students but contracting with minority businesses for work at the nine campuses. The architecture firm is black-owned.

The company’s most visible contract, though, is the so-called “space saver” school in Santa Ana.

The $20-million construction project in the Santa Ana Unified School District, which is expected to yield $1 million to $1.5 million in fees, is the firm’s first high-profile contract, Anderson said. “The site is very prestigious, very unusual.”

Luckily, the project has been unaffected by Orange County’s filing for bankruptcy Dec. 6. The funding came through and the plans are proceeding on schedule, according to Anderson.

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Money aside, winning the contract will add clout to the company’s name, Christopher Francis said.

“Its the first of its kind in California . . . over the site of a shopping center,” he said. “In this case the board made an unprecedented decision to hire a small, relatively obscure African American firm out of six well-established firms.”

But that is exactly what the firm set out to do--snare the big contracts that have so often eluded the smaller minority architecture firms, the partners say.

Now, in their soon-to-be-assumed roles of president and vice president of the Los Angeles chapter of the National Assn. of Minority Architects, Francis and Anderson said they plan to help other minority architects reel in the big-money contracts.

Historically, minority architects have received construction jobs worth $100,000 or less, said Francis. When public money is used, contracts usually mandate that 15% of construction dollars go to minorities, 5% to female-owned businesses and 3% to disabled veterans.

Too often, said Francis, that requirement is satisfied by bringing in minority subcontractors to handle small jobs, such as restroom remodeling or handicapped access enhancements required by the Americans With Disabilities Act.

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There’s enough work of that sort to make a living but that’s not a place for a firm to build a name for itself, Francis said. “We can’t succumb to these subservient roles or, worse yet, relegate ourselves to these smaller projects.”

But size and experience requirements can make it difficult to compete with the larger, older firms for the key position of prime architect, Francis said. “That is where the small minority practice is usually weeded out of the running.”

One way that Francis + Anderson deals with the problem is to combine the experience level of each architect at the firm for a cumulative total. If the application specifically requests the number of projects “the firm” has completed, Francis said he answers honestly but adds an explanation, citing the experience of his staff.

“After that we do a lot of research and we study what the potential client really wants. We address those issues and study the agenda of each and every individual interviewer,” Francis said.

The firm’s interest in meeting clients needs doesn’t stop after winning the contract, said Carol Fisher a former Lake Elsinore school official. She said she was impressed by the firm’s thoroughness when acting as project engineers for the Lake Elsinore School District in 1993.

“They exhibit a true concern for the school districts’ needs,” Fisher said. “I think several of them (other firms) express it, but I don’t see it in the work that they do.”