The Club approach

The Club approach

DEVELOPMENT by Mark Gordon | Managing Editor

The going is good at a Gulf Coast planning firm - but it would be a lot better if the government would speed things up. Or at least get out of the way.

Like any good entrepreneur, Bruce Franklin wants to move fast, get things done and finish projects quickly, even early when he can.

But being that Franklin's chosen line of work is in architecture, design and planning, he frequently doesn't get what he wants. Up and down the Gulf Coast, it's a field that by design is a gauntlet of permits, hurdles and regulations that need to be overcome before a project can get started, much less finished.

While Franklin understands and sometimes even appreciates the purpose of the process, it is nonetheless cumbersome. In Sarasota, his main market, he sees it in the constant bickering between residents, elected officials and each other, which in the end, he says, has only served to hurt the entire city.

"The whole idea that we have to slow growth down isn't helpful," Franklin says. "The slow pace of economic growth here is frustrating."

But frustrating as it might be, the slow growth attitude in Sarasota doesn't include the ADP Group, the Sarasota-based firm of which Franklin has been with for more than 25 years. He's currently the president. The multimillion-dollar revenue firm has grown 12% to 14% a year over the past three years, growth coming on the heels of a 50% growth spurt three years ago in 2004. Franklin declined to release specific revenue numbers.

The firm's client list includes some of the all-stars of Sarasota development, such as the Plaza at Five Points and the redevelopment of the Quay, a $1 billion mixed-use project. (See related story). To handle the work, the ADP Group also has 44 employees, more than double the 20 it had in 2004.

Finally, the firm will soon be able to show off its growth with a new headquarters. The company currently has two locations in Sarasota, one for most of the architecture and planning work and another for its design studio and offices.

Its new downtown Sarasota headquarters, in a building to be built in conjunction with Sarasota developer Dr. Mark Kaufmann, will be a few blocks north of its current location and will be big enough for all of its employees. The firm is currently working on the design phase for the new building, Franklin says, and should be ready to move in to it within two years.

Going clubbing

Part of the company's recent growth stems from a niche it figured out about 10 years ago, one it continues to capitalize on today: Clubhouse design.

That market is a good one, Franklin says, because there are so many golf courses with clubhouses in Florida and the competition puts club owners in a position to be thinking about redesign every five to seven years. Says Franklin: "Most clubs were built as sales tools, not as a functional developments."

The ADP Group began to put the function back into the clubhouses. The firm has designed or reworked more than 60 clubhouses in Florida, including the Imperial Country Club in Naples, the Plantation Golf and Country Club in Venice and the Naples Yacht Club.

What's more, the firm accomplished its goal of taking the clubhouse business line national last year, when it bought St. Paul, Minn.-based clubhouse design firm HRMA Inc. It now has a sole leader in charge of the business line in Richard Heise, HRMA's founder, and it also has projects in Louisiana, New Jersey and South Dakota.

Franklin says the clubhouse business, which he says is worth between $1 million and $5 million in annual revenues, has the potential to grow 100% over the next three years. In addition to other states, he'd like to see the firm acquire some projects in the Caribbean.

Diversified architects

There was a time when the ADP Group was a debt-ridden design firm, not a niche clubhouse designer and planner and certainly not one of the largest architecture, interior design and land planning firms in Sarasota.

The initial company was founded in the late 1970s in Bradenton as Architects Diversified. By the early 1980s, Franklin had joined the company to open its Sarasota office, and he was joined by two other ambitious and young planners: Robert Town, who had been the head architect for the Ramar Group, a Sarasota-based builder, and Javier Suarez, an architect and planner who had run a small Puerto Rico-based architecture firm.

Architects Diversified was struggling though, despite the young talent and despite counting several major developers as clients, such as Pat Neal and Arvida. Its owner was $250,000 in debt and put the company up for sale.

In 1984, Franklin, Town and Suarez bought the company - the trio paid $1 to take the firm, and its debt, over. They took on a line of credit, repaid the most immediate debts and began rebuilding the company.

Within a year, the name was changed to ADP Group, representing architecture, design and planning, the firm's three main services. The company also began turning a profit.

Looking ahead, Franklin says he and his partners, a group that also includes Pete Houk, who joined the firm in 1988, would like to temper the firm's growth to be more manageable. The company doesn't plan on extending its recent hiring binge, but it does hope to mold some of its younger current employees into future leaders, so they can eventually have an ownership stake in the firm.

REVIEW SUMMARY

Business: The ADP Group, Sarasota

Industry: Architecture, planning

Key: Firm has more than doubled its employee base over the last three years, from 20 to 44, by being involved in a diversity of projects.

BALANCING A BIG PROJECT

For the redevelopment of the Quay in downtown Sarasota, the ADP Group's biggest current project by volume, dollars and public attention, it all comes down to the three Ps: Planning, permitting and politics.

Bruce Franklin, president of the Sarasota-based architecture, design and planning firm, also serves as the project manager for the firm's myriad roles in the massive and ambitious development. "It's such a complex project," Franklin says. "It has so many different components."

The $1 billion plans call for just over 700 condos to be built in a trio of 18-story towers adjacent to 189,000 square feet of commercial space, 39,000 square feet of office space and a 175-room hotel. The city of Sarasota has approved much of the initial plans and crews began demolishing the remaining structures on the 14.5 acre property last month.

Franklin says his biggest challenge has been balancing the three tasks, as some projects overlap with each other. Permitting and planning tends to follow a formulaic timeline but the political piece - which includes appeasing and working with elected officials and Sarasota's vocal neighborhood groups - can be less predictable. It helps that Franklin has consulted with past owners of the Quay on other projects on the property over the last 15 years.

The demolition work is expected to be completed by September, Franklin says, and after that, work on configuring utility lines and the 1,700-plus structured pilings can begin.

-Mark Gordon