Sad news came at the end of last week: Cubellis, one of Boston’s largest architecture firms, has closed.
According to the article in Architectural Record, the 23-year old global, multi-disciplinary firm, with locations across the US and in Dubai, was refused a key line of credit by Sovereign Bank, which made paying it’s 170+ employees impossible.
But the general industry-wide collapse also is to blame, according to Tom Bergerson, a principal in the firm’s office in Newport Beach, California, which at its peak had 24 employees. “Clients can’t get the funding to do the projects they want to do,” says Bergerson, adding that, over the last 18 months, his office had not been paid for certain front-end work.
A 2006 Boston Business Journal feature on Cubellis Architects’ founder Lenord Cubellis demonstrates just how much things changed in a few short years. In that article, Cubellis is quoted as saying, “Many architects would rather be able to have something in their portfolio and say, ‘I designed that building,’ and it’s not so important to them that their company made money. That’s okay when it’s just you or you and a couple of people, but if you really want to have a company then you need to treat it like a business.” Apparently, his focus on profit and growth couldn’t survive the dramatic lean times we’re currently facing.
This is sad news for Cubellis and its employees, but it also raises concerns about some of Boston’s other large, multidisciplinary design firms. Do we need to fear similar results for CBT Architects of Elkus-Manfredi?
What about smaller firms that don’t have the global reach of Cubellis? Do smaller, more niche-oriented firms stand a better chance of surviving the recession?
