Neil Clark uses his creativity to design Columbus architecture, streetscapes

He may have come from a small town in south Alabama, but Neil Clark has had a hand in some big projects throughout Columbus over his three-decade career with Hecht Burdeshaw Architects.

The streetscapes project that Columbus-area residents enjoy now is one of his more sweeping efforts, particularly along Broadway. But the Chattachoochee Riverwalk and the 14th Street Pedestrian Bridge are among the aesthetic projects that the company, whose namesakes are Robert Hecht and Ed Burdeshaw, have accomplished through the years.

Many of the most prominent structures and areas in the city are design products of the firm Clark, 61, has worked with since 1987. The RiverCenter for the Performing Arts, the National Infantry Museum and Soldier Center, the South Commons area and the Muscogee County Main Library are on the list of works by the company whose office is on 11th Street, just off Broadway.

Today, Clark is one of four partners at the architectural firm, which has a staff of 16, including six licensed architects. The other partners are Bob Kidd, Tim Jensen and Scott Holmes.

The Ledger-Enquirer visited with Clark at his office recently to discuss his job, its challenges and what it’s like to help design things that will be used by people for decades to come. This interview is edited for length and clarity, with an expanded version at www.ledger-enquirer.com.

Q. Where are you from?

A. I grew up in south Alabama, in a very small town called Florala. If you’ve been to the beach you may have been through there … I tell my wife it was a great place to grow up because it was like growing up in Mayberry.

Q. So moving to Columbus was coming to the big city?

A. It was. When I was in the sixth grade, both of my parents decided that they wanted to become teachers. At that time, my mother was a housewife. My dad had an insurance and land business. So in the summers he started coming up to Auburn University and he eventually got his Ph.D., and then we moved to Auburn and my mother got her master’s degree. So they both became teachers. He started teaching at Auburn and she was teaching at Opelika at their elementary school. Then we came to Columbus when I was in high school and my dad started working for Columbus College.

Q. When did you know you wanted to be an architect?

A. I’ve always been a handy kind of guy. I worked a lot in different construction jobs. But it really began to gel when I was going to Columbus College and was an English major. I was planning on teaching or writing the great American novel or something along the lines of English. My best friend from high school wanted to be an architect and he was going to go over to Auburn to sign up and apply. He said why don’t you go with me. So I rode over there with him and we got a chance to walk through the design studios, and those people were having so much fun, and there was so much creativity going on that I got the bug and said this is what I’ve got to do. So I applied at the same time and I got in a year later. I spent two years at Columbus College and then went to Auburn and graduated from there in 1979.

Q. Did you ever see yourself as a partner in a long-time architectural firm?

A. I did, from day one. (laughs) I never had any doubt that I could make it to the top of something.

Q. Can you boil down the job of an architect?

A. It’s funny, when I talk to a lot of people and they find out I’m an architect they say, well, what buildings have you built. The truth is architects generally do not build anything. We’re in the design and planning business, and those are two different skill sets. I always say I wouldn’t hire an architect to build anything and I wouldn’t hire a contractor to design anything. It’s two different approaches. Now we do have to know a lot about construction because we have to create a set of drawings to tell a contractor how a building should be constructed. But to actually get that done, you need a good contractor.

Q. What’s the day-to-day life of an architect like?

A. Every day is a little bit different because you generally have projects that are in all different phases. We say a project has five phases – schematic design, design development, construction documents, bidding and negotiating, and then construction. Different things happen at each one of those phases and I’m maybe working on three or four different projects at the same time, each one in some different phase. So I could be sitting here working on a design. I could be in a meeting about the construction of a project. We could be doing what it takes to run the business, and the marketing and going out to get new work. You’re doing all of those.

Q. What’s a typical day for you?

A. A typical day is we have any meetings and they generally happen in the morning. The afternoon for me is design time and I’m involved in my own projects, and sometimes I get pulled into other projects just to give them quick design input. It’s a very collaborative atmosphere here at Hecht Burdeshaw.

Q. You need focus to juggle all of that?

A. You do. You have to be focused. You have to be organized.

Q. Is that easy for all architects?

A. That’s the great thing about having partners in a business, because everybody has something that they’re really good at and it’s usually different than the other partners. My focus is generally the design and planning end of things. That’s where my efforts are spent here.

Q. How soon do you as an architect come into a project?

A. It depends on the project. Sometimes a client will get us involved as early as selecting a site, and doing planning for a larger complex. The earlier we can get in, the better we like it … Every year we will do about 50 or 60 projects, and maybe 30 or 40 of those will turn into an actual building. The other ones are planning studies or things that might not come to fruition with a building. But we’ll help somebody understand if that site will work for them or may determine the size of building they will need when they’re ready to pull the trigger.

Q. How long do projects take from beginning to end?

A. An average building, from start to finish, from the time that we start thinking about it until the time the owner moves in is generally a year and a half to two years.

Q. Does your job include site visits?

A. It does. Our job during construction would be to attend all of the project meetings. If it’s a complicated job, we may meet every week or two. If it’s a simpler job, you might meet whenever the job requires it, maybe every month or so. And we would be the client’s representative, making sure that the construction is in accordance with what we had shown on our drawings.

Q. Is there an interesting project you’re now finishing?

A. One of the projects that we have wrapping up is the 14th Street bridge plaza project. We renovated that two years ago. It’s the project that connects that bridge and brings it up to Broadway. We actually started the design of that before we started the bridge project. But they couldn’t build it until the bridge was finished because that was the only access for all of the construction materials. Now they’ll be doing the grand opening of that in a month or two.

Q. What’s the most unusual project you’ve done?

A. The bridge probably is. That’s not something that an architect would typically get involved in. You’ve been here long enough to know what shape that bridge was in for vehicle traffic because the foundations were so compromised. They were still using it as a pedestrian bridge, but they had stopped cars from going over it years ago. So rehabilitating that bridge was about a $6 million project and about half of that money was spent under the water to stabilize the foundations. I learned so much in working with the bridge engineers and with Scott Bridge Co., who was the contractor. That truly was a team effort and a very unique experience. To me, it’s one of the most beautiful things that we’ve done.

Q. Before that, there was the riverwalk?

A. We started designing the riverwalk in 1991 and then we’ve done all of the successive projects that led up to where we are today. That’s some of the most satisfying work that I’ve done because it’s such a democratic place because everybody goes down there. You see the bank president down to the street sweeper and everybody in between, all demographics, and they’re all down there having a great time. To know that you’re able to have that kind of affect in changing the face of a community … because when we started that you couldn’t even see the river unless you got out on the bridge. It was so overgrown with thicket and kudzu.

Q. Do you have a preference on a type of project to work on?

A. We don’t really have a style of architecture. If you look at our buildings, from 1960 when Hecht started the firm, all the way through today, you see a multitude of styles. The one thing they have in common is that they speak to a time and a place, being of Columbus, Ga. That’s why we can claim the RiverCenter and how modern part of that building is. Yet if you look at the brick detailing, that harkens back to traditional masonry and detailing that you would find in many buildings throughout downtown.

Q. What are the top handful of projects in your mind the company has worked on over the years?

A. The RiverCenter is one of those. In south Columbus, it would be Oxbow Meadows and the National Infantry Museum. Both of those were signature projects and a critical part of Columbus coming into being a tourist destination. Of if you look at Midtown, the Columbus (Main) Public Library, the Citizen Services building, and the Muscogee County School District buildings. They are all our projects. If you look at the Columbus Museum in Midtown, the renovations that were done in the 1980s was from our firm, and that absolutely has transformed that museum. If you look at Aflac, the tower, we had never done a tower before we did that. We designed the Aflac tower and most of the Aflac buildings here in town. Blue Cross and Blue Shield (in Midland) is our project. All of the South Commons work, that was a great way for us to be involved in the ’96 Olympics with the renovation of Golden Park and design of the Civic Center.

Q. Are there any prominent projects that you’re working on now?

A. Two of them. One under construction is the new arts high school. I think that will surprise a lot of people because it’s not a typical high school. It’s pretty exciting. And we’re working on Spencer High School.

Q. How competitive is the architectural design business in this city?

A. Columbus has always had a variety of architectural firms, from large firms down to single-man shops, and it’s still that way today. Yes, there’s competition out there and we do not win every project we go after. The work seems to be spread out pretty well. But I have learned enough not to second guess life, and I know if we didn’t get a project we weren’t meant to have that project, and we move on.

Q. Are there any projects you didn’t get that you wished you had, and I point a bit to the Columbus State University health sciences building now under construction downtown?

A. You know, Will Barnes (of Barnes Gibson Patel Architects) used to work with us. He came through our firm, so I would like to think that some of what he does now is influenced by what he learned here. I’m excited to see what he has done down there and see that come to fruition. From that point of view, the competition here in town is good, and we’re happy to be part of it.

Q. What’s the most challenging aspect of your job?

A. We have three masters, and that is time and money and quality. It’s balancing those three. I might even add a fourth in there, and that’s beauty and aesthetics. That’s another driver. Trying to balance all of those and keep the client focused on those can be a challenge.

Q. What do you enjoy the most about your job, find the most fun?

A. The most fun that I get out of it is being able to use my creativity to change the face of Columbus. That’s a powerful thing to do and I really enjoy it. When Historic Columbus has the river raffle down there on the bridge, and I see all of Columbus down there just having a big ol’ party, I love that.

Q. Because you know that your work is going to be around for years, for generations. Is that a big responsibility for you?

A. You know, it’s such a self-serving thing, but it’s true. A lot of what I do, I and Bob Kidd and Tim Jensen, we all are trying to make Columbus the kind of place where our kids and our grandkids will want to stay and want to come back to. Columbus really had a big problem in the ’70s and ’80s. People would go to college and then they would go somewhere else (to live and work), not Columbus.

That’s starting to change with a lot of the cool things that are going on, with our vibrant Uptown area, the nightlife and now the river and opening it up, the tourism that’s come to Columbus. The city has a great vibe going on. But that doesn’t surprise me because Columbus has always been kind of an aspirational city. It wants to be better, and it’s not afraid to go out and look at what is being done elsewhere and see other good ideas and how can we translate that and bring it back to Columbus.

This story was originally published June 25, 2016 at 8:41 PM with the headline "Neil Clark uses his creativity to design Columbus architecture, streetscapes."