Rebuilding after the recession

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The reception desk in its office at 12th and Arch Streets remains unstaffed, with only a bell for visitors to ring to announce their arrival at BLT Architects.

But down the hall, workstations emptied by wave after morale-breaking wave of layoffs following the economy's tailspin three years ago have started to fill again, with 10 hires this year. And on computer screens and drafting tables, designs are under way for new projects and those now given a second chance.

BLT is feeling more alive than it has since the recession put a virtual halt to most construction, leaving those tasked with designing what is to be built little to do.

For this firm, which has helped shape the built environment for 50 years with such structures as Philadelphia's Cira Centre, the PSFS Loews hotel and the Gallery shopping malls, the misery was especially hard-hitting.

On back-to-back days in 2008 came two knee-buckling blows.

On July 31, a business jet crashed in Minnesota, killing eight on board, including six people who had been working with BLT on a project in Atlantic City - the $2 billion Revel Entertainment Group L.L.C. casino. None of the dead worked at BLT, whose employees skipped the trip because of other obligations. But the firm grieved nonetheless, many of its staff "close friends" with those who perished, said managing principal Michael L. Prifti.

The next day brought word that Boyd Gaming Corp., citing financing difficulties, was suspending construction on another project that figured largely in BLT's portfolio - the still-stalled $4.8 billion Echelon hotel on the Las Vegas Strip. BLT had even opened a Vegas office in 2006 to service that project.

"It was a quick one-two," Prifti said last week, recalling that run of bad luck. There would be more.

A few months after the Boyd bombshell came another: Revel Entertainment halted construction on the Atlantic City project, with only its exterior completed.

Amid that turmoil, Heidi Thiede had traveled to Philadelphia from Boston to interview for a job as director of marketing and business development for BLT, whose early owners were John Bower, Rodger Lewis, and Jack Thrower.

Despite the firm's setbacks, Thiede accepted the job effective Sept. 7, 2008, having convinced herself that the Boyd and Revel decisions were "just a blip."

Eight days later, Lehman Bros. Holdings Inc. announced it would file for bankruptcy, triggering a worldwide economic crisis - as well as layoffs at the company that had just hired Thiede to help it grow.

She urged her new bosses to press on with completing a revised business plan, one that she suggested should stick to what BLT was especially good at, but also include diversifying its portfolio (so it would not be vulnerable to any one industry), broadening its geographic reach, and embracing technology.

"One thing that this economy has shown everybody is that we're in a new reality," one that requires "a certain nimbleness, flexibility," said Stanley Tang, another BLT principal. "If anybody stays stagnant, they're not going to be around very long."

Among those lauding the firm's newer leaders for the change in focus - including shortening Bower, Lewis, Thrower to BLT for branding purposes - is Bower himself, now 81 and still a partner, but no longer an owner.

"They're doing a lot of the right things to keep moving in the right direction," he said in an interview Friday, though some of it was unheard of when he and Fred Fradley founded the firm, then known as Bower & Fradley Architects, in 1961.

"We relied almost entirely on references and past clients and reputation," Bower said. "You were not allowed to do anything smacking of advertising."

Now, architects are starting to peddle their trade on Twitter.

About a month ago, Juliet Fajardo, 30, a member of BLT's design staff since 2007, went on Twitter (@julietylee) to alert followers to a project at the Latham Hotel at 17th and Walnut Streets that she had been working on before going on maternity leave:

"The storefront by yours truly is going up! Exciting!"

Developer Carl Dranoff doesn't need Twitter to know BLT, whose roster of prinicipals also consists of Eric Rahe and Michael Ytterberg. The firm has worked on 16 to 20 of his projects since the 1980s, including the lavish Symphony House on South Broad Street and the pioneering Victor Building redevelopment in Camden.

In Dranoff's view, BLT was able "to bend but not break" during the last three years because it retained key staff and heavily involved the principals in projects to ensure clients "continuity."

As a result, the firm lives on to work on more Dranoff projects, including serving as master planner of a 1,500-unit housing complex proposed for 10 acres of Camden's waterfront.

Work has also resumed on the Revel project in Atlantic City, thanks to a $1.15 billion financing deal the development's owners secured in February. In Las Vegas, however, Echelon's future remains uncertain, so BLT has closed its office there.

Of the state of his industry, John Claypool, executive director of the Philadelphia chapter of the American Institute of Architects, said:

"It's sort of an exciting time, if you don't mind watching some painful experiences."

For more photos of BLT Architects and its projects: www.philly.com/commercial EndText