LRK pursues public-sector work after bankruptcy

A bankruptcy judge in Memphis approved in late May the Chapter 11 reorganization plans of Looney Ricks Kiss Architects, which at its peak employed 240 people in nine offices across the US. Some of the firm’s assets, particularly contracts for projects still in the design phase, will be sold to a newly established firm called LRK Inc.

Frank Ricks headed the original firm, founded in 1983, and he will lead the new LRK. Ricks told New Urban News that “for the most part, we will have the same principals” that the original firm had. Those will be founding partners Ricks and J. Carson Looney, six other existing principals — Jim Constantine, Mark Jones, Mike Sullivan, Rebecca Courtney, Rob Norcross, and Elaine Colvin — and two newly named principals, Tony Pellicciotti and Victor Buchholz.

With a staff of about 45 and with offices pared down to four locations — Memphis; Princeton, New Jersey; Celebration, Florida; and Baton Rouge, Louisiana — the new firm will try to gain more public-sector work. The original firm worked mostly for developers and other private-sector clients, and suffered when many of their projects came to a standstill because of difficulties in obtaining or retaining financing. Among the government-funded projects the new LRK hopes to work on are improvements to a transit corridor in Houston and construction or renovation at public housing developments in Huntsville, Alabama, and Holly Springs, Mississippi.

“A lot of our work now involves helping developer clients understand the changes in the marketplace due to the recession,” Ricks added. “We are involved in a number of market research assignments. … We have several multifamily/mixed use projects where we are having to substantially redesign the projects to address the current/new marketplace demands and/or the financing criteria.” Other work includes “reevaluating planned or partially built projects for alternative phasing strategies and uses in an effort to keep projects alive in the current marketplace.”