September 14, 2015

SvR merges with California firm MIG

Rodgers

von Schrader

Staeheli

SvR Design Co. is a 26-year-old Seattle landscape architecture and engineering firm that has developed a niche doing complex projects in public spaces, including Bell Street Park, High Point and Growing Vine.

Its approach integrates civil engineering and landscape architecture, and can involve below-ground utilities, streetscapes and even how trees grow in cities.

MIG is a Berkeley, Calif.-based multi-disciplinary planning and design firm that also does public work, but lacked a civil engineering component, so it's buying SvR.

The deal was announced Friday, but the terms were not released.

The merger gives SvR a national platform for its work, and offers MIG an office in a booming city.

The new company will be called MIG|SvR.

“We really have a shared vision for sustainable community and we have a culture that creates the right environment for our skilled staff,” said SvR Managing Principal Peg Staeheli.

SvR's 32-person staff of civil engineers, landscape architects and planners will become MIG's Seattle office. MIG has over 175 people in 12 offices on the West Coast (including in Portland) and in New York, North Carolina and Denver.

SvR's three managing principals are Staeheli, Tom von Schrader and Dave Rodgers, and they will become principals at MIG.

Staeheli said SvR is unusual in that it does large-scale work, from infrastructure planning to streetscapes to parks and utilities.

Von Schrader said SvR has been asked to do work all over the country, but has been limited by having only a Seattle office, which is quite busy. Now it can do projects in other places by spring-boarding off MIG's platform, he said.

MIG was founded in 1982. It has worked in a number of Washington communities. Among those projects are developing a communications strategy to spur growth in downtown Seattle. For the city of Spokane, it did Spokane Riverfront Park and North Bank Master Plan as well as the Great Spokane River Gorge Strategic Master Plan.

MIG also worked with SvR on a master plan for Bastyr University in Kenmore.

Staeheli said SvR considered adding offices, but instead decided a merger with a firm that matched its values was in its best interest.

She said the merger will make operations more efficient for finance, human resources, information technology and business development, and make it easier to offer more services.