Emick Howard & Siebert

Specialty: Architecture, programming, space planning, strategic facility planning

Management: Jack Emick, Mindy Howard, Brett T. Conway, Jim Haack, Paul Siebert

Year founded: 1977

2003 revenues: $4 million

Projected 2004 revenues: Up: “A real moving target”

Largest current projects: Metropolitan Tower improvements, Park Place improvements, Lexus of Bellevue

Reverberations from the late-1990s dot-com mania continue to be felt in unlikely ways. One of them comes from the financial sector, where for years traditional banks were steering their customers online to cut costs.

But the transition to Internet-only banking didn’t take, said Jack Emick, and now bricks-and-mortar branches are sprouting in abundance around the country to meet pent-up demand.

For Emick, a principal at Emick Howard & Siebert, that’s just one reason why business has grown like gangbusters in 2004.

“The corporate side of the business had been way down (in recent years),” he said, “but it came roaring back.”

The Seattle firm, which is known locally for interior design and space planning, has built up a national portfolio of banking, office and retail projects.

The work from financial clients around the country — banks, mortgage companies and credit unions — has encouraged the firm to seek out retail and legal clients as well.

“We’ve done a lot of specialty retail centers,” Emick said, “and a few law firms.”

The firm’s 40-plus employees have managed the work from a lone downtown office. Emick said the firm will continue to maintain a single location “as long as we possibly can.”

The local economy has been slow to recover, Emick said, so the firm is seeking to expand its services here. “We’re expanding work we didn’t compete for locally,” Emick said. “We’re becoming more and more involved in new construction.”

One of its biggest such projects is a 410,000-square-foot Lexus dealership in Bellevue, Lexus’ largest, Emick said.

The tenant improvement market has rebounded for the firm, and Emick noted that tenant sizes have been increasing, including a pair of recent projects that topped 60,000 square feet.

Growing work loads have placed the firm in hiring mode, Emick said, citing three recent hires.

But managing all the growth can be tricky: “The people that we’re adding are good and have a following, so the work we hired them to do isn’t necessarily being addressed by them.”