 I'd like to welcome everybody to the Columbia Economic Development Podcast. For this episode, we've got a very special guest, Mr. Scott Garvin, who runs Garvin Design Group here in Columbia. Garvin Design Group has been a fixture of the community for the past 15 years, and so we're really excited to have him on board today to talk a little bit about the history of his company and the background of Columbia, how he's seen things change over the past 15 years, and then, you know, kind of the plan for the future and where, you know, we can expect to see Columbia go over the next 10 years. So, Scott, thank you very much for coming and joining us this morning. Absolutely. We're excited to have you. Thank you. And so, first off, let's just dive right in. Congratulations on the 15-year milestone. So you've got a very successful and storied career here in Columbia, and a lot of active projects going on right now, but tell us, for those folks who don't know, tell us a little bit about the background of the company, how you got started and the evolution over time. Sure. It's hard to believe. It's been 15 years. I went by really fast, which is great. 15 years ago, I was a partner in another firm here in Columbia and had been practicing architecture for 15 years, actually, ironically. That must be my number. So you're 30 and you're already pretty much ready for retirement, right? No, no. I have four daughters. I will never retire, so that's a given. But I'd come to the point in my career where I was ready to do my own thing for different reasons and had just finished up the Stromtherman Wellness Center at USC. And that was an important project for me to finish. I just wanted to complete it. A lot of us, a lot of folks in our firm worked on that project, so it was just important to get it done. And then I jumped out in June of 2003 and had no clients, no employees, four little kids, a wife who thought I was crazy, but it's been an awesome experience. The community really rallied around us from the get-go. We had humble beginnings, of course. We were doing screen porches and houses for friends and just anything we could find. Within several months, we started getting, receiving pretty significant projects. And there was some controversy around my leaving, which there always is with companies, but the marketplace responded in a very positive way to us. And most of the folks that came my way in the first year, we worked together at the former company. So it was a great start. We ramped up fast, got a lot of work in the first year, and the rest is history I guess. Sure. And so as your company has grown over 15 years, you have also watched the Vista and the City of Columbia grow as well. So from a business person's perspective, you know, tell us about, you know, how you've received that change here across the city. Well, it's been fun to be sort of in the mix of all the ramping up and all the changing that's been going on. The Vista was a much different place when- The Vista was scary. Yeah, it was a very scary place. And when I first opened up my office on Lincoln and rented space in that building, you really didn't want to be around at night, it just wasn't considered safe. But now, I mean, as people walking around every night, going to restaurants and bars, it's really cool. One of our first significant projects was the Olympian Grammy Mills, which was in the first year of our business, and look at the change there with the mills being renovated in 701 Whaley, which we were also involved with. That community has completely transformed. The Vista has, Main Street has, and it's just neat to be involved in those projects. A lot of historic buildings that were empty now are full of people. It's just great to be part of that process. And so you talked about a few of the key projects that you've worked on, but is there like a defining project that really puts you all on the map, or a couple of marquee projects that you've done over time that really stand out to you? Well, I think, without question, the Olympian Grammy Mill project put us on the map as a firm. We had done a lot of significant projects as individuals with another company, but that was the first real marquee project for us. And I think we were eight months old as a company. And Ron Kaplan from Philadelphia came down and gave us that project after we chased him for a little while. And we worked on that for three years, and then it just built from there. We've done a lot of projects at the university, Honors College, Residence Hall, Patterson Hall, Women's Quad, a lot of housing projects, a lot of athletic projects. Then we started branching out around the state. We did the Peace Center in Greenville. We're doing a lot of projects on the coast now for Hilton. So it's a statewide focus as a company, which works really well for us. And I know, here locally as an architect, you're very well regarded for working with your clients and making sure that you've really provided them with space that encapsulates their entity and their design and feel. So as you're working with people, how do you help them design space that really fits who they are as a residential or a corporate entity? How do you bring all that together? Good question. Well, it starts with the people that I work with. I have amazing talented people around me that are all great architects and interior designers, and they know how to draw that information out of clients. And the first thing we try to do is understand what the client wants physically. What are the square footages and the program needs and the physical spaces that they want? More importantly, what's their vision? What's their personality? What's their flavor? What's their identity? And then that's the fun part. You can take all the pieces and parts and design something that fits their personality or what they want their company vision to be. And that's the fun part. And if you involve them in the process all the way through, which we do, they feel like they designed it. And there's been many times, many occasions where we've been at ribbon cuttings and you hear the client say, well, I designed this, they just drew it, which is a huge compliment. I mean, that's what you want them to think. It's what you want them to say. A bit of an oversimplification. Yeah, well, you don't want to sell somebody something that they don't really need or want. And that's what you don't want to happen, especially when you're building a building. You don't want to be there at the end and go, this is not exactly what I had in mind or I didn't know it was going to look like this. So we try really hard to make sure they understand what they're getting. And it's fun. It's very rewarding. And the greatest compliments we receive are from clients who say, you spent a lot of time and you really understood what we were looking for and nobody else has done that. And I'm very proud of what we've ended up with. It sounds like a very involved process, but you want the clients, you know, when you're designing workspace, you want the workspace to feel like home, to feel like an extension of their business. Right. And you don't want every building that you designed to look the same. None of them do. That's because they're a reflection of who you're designing for. So whether your style is modern or traditional, it's more about the person who's going to occupy the space and what's their style. So that's what you target. Cool. You talked a little bit about your time and growing your business and you mentioned community support earlier. Over the past 15 years, how has the community in Colombia supported your business? Just, I guess, the excitement that you find in the community when you do something. The positive comments, the press that we've received, especially renovating old buildings, those seem to be the crowd favorites. When you take an old building, it was falling apart, like City Market on Gervais and put it back together. It's just incredible how excited people get about seeing that happen, which motivates us. Because, you know, we want to create nice places for people to hang out and do things. And when they react that way, it's just very fun. And how have you, I think you've been recognized and received some awards lately. Any of those you can talk about? Well, I mean, our firm has received a number of awards from Historic Colombia, AIA, South Carolina, AIA, Colombia, and others. But the way we look at awards, if we get an award, it's because the process worked for the awards committee that's looking at the project. We don't design to get one. They're nice to have, they're nice to hang on the wall. But it's not what we shoot for. And also, the cool thing about an award is there's not a project in our office that anybody can say, well, that's mine. It's a team effort. So there's usually four, five, six, seven people working on it. So you sort of celebrate that together. And that's just a cool thing about our company is we all enjoy each other, we have fun, we work hard, but we really have a good time working together. And I think that comes out in our work. Our clients tell us that all the time. You guys just seem to have a really good time, and we do. We like what we do, we like who we work with, and I think it makes the buildings better, to be honest with you. That's more important than awards. Well, and I like the emphasis that you put on that. The real reward is having a satisfied client at the end of the day that is happy with the space and the product they've received, but receiving recognition from other avenues for good work that you've done is kind of icing on the cake as well. It is, and it's nice. And we definitely appreciate it. I don't want to say that we might not get anymore, but yeah, we definitely love to receive you. I'm sure there's plenty more to come. I hope so, I hope so. 1649, Maine is one of your current projects you're working on. The Hendricks Market is in the process of going in there, and so that's kind of a hot topic right now for everybody. A lot of excitement around the old Hennessy's building. So talk with us a little bit, just how the development of that space has been as an experience, and then if you've got any plans for what's coming down the road for that, so that you can share. And that's a building that, with a group of other people in developing, so I'm designing it, and also the developer. And whenever you buy an old building like that, you can't have everything completely figured out. So the first step is to purchase it, and then try to put it back together. Hennessy's was important to me, because I used to eat lunch there with my father all the time, and that was the place to eat in Columbia in the 80s and 90s, so there's an emotional connection for me. And people in Columbia love Hennessy's because of the history of it. So we purchased the building, and then we started cleaning it up, cleaned out all the junk that was in it, ripped out the mezzanine that was put in in the 80s that created the really low ceilings, and it's a beautiful building inside and out, so we basically stabilized the shell, and then you sort of throw your lines in the water and try to find tenants. Sometimes that happens really fast, it did at City Market. In this case, we've been very patient. Colliers is our brokerage group, and they're doing a great job. A lot of people have looked at it. We said no to a lot of potential tenants because we want it to be the right fit for that building and the right fit for the 1600 block. And Hendrix is a great concept. It's gonna be a full service restaurant, occupies the second floor and also the roof, so they'll have a rooftop bar component with a chef that's well known for motor supply. It's gonna be awesome. It's gonna be a great restaurant. The other two spaces are not least yet. Again, we have a lot of interests. We're kind of weighing our options, and we wanna make sure that the next tenant is a good fit with Hendrix, so we're just being very careful about it. And it's just, those projects take time, they're messy, they're scary, they're risky, but they're very rewarding again when you put an old building back together. The other unique thing about that one is the sidewalk. They had, in the early 40s, roof hardware had expanded underneath Blanting Street sidewalks, so there's a huge basement under it. The city allowed us to open up that sidewalk, so we cut holes in it to create an outdoor courtyard, which also allowed us to lease the basement to a tenant because now we have daylight. That's gonna be really cool. There's nothing like that in Columbia at all, so looking forward to seeing who occupies that space. That sounds really awesome, so I'll be excited to eventually get over there myself and check that space out. You better, you need to spend some money over there. Oh, I'm sure they'll get it. So, we've talked a little bit about past and present, but as a business owner, how do you see Columbia reshaping over the next 10 years? There's a lot of activity going on right now. We've had a couple years of good development, very university-driven, but a lot of activity around the city. What do you see happening over the next decade? Hopefully the momentum continues because we have a lot and it needs to push forward. I think our main challenge has always been we have so many different areas that we are developing in Columbia, and the overused phrase is we have to connect the dots. I think they're starting to connect. I think if you look at the Vista as a region, from the top to the bottom of Jirai down toward the river, it's starting to connect, which is good. Same with Main Street. We've got to bring Main Street and the Vista together, and then we've got to connect to the river. So that may be 10, 20 years. I don't know how long it's going to take, but if we can connect Main Street to the river with development in hotels and shops and restaurants, I think Columbia is there. We've arrived. The challenge has always been trying to connect those dots and working with all the different political entities in the state capital with all the local governments who all have no politics at all. It's gotten better though, and even I've said this before, but the city and the university are working together, which 10, 15 years ago that wasn't the case. So I think if all those folks can come together and push Columbia forward and we reach the river and actually have something exciting down there, it'll be a success. And I think Columbia also benefits from being kind of on the grid structure that we are. Even when you expand out from those districts and you look at where Bull Street will be and where Five Points is, everything kind of ties into those same high traffic corridors. And so you can kind of almost see like a box forming around the downtown area. It could probably be a little more pedestrian friendly with things that would attract people to walk a little more through the city, but Main Street and Vista are the most well positioned for that type of growth. And the main change you've seen in the last 10 years is it's become more walkable. And you see people walking around at night. Except in the summer. Except in the summer, it's really hot. The more it becomes walkable, I think the more successful it will be. And Colombians have to start using garages. I know we hate to, but we've got to park in a garage and quit looping around the block and walk to where we're going. And I think that's something we'll do eventually. We'll grow up and do that. Cool, well that's all great to hear. Again, can't say it enough. Congratulations on 15 years of business. And we hope y'all have 15 more years of very successful work here in Columbia. Just great contributions that y'all have done to the city and businesses that y'all have worked with here. So thanks for your time coming in and talking with us today. And for anybody that's watching the podcast, if you get the opportunity to go check out the Hendricks Space 1649, please do so. I believe they'll be trying to make some more tours of that space available here over the next few weeks or months. So thanks a lot. Thanks, Ron, appreciate it. Yes, sir.