Boskus Still Making Waves, Pursuing Career Highlight

Although it’s been just a few years since architect Roger Boskus was named to the Northwest Arkansas Business Journal’s Forty Under 40 class in 2007, an adverse economy has radically altered the business landscape for those in building-related fields.

But Boskus and his partners in the Fayetteville firm Miller Boskus Lack Architects saw the economic storm coming and strategically positioned themselves to weather it.

“We had a really good sense that the commercial market was overbuilt, and we knew the housing market was overbuilt,” Boskus said about those heady years before the recession. “We felt the writing was on the wall that it was really going to be bad when it finally did hit.”

They did very little housing design, so the firm wasn’t affected much by that market’s collapse. But more than half their business was in commercial office space, he said, as well as other areas driven by the vendor community such as retail and restaurant space.

However, MBL has always specialized in long-term care facilities, Boskus said, so it continued to focus on those projects and seek out others in the health care arena.

Also, work for Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Sam’s Club “really helped us bridge the gap,” he said.

Though the work kept coming in, the firm still had to cut some positions. Now with a staff of 12, Boskus says he’d like to start hiring again, but will wait until the economic recovery is farther along.

“You have to be really, really careful about the decisions you make, and err on the side of caution,” he said.

Probably the biggest difference between doing business in 2007 and today, he said, is in the amount of backlog of work.

“There’s just not as much of it there as there was back then,” Boskus said. “In 2007, there was six months to a year’s worth of work out there on any given day. Now, that’s creeping back up, but there for a while, we were doing good to have a month or two [of backlog] at a time.”

One of the few development projects built in recent years is Park Centre on Zion Road in Fayetteville. The company started working on the 100,000-SF office and retail building in 2009, and finished it early last year.

Now in leasing mode, Park Centre houses such businesses as Ozark Dermatology Clinic and Conner & Winters law firm.

Another difference between 2007 and today, he said, is they do less “bricks and sticks” new construction but more tenant infill and remodels.

One of the projects Boskus is most proud of is the Waterside Business Center, which houses Northstar Partnering Group. An example of MBL’s sustainable building designs, they expect the project to receive LEED gold certification.

The firm recently completed Cross Church on Wedington Road, and is currently working on the Jean Tyson Child Development Study Center, a $2.5 million project for the University of Arkansas.

Helping keep MBL busy is only one facet of Boskus’ life, however. He and his wife, Karen, own and run Cedar Creek Water Ski Park in Elkins.

The couple built an 11-acre lake in 2000 for their own use, but added a 13-acre lake in 2006 with plans to host competitions.

The park evolved into a second business, Roger Boskus said, with boats and equipment available to members. The University of Arkansas waterski team practices there, and the park hosts a day camp for kids each summer.

Boskus still skis competitively, and two of his children have taken up the sport. His oldest daughter, who’s 14, won five medals including the overall individual title in the 2010 Pan American Games in Chile.

The family’s other passion is basketball. All four of his children play, and Boskus coaches the sixth-grade team at St. Joseph Catholic School.

Boskus still finds time to serve on the board of directors of Restore Humanity, a nonprofit started by Sarah Fennel.

Boskus got involved with the group when one of his daughters was a student of Fennel’s at Fayetteville Montessori School. Fennel was collecting items to donate to children in Africa as a class project. The group has now built an orphanage in Kenya that houses 15 children, Boskus said.

In his Forty Under 40 profile, Boskus said he hadn’t yet hit his career highlight. That feeling hasn’t changed.

“I think it’s still ahead of me,” he said. “I just feel thankful and blessed that I can get up every day and come here and enjoy what I do, enjoy the clients I’m working with, and have a great staff that supports me.”

“I say it often, it’s not like I have to go to ‘work.’ It’s fun. I enjoy it every day.”