Bigger Isn?t Better For Architecture Firm

Jim Mangold never minded doing things on his own.
He’s biked across the country and he cleaned carpets for three years in the late 1980s while building his architecture firm in Rogers.
His individual spirit has kept Mangold Architecture & Construction Inc. at three employees even as the firm has grown in the last decade from 30 projects a year to 74 in 2006.
The firm is on pace for its best year ever with 71 projects already in the works for 2007.
Even as Mangold digs into its biggest project to date — a 140,000-SF indoor sports complex in Memphis for local developer Chris Talley — the founder knows that bigger is not better for his firm.
Mangold’s company doesn’t put on a stuffy front. The family-friendly office in downtown Rogers houses a baby grand piano in the lobby for his son to play and one side office has as many toys as it does pencils for when his daughters and grandchildren visit.
The company is also “builder-friendly,” said Mangold, who is also a licensed contractor and is very familiar with trends in the building field.
“We have a little more flexibility and are more hands-on,” he said. “We can cater to our clients more than other firms.”
The company’s size has kept it off the Northwest Arkansas Business Journal’s list of largest architecture firms, but it hasn’t hampered it from landing big jobs.
In the last year, Mangold landed projects like the $8 million, 223-acre Greenstone Estates in Bentonville and the $2.84 million Pinnacle Bank on New Hope Road in Rogers. The company is designing Microtel Inn & Suites in Rogers and Bentonville worth at least $5 million combined. Two other Microtels are in the preliminary stages.
The 68,000-SF Park Place Plaza on Walton Boulevard in Bentonville opened in 2001 and was an early part of local trends away from stripped-down strip malls in favor of more inviting retail complexes.
“We’ve never had any stop in our work,” Mangold said. “Even in slow times with the economy, we’re always busy.”
Besides its namesake, Mangold’s firm is made up of senior draftsman Dan Grey, who has been with Mangold for 11 years, and intern architect Dave Burris, who has been with the company for a year. Burris is set to receive his license soon and has already been tapped by Mangold to take over the firm upon his retirement.
Mangold’s career started with Perry Butcher and Associates Architecture in 1984 after graduating from the University of Arkansas and studying under world-renowned architect E. Fay Jones.
When his nephew was diagnosed with spinal bifida, he and fellow Butcher and Associates draftsman Mike Young crossed the country on bicycles from San Francisco to Jacksonville, Fla., to raise money and awareness.
The pair had a support car from California until reaching Rogers, where school bands and U.S. Congressman John Paul Hammerschmidt led a rally for their cause.
The trip took three-and-a-half months and the pair felt so good they took the final half of the trip from Rogers alone.
“That was definitely one of the highlights of my career,” Mangold said. “You don’t forget something like that.”
Another highlight of his career came on what would appear to be a mundane project.
What was bid as a simple home renovation in downtown Fayetteville turned into an opportunity to better utilize existing space. The home owners put their trust in Mangold when he suggested some radical changes like gutting walls for more open space and two-story ceilings.
“Later on they told me when they moved back in, they hated it,” he said. “They weren’t used to it. They said, ‘After we lived there for a while, we came to love it.’
“That was the biggest compliment they could give me.”