![]() You hire within underserved communities, including ex-offenders. I’m gonna jump on this urban farming because I think the only way we’re going to revive our whole industry, landscape architecture and contracting, is we’ve got to put what we do in touch with the people. There’s a few of us, we’re gonna change this. That’s my next thing in life, I’ll tell you right now. I even picked up a few of them myself, just acquisitions of inventory, acquisitions of equipment, some their business, some just their stuff. The guys that cheated the hell out of our customers, the bad designers… this cleaned the house. If other firms are weeding themselves out, doesn’t that create less competition for you? Has the decline of the industry as a whole actually benefitted your business? You know it’s the age of acquisitions and mergers, so you’re seeing all these architectural firms teaming, and though they used to have a great landscape architecture section to them, now it’s, “Hey, we don’t need you. Everyone’s struggling across the country. Is it too late for the industry to rebrand? Across the country, we have some really famous hotshots out there in the landscape architecture industry, but us local guys, we’re just a piece of the puzzle. They think, “Oh, it must be a green building.” Our industry was so busy fighting the legislators about fertilizations and herbicides and pesticides and fighting each other about whether a landscape architect could have a practice act. When you think of “green” and “sustainability,” people don’t even think of landscaping. I just feel like our industry didn’t get together in time. Nobody even knows when you go to beautiful landscapes-like Millennium Park or South Beach or millions of different, beautiful landscapes-that you know are so unbelievable, a landscape architect designed that. What part of this movement were we a part of? It’s sort of like we were just the greenies that came in and did the work. When “green” came around, we didn’t have a message. There’s a big change in the landscaping industry in Chicago of moving away from just landscape architecture firms to firms that are all-inclusive of design, build, and maintenance. We’re doing acquisitions, we’re growing, we’re picking up a lot more. Susan Du: How do you see the landscape industry developing in Chicago now, and where do you fit in?Ĭhristy Webber: For the last couple of years, I’ve really managed to develop a team of players who are really carrying the weight.
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