Business & Professional
Architect Means Business
Dennis King drives vision and growth of major design firm.
Bill Carroll
Special to the Jewish News
I
n his rise to the top of an international
design firm, Jewish architect Dennis
King wasn't exactly enthralled by the
job of business development director. It
was sort of dull compared to going out and
actually designing new buildings.
But he realized it was a necessary step-
ping stone on his career path; he needed to
be well-rounded in all aspects of the archi-
tectural business.
King is glad he made the most of the
business job. He says it helped him become
chairman and CEO — the top job — at
Harley Ellis Devereaux Corp., a planning,
management, design and construction
services company with offices and partner
companies in Chicago, Ohio and California,
but based in a Southfield office building
that King designed.
King, 63, of West
Bloomfield, has guided
the growth of the 101-
year-old firm in various
executive capacities over
the past 30 years, becom-
ing the company's sixth
CEO in 1991. Harley has
Dennis King
gone through almost a
dozen iterations, mergers,
partnerships and name changes in the past
century; but only the name of the founder,
a young, transplanted Canadian architect
named Alvin E. Harley, who specialized in
designing the "grand residences" of Detroit,
has survived throughout.
The company's architects have designed
almost every type of building — from
synagogues and schools to hospitals and
crime labs. They include recent expan-
sion projects for the Beaumont Hospitals
in Royal Oak and Troy and the Henry
Ford and St. John hospitals in Detroit, the
Veterans Memorial Building in downtown
Detroit, the Rackham Memorial Building
near Wayne State University in Detroit, the
Coleman Young Municipal Center (City-
County Building) in Detroit, the north and
south wing additions to the original Detroit
Institute of Arts, Adat Shalom Synagogue
in Farmington Hills, the University of
Michigan's Mandell L. Berman Hillel Center
in Ann Arbor, the Huntington Woods
Recreation Center and countless office
buildings downtown and in the suburbs.
Like many businesses, Harley Ellis
24
August 27 2009
Gem and 1 is the name of this unique painting by architect Dennis King at
"River House," his vacation home in Saugatuck.
Devereaux is facing challenging economic
times, but is working on several new proj-
ects, such as plans for a new Oak Park Civic
Center, which will be financed partially by
federal economic stimulus money, and the
new $76 million Raleigh Michigan Studios
(formerly the Motown Motion Picture
Studios) in Pontiac.
"When I took over responsibility for
the company's business development and
marketing activities in the 1980s, I focused
the organization around a series of niche
market segments, emphasizing design work
for specific technically and technologically
sophisticated projects, which have been
the historical strength of our company,"
King explained. "We design structures, but
sometimes you have to redesign the busi-
ness itself.
"Harley used to be a generalist com-
pany, but clients today want to deal with
companies with expertise in specific niche
markets. And we've added high-quality
management systems and processes to the
work projects.
"Architecture always has been viewed as
an art and architects usually are considered
to be poor business people. I've emphasized
the business side and stressed that they be
more proficient in business practices:'
Early Days
Growing up in northwest Detroit, King
hadn't even thought about an architectural
career. His father, Jacob Katz, who became
Jack King, owned a Telegraph Road lum-
beryard, where Dennis puttered around as
a youngster. He attended Detroit Mumford
High School (class of '64) and simply
decided to take mechanical drafting classes
that led to high math courses.
"I became sort of a natural at it, learn-
ing to draft and draw and acquiring all the
necessary architectural skills',' he recalled.
"My father always said, Wnything that's
worth doing is worth doing right.' I went
to the University of Detroit first and then
transferred to the University of Michigan to
get my architectural degree. I spent 10 years
working for three small, local architectural
firms."
Getting married along the way, King real-
ized he needed the better pay, benefits and
security of a larger firm. To help make ends
meet, he even went right from the office
every day to spend the night managing his
cousin's pool hall on West Grand Blvd. in
Detroit. King and his wife, Haven, have been
married 40 years and have two daughters
and one granddaughter.
King joined Harley as a project manager
in 1979, interacting with clients as the
head of a design team. He was promoted
to director of project management and
became a partner in the company four
years later, followed by the all-important
business development job.
When Jewish President and CEO Ralph
Pierce retired, King moved up to the presi-
dency and then chairman and CEO as the
firm grew larger and split executive respon-
sibilities.
"We're now much more than a traditional
architectural and engineering firm," King
explains. "We're focused on providing com-
prehensive services to clients who need
expertise in complex facilities that require
a high level of technical competence and
innovation. Each of our 40 partners now is
a recognized leader in the industry."
Harley Ellis Devereaux has 300 employ-
ees, 150 of them in Southfield and the rest
spread over offices and studios in Chicago,
Cincinnati and several California cities. The
Michigan location started in downtown
Detroit in 1908 and moved to the Southfield
office on Northwestern Highway in 1970 to
occupy 60,000 square feet on two floors. But
that doesn't stop its architects from getting
around the world and designing projects in
such exotic locales as Taiwan, Kuwait and
Jordan.
One of the company's more unusual nich-
es is designing forensic laboratories, having
successfully designed more than two-dozen
of the labs, including the Taiwan project.
The first was a regional crime lab for Los
Angeles, the $102 million Hertzberg-Davis
Forensic Science Center at California State
University that opened last year.
"After doing some research, we real-
ized this market was being underserved,"
King pointed out. "Many companies were
simply operating out of 'leftover space in