The Kansas City office is well known for its sports and entertainment offering, and in recent years the firm has expanded the office’s scope to include commercial projects such as the new Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City and now healthcare. Ellerbe Becket has a nearly 100-year legacy of healthcare architecture dating to the original Mayo Clinic, a client that remains with the firm today. Until now, Kansas City was the only office in the Ellerbe Becket system that didn’t offer healthcare.
Gale is a talented architect and planner whose firm had collaborated with Ellerbe Becket in the past on Department of Veterans Affairs projects. He owned and operated J. Christopher Gale & Co. in Kansas City for 20 years, serving healthcare and corporate clients.
“I couldn’t pass up this opportunity,” said Gale. “This new adventure is not only a great opportunity for me, but it is a unique opportunity to have the experience, the staff, the expertise and the support of a world renowned healthcare architectural practice right here in Kansas City.”
Gale will continue to work with healthcare clients he was serving at his own company, and will become an active participant on current Ellerbe Becket healthcare projects. The firm’s healthcare portfolio is booming, with significant medical wins in the Middle East and several locations around the U.S. Gale is hiring experienced medical design staff in Kansas City to keep pace with demand.
“It’s one thing to say you’re going to open a healthcare practice and quite another to be able to open your doors with business in hand,” said Jon Buggy, Ellerbe Becket’s national director of healthcare. “Ellerbe Becket has completed medical work around the world, and under Chris’ leadership we can now offer that legacy of healthcare design and service to the Kansas City region.
In 2005, Gale and Ellerbe Becket teamed to win an Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity Contract with the VA Heartland Network 15. The contract makes the firm eligible to perform architecture and engineering work at Network 15’s eight midwestern medical centers. Ellerbe Becket has worked for the VA for nearly 60 years and has major projects underway in Chicago and Orlando.
Sports will continue to represent the largest segment of the Kansas City office’s business, with current projects such as the Louisiana Superdome renovation, the Providence Civic Center renovation and new arenas for the University of Oregon and Missouri State University.
Locally, the firm is designing an aquatic center and park renovation in Lee’s Summit and conducting a master planning effort at Park University.
An innovator since its founding in 1909, Ellerbe Becket is a leader in architecture, interiors, engineering and the construction industry with office locations worldwide.
Contact: news@ellerbebecket.com
