Roots in Kalamazoo… Then and Now

You can’t talk about what OCBA was like in 1993 without mentioning the office location, which was in the “Kindleberger Mansion” located at 521 Riverview Drive in Parchment, Michigan. It’s not really a mansion, just a big old two-story house that was connected by a bridge to a second two-story house built by the city’s founder. By the time I arrived at OCBA the buildings were barely recognizable as residences and made wonderful offices. We undertook a renovation and expansion of the buildings in the late 90’s as both OCBA and Slocum Architects, with whom we shared the building, were outgrowing our spaces. Then the recession of 2008 hit and suddenly there was more space than we needed and for several years all OCBA staff were on the first floor and a portion of the second floor was leased to another business.

The 521 Partnership (composed of OCBA and Slocum partners) sold the Kindleberger Mansion around 2010, and deferred maintenance started to get the better of the buildings. Neither firm anticipated hiring enough new staff in the short term to fill the empty desks left by the recession, so in 2016 both decided that we would be leaving Parchment after 40 years.

But in spite of there only being a handful of OCBA staff to help move the company to a downtown Kalamazoo office in 2018, there was more than 40 years of drawings and files to go through and determine whether to save or throw out. Two years before the actual move we started hiring college students to scan the rolls of drawings and presentation boards of various sizes which were crammed into every nook and cranny of the old house. It took a long time, but we were down to one box of old drawings that still needed to be scanned when we moved to the new office.

Our current office located on the fifth floor of the Argos East building in the heart of downtown Kalamazoo could not be much different than the old Kindleberger Mansion. While it doesn’t have the same colorful character, we really like the modern office space with great views and easy access to all of the downtown activities. It also is a great relief to have all of our old files saved digitally with no rolled-up paper drawings stored anywhere. It is an ideal space from which to launch our next 60 years in business!

— Sandy Bliesener

OCBA President