by Tracy Ostroff

Jorge Garcia, AIA, is a man with a mission. He balances significant community involvement, holding numerous board positions with various professional and charitable organizations throughout South Florida—the Humane Society of Broward County, Boys & Girls Club, Jack & Jill Children’s Center, Florida Atlantic University, and the Urban Land Institute—all the while nurturing Garcia Stromberg, a nearly 20-year-old award-winning multi-disciplinary architecture practice. For his endeavors, the Sun-Sentinel Co. honored Garcia with the 2005 Excalibur Award, presented to leaders in South Florida who have distinguished themselves in business and who have made a difference in the community. With most of us vying to simply keep our heads above water, AIArchitect speaks with Garcia to find out how he does it all.

What is the significance of community service and leadership?
We are involved in a profession with which I am obviously completely enamored because it touches every aspect of life, including social, economic, environmental, and educational issues. When you discover how good it feels to do things that are good for somebody else—if you do things that get away from the ego and the self-serving propositions—a lot of other things begin to happen around it. Just by virtue of community involvement, you meet other caring people, and caring people are also usually very good business people and generally very successful people. I’ve made a lot of great friends and business acquaintances, and at the same time have exposed our organization and ourselves to other people and entities. By virtue of being involved, you’re surrounded by other people who are of like thinking. It has been rewarding in that we do something good for the community and good things happen to us.

How do you encourage your employees to be active in community work?
We put together a list of philanthropic and professional organizations. We encourage everyone who has the time—and not everyone does—to have one organization they dedicate efforts toward, including the Chamber, the Humane Society, the Boys and Girls Club, and others. We allow them to take time during the workday. We sponsor them when they go to these functions and we make sure their travel and accommodations are taken care of when they are going to do something for the community. It’s a non-written policy. Once they get involved with it—I think at first they think they’re going to get a little time out of the office—all of a sudden they become impassioned by it.

What is the foundation you are working to establish?
As we have grown, one of the things we have come to terms with is that we do something for almost every organization that comes to us. We said, “If we’re going to participate in these things anyway, why don’t we make a real department and issue of it?” We have been reviewing and exploring ways, not only how we can participate ourselves, but how we can influence those we associate with, like our engineers, vendors, and others in our realm. We thought if we could establish a foundation that can have and drive these fundraisers and philanthropic functions and golf tournaments, we could bring our clients together with our consultants and not only be a participant, but encourage others to do so, too. We would manage it for free. It’s another way to generate even more finances and time for these organizations that do such a fabulous job.

Are you ever overwhelmed by the number of requests you receive?
Yes. We’re trying to manage that. But everyone has a cause, and there are good ones out there. It’s not a choice as far as I’m concerned. I think it’s our obligation.

How does your commitment to community extend to your architecture practice?
It does in many ways. From a community standpoint, I’m on a couple of governmental committees, including the planning and zoning board of the City of Boca Raton. I thought I was just going to participate for a little bit, but I’ve found that there’s a need for people like myself to help shape our communities by administering the correct land-use issues and participating in them. We also guest lecture at Florida Atlantic University with no compensation, just to influence the level of professionals that are being produced in our universities. We volunteer at the Chamber of Commerce to attract good industries to our community. All these things are a good balance of things you do for your community, at the same time as improving the quality of life for ourselves.

What projects characterize your practice?
Architecture is so dynamic that it changes every day with societal needs. When I’m asked if we specialize in any particular thing, I say, “Yes, we specialize in good architecture.” The more interesting and the more complex, the more we like it because we enjoy the challenge.

One of the interesting projects that we have done is the Floridian, a very private golf clubhouse complex in Palm City, for Wayne and Marti Huizenga [owner of the Miami Dolphins, and co-founder of Waste Management Inc. and Blockbuster, among other enterprises]. We finished it back in 1997, and to this day people who visit it come to our firm because they saw the kind of work we did there. That project was one for which we said to the client, “To achieve this level of accomplishment under this kind of schedule, you have to tell us the budget and give us full control over everything that happens inside the property lines.” This is a study in “be careful what you ask for,” because he did! Of course, he’s one of my best friends today because of the opportunity he gave us there to explore what we profess in our organization all the time, which is that we can be comprehensive and address budget and construction. In our firm, we promote the well-roundedness of the architect; that is, you need to know every aspect, from good design to good business. We also do not subscribe to the starving artist theory in architecture.

We’re also doing work with Blackstone right now. They are the very aggressive, intellectually minded clients that we’ve always wished for, and they’re not bottom-fishers in terms of fees, they are value shoppers, as we call them. They are the perfect client because they don’t want good design, they want great design. We’re redoing the existing Boca Raton Hotel and its famous Beach Club. We are also involved with other projects with them in Puerto Rico: the El San Juan Hotel and The Conquistador, all landmarks. They rely on us to do our jobs comprehensively.

We also have an exciting project that is really testing our skills. Its range depends on how it proceeds from between 5,000 and 12,000 acres in Nicaragua. There’s no architectural vernacular that we have to adhere to—we’re establishing everything there from ground zero. We’re getting a chance to be a part of an economy that’s going to improve by providing work for those who need it. We’re designing everything for sustainability. We’re dealing with humungous environmental issues and we’re orchestrating this whole process of doing it correctly. We’re working with the land-planning group EDSA from Ft. Lauderdale. A project of this magnitude is a moving target, because it can easily become a 10-year project and economies and markets can change. Everything we design has to be flexible. We are totally exposed there. We have to do the right thing.

How do you balance all your commitments?
I sometimes don’t know myself. I manage myself pretty well because simultaneously I also have a wife, a daughter, and a son who plays on a travel hockey team. The balance allows me to do it—I just have been very strategic with my time. We have a lot more time than we think; we just don’t manage it correctly. I don’t have any days where I say, “Jeez, I wonder what I want to do first today.” I know exactly what I have to do each day.

What is your firm’s retention rate?
Our turnover rate is very slow. Since I founded the firm in 1987, we never lost anyone due to a lack of work or because they are dissatisfied with the kind or work they do or how much they make. We have many people in this organization who could go out and start their own firms, but they choose to be part of Garcia Stromberg because we have a future for them. They know it and live it and they get the opportunities here. We have found the true secret to our organization has been the balance between young, “unleashed” minds with very experienced professionals. Somewhere in the middle we have a formula that makes practicality out of very intellectual thinking. That keeps the older guys enthusiastic and the younger people ambitious.

How does it feel to be publicly recognized?
I’m proud and flattered by it because it’s from colleagues who know me or know of me and recognized me—rather than being PR-driven. I’m also proud because it speaks to everything I’ve just addressed. It’s not just that we’re great architects, or great business people, or great philanthropists, or community-involvement people, it’s because we’re all of them.

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