Plans expansion to double space SYRACUSE — One year after opening an office in Syracuse’s Armory Square area, BCA Architects & Engineers is already intending to expand its space by double. Watertown–based BCA in September 2024 opened a 2,400-square-foot Syracuse office on the ground floor of the Pomeroy Building at 225 West Jefferson St. It […]
Plans expansion to double space
SYRACUSE — One year after opening an office in Syracuse’s Armory Square area, BCA Architects & Engineers is already intending to expand its space by double.
Watertown–based BCA in September 2024 opened a 2,400-square-foot Syracuse office on the ground floor of the Pomeroy Building at 225 West Jefferson St. It became the firm’s seventh New York state office after previous expansions into Ithaca (2014), Saratoga Springs (2016), Rochester (2020), Troy (2023), and Binghamton (2023) added to its Watertown main office.
Why open a Syracuse location?
“We’ve had our eye on opening an office in Syracuse for a number of years I would say. The main reason would be there’s so much going on, so much investment happening — it would be kind of foolish not to be here,” Travis Overton, CEO of BCA Architects & Engineers, says in a Sept. 5 interview with CNYBJ at the firm’s
Syracuse office.
He continues, “We sort of had [Syracuse] surrounded. We had Rochester, the Capital Region, and then the Southern Tier with Ithaca and Binghamton. It really was just a matter of waiting for the right opportunity, the right person to sort of head it up. And those things came together.”
That right person was Taylor Woolf, who started with BCA Architects & Engineers as an intern, earned his architectural license, and worked his way up to become a firm shareholder.
“Taylor, we asked him, ‘Hey what do you think about Syracuse?,’ “ Overton explains. “He’s a younger guy, kind of an up and coming, emerging professional. He’s a go-getter… He’s got 20 ideas
for every one we throw at him. He jumped at the chance.”
Without Woolf’s leadership, his eagerness, and ability to take on this responsibility, Overton adds that he’s not sure how BCA would have an office in Syracuse today.
BCA Architects & Engineers, which currently has eight employees in its Syracuse location and is growing, is pleased with how the office has performed in the first year.
“I don’t know what our expectations were coming into Syracuse but this has exceeded those,” Overton says. “Being able to find a place that was the right price, right size to start out with, right here in Armory Square was more than I think we could have asked for. If we could have drawn it up this is what we would have drawn up. It’s been perfect.”
So much so, that now BCA is looking to expand in the building within the next year and is talking with its landlord, Washington Street Partners, about taking the second-floor office space in the building when that becomes available. That space is the same size as its first-floor office, so it would double the firm’s square footage in the structure.
Overton concedes that Syracuse is a challenging and competitive market and that the firm has its work cut out for it in terms of signing up new clients in the area.
“As far as clients down here, we’re hoping to break into this market,” he says. “We’re a multi-disciplinary firm with engineering and architecture. We think we’ve got a good story to tell and a good product. We came down here to service this part of the state that much better.”
Overton notes that having the Syracuse location has allowed BCA to pursue a few requests for proposal that it would not have otherwise. The firm has also had its leadership team meet in Syracuse because it’s conveniently located between its various offices.
BCA’s full slate of disciplines include architecture; mechanical, electrical, plumbing engineering; civil engineering; landscape architecture; structural engineering; transportation & aviation engineering; and interior design.
The institutional markets it serves primarily are K-12 education, colleges and universities, municipal infrastructure, New York State government, health care, and regional aviation.
BCA Architects & Engineers has about 120 employees total across all its offices, including 65 at its headquarters location in Watertown, according to Overton. The firm has added about 40 employees in the last four years, boosting its headcount by 50 percent.
BCA has seen a surge of work in the K-12 market since the end of the COVID pandemic, and has also increased its work with the state government significantly. Now, Overton hopes to keep that going and he is optimistic about the role the Syracuse office will play in that growth.
