Architecture firm moves downtown

La Crosse Tribune, Aug 14, 2001 by Cahalan, Steve

The La Crosse office of the architecture, design, planning and program management firm Gensler will move by late September to the fourth floor of the former La Crosse Plow building at 300 Second St. N.

Sixteen people work in the Gensler information solutions office that opened in 1994 at 308 Buchner Place, said Thomas Houlihan, a Gensler vice president who heads the La Crosse office.

"We expect in the next year to at least double that," he said. "We'll have room for 50 in the new space."

Houlihan said his company's La Crosse office is moving because it needs a larger location. It will occupy the entire fourth floor of the former plow factory, which is owned by brothers Ralph, Dan and John Wettstein.

John Wettstein said Gensler will fill the last remaining space in the almost century-old building, which the Wettsteins bought in 1994. They have renovated it extensively since then.

Wettstein said he is especially excited about leasing the fourth floor to a high-tech company. "With Gensler, CenturyTel, Firstlogic and EDS, it's starting to take on an image of a place to be with hightech jobs," he said of businesses along or near Second Street in downtown La Crosse.

About $600,000 in infrastructure improvements, including additional remodeling and computer network improvements, will be made in the building before Gensler moves in.

Gensler, which is based in San Francisco, has 24 offices and about 2,300 employees. Its La Crosse office provides information management services to clients to help them manage their resources. It gathers facility and real estate data into a computer program that clients can use - or that Gensler can administer - for facilities management, spotting space-use patterns, and for making strategic decisions.

"I think it's additional good news for the downtown and for the city, that a firm of this nature has decided to move into historic downtown," said Bud Miyamoto, executive director of Downtown Mainstreet Inc.