DMJM's new blood.

Corporate highrise designer Rick Keating merges his 4-year-old firm with architectural/engineering giant

Another four or five years have passed, so it must be time for another giant step in architect Richard ("Rick") Keating's milestone-studded career.

One of the nation's most noteworthy "corporate statement" highrise designers during the 1980s development boom years, Keating and partners last week merged the firm they founded four years ago into international architectural/engineering giant Daniel Mann Johnson & Mendenhall's Mid-Wilshire headquarters.

Most of the Keating Mann Jernigan Rottet team -- which grew from six to 60 in just four years -- will now bolster DMJM's L.A. and San Francisco offices through the merged DMJM/Keating entity.

"Now I won't be the oldest guy in the firm any more," quips Keating, who's officially carried the "design partner" title at KMJR. With his somewhat shaggy, graying hair and thin build, Keating is a youthful-looking 50-year-old with a lot of kid in him -- his sharp suits and white collars notwithstanding.

Of course, DMJM's acquisition of the KMJR operation offers benefits to both firms.

Keating and his associates gain access to DMJM's broad-based, worldwide clientele and sophisticated financial controls and administration. And that breadth will undoubtedly be welcome considering the still-depressed local development environment.

As for DMJM, the addition of "modernist" Keating marks the first "star-quality" designer to be among the firm's 1,300 employees since Cesar Pelli left DMJM a quarter-century ago, sources suggest.

"He's a great designer, the kind that could become a legend," comments Chris Martin, managing partner with Albert C. Martin & Associates, one of L.A.'s big architectural firms. Keating is also "an incredible marketer; he's scary as a competitor," Martin adds.

Competing for local commercial building design assignments with firms like the Martin group and other established homegrown shops -- as well as "name" architects throughout the nation and the globe -- Keating has had an impact on L.A.'s skyline in his few years here.

He's best known locally for the eye-catching 50-story Gas Company Tower in downtown L.A., headquarters of Southern California Gas Co. Other local Keating works include International Creative Management's Beverly Hills headquarters -- originally designed and developed as the home office of now-defunct Columbia Savings & Loan Association, American Honda's headquarters in Torrance, and the Shutters on the Beach hotel.

When local highrise development hit the skids -- some key Keating-designed towers remain on the drafting board -- KMJR successfully adapted to the new environment by focusing on interior buildouts and building renovations.

Some of the most prestigious businesses operating in L.A. have called on KMJR's services. So have major local property owners seeking renovation assistance, including First Interstate Bank and a long-time client, Houston-based Hines Interests.

Indeed, the city of Houston and Hines Interests in particular have played prominent roles in the making of Rick Keating. In 1986, four years before he and three partners broke away from design giant Skidmore Owings & Merrill to launch their own shop, Keating brought most of the SOM team he'd built in Houston over to then-booming L.A.

He'd spent the previous decade building SOM Houston into a 200-person operation -- an operation he had launched pretty much from scratch in 1976, when he was barely past his 30th birthday. All three of Keating's "name" partners in KMJR -- Mike Mann, Rob Jernigan and Lauren Rottet -- hooked up with SOM's Houston shop within three years after Keating took it over.

Until the saddles fell off the unbridled Texas markets in the mid-1980s, Keating and associates made major marks on the Houston and Dallas skylines. Among Keating's critically acclaimed highrises are Houston towers housing BMC, Houston Industries and British Petroleum, and the Trammell Crow Center and Texas Commerce Tower in Dallas.

Not all of Keating's career milestones have come at four- or five-year intervals, but the first did actually come when he was five years old. That's when San Diego-born Keating and his family moved to a home in the East Bay community of Orinda, Calif.

The home's previous owner, an architect, had left a shop full of drafting equipment. And a family friend soon taught enthusiastic young Rick how to use it.

"I was an architect at age five!" Keating recalls, noting that he still has the T-square and drafting pens the former owner left behind.

Intelligence apparently supplemented his enthusiasm, as Keating graduated from high school at 16 and began working for a Salt Lake City architect while attending the University of Utah for two years.

After returning to the Bay Area and graduating from University of California at Berkeley in 1968, Keating considered pursuing a doctorate in architectural history. But the young designer opted to "do it vs. study it" and "refocused" on the commercial highrise discipline.

He joined SOM's headquarters office in Chicago and spent eight years there, working on university design projects and master-planned "new" cities, as well as commercial buildings. Having handled some of the Hines group's dynamic design requirements, Keating was asked to open the SOM Houston office in 1976.

The SOM brain trust had envisioned that operation as a small shop focusing mostly on renovation assignments, Keating recalls. He rejected that notion and convinced the brass to let him build a "full-blown" office.

Less than three years later, more than 200 employees staffed the Keating-led Houston operation. It would handle more than 50 million square feet of design assignments before the bulk of the office relocated to L.A. in 1986.

"We were extraordinarily lucky," the former head of SOM's design committee notes, refusing to take personal credit for the Houston operation's success.

Although Keating's professional success and reputation progressed with extraordinary speed, he retains no shortage of kid-hearted tendencies now that he's reached the half-century mark.

Queried about "life at home," he quickly tosses out photos featuring wife Deanie, their 6-year-old twins and assorted friends pursuing favored pastimes. Among the activities featured are sailing, motorcycling and cruising in the Keating's antique car.

Long-time Keating friend Bob Newsom, who has been the DMJM architectural practice's western regional vice president of administration, says Keating will be "a catalyst" who can "nurture" the careers of his new DMJM associates. And that should make DMJM/Keating a formidable force in the marketplace, Newsom suggests.

"Rick built strong teams with SOM in Houston and L.A. and also with KMJR here, and he brought key people along as they became partners," adds Newsom, who becomes DMJM/Keating's managerial and administrative director.

"That's not an easy job," he says. "It doesn't come naturally to someone who's been such a fixture in the public eye."

Snapshot

Richard Keating

Native of: San Diego Resident of: Fremont Place-Hancock Park

Age: 50

Education: Bachelor of Arts degree with honors in architecture, University of California at Berkeley, 1968

Spouse: Deanie Keating