Landscape architects celebrate 20 years.

Melillo & Bauer Associates, Inc., one of New Jersey's leading landscape architectural firms, is celebrating its 20th anniversary with the start of the new millennium. Based in Point Pleasant Beach, the company is recognized throughout the industry for its creative design and high level of professional service rendered to a distinguished client list.

"When we launched the company two decades ago, one of our goals was to advance the profession of landscape architecture in New Jersey in both the public and private sectors," notes Sam Melillo, who partners with Tom Bauer in the firm. "At that time, the benefits of our profession were relatively unknown. It became essential to educate our clients while, marketing our services."

As landscape architecture is defined as an art and a science, Melillo and Bauer saw their profession as a perfect fit with the more accepted engineering, planning and architectural disciplines. The wide-ranging scope of the full-service design firm's work clearly demonstrates how talented they are.

Whether it's a land plan for a housing community, a conceptual design for a public park or a landscape design for a private residence, the high-powered firm brings a unique expertise to the table. Working alongside the various design professionals, they form an effective interdisciplinary team that serves a wide variety of clients, from individual homeowners to developers, from municipalities to corporate and educational institutions.

"We're best utilized when retained at the outset to create a vision for future development," said Bauer. "As a result, we're able to help ensure our clients achieve their overall goal, both in function and aesthetics, and quite often, realize cost efficiency in the long run."

Melillo and Bauer first met in the 1970's when they both worked for Zion and Breen Associates, a nationally recognized landscape architectural firm initially based in New York City and subsequently transplanted to central New Jersey. As a reaction to universal staffing reductions resulting from the recession that hit in latter part of the decade, the two decided to venture out on their own.

The timing couldn't have been better. Atlantic City was emerging as the state's gambling hub and the new firm was retained by a number of hotel/casinos to help transform previously abandoned and unsightly streetscapes and vast empty rooftops into dynamic pedestrian and recreational spaces.

Melillo & Bauer continued to blossom and soon amassed a talented core group of professionals which has led the firm into the forefront of landscape architecture in New Jersey and beyond. Its billings have grown from several thousand dollars in its first year to in excess of $1 million in annual revenues.

Melillo & Bauer's client list has grown as well, including such respected names as Harrah's Marina, The Trump Organization, Caesar's Palace, Seton Hall University, Monmouth University, the K. Hovnanian Companies, The Applied Companies, the former Trammel Crow Residential Division (now AvalonBay Communities), and the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority.

Recent commissions have included the nationally acclaimed Due Process Golf Club in Colts Neck Township, where the firm worked with Johnny Miller to design one of the nation's most celebrated golf courses; Port Liberte in Jersey City, a major urban waterfront community which will include the first 18-hole golf course in Hudson County; the Wildwood Convention Center and Streetscape Development, which has the distinction of being the first building in New Jersey to be sited on the beach side of the boardwalk; and Four Seasons Active Adult Communities located up and down the East Coast.

The landscape architects are also continuing their unique relationship with a number of municipalities, including Stafford Township, Princeton Borough and Montville Township, that retain the firm to assist with Township Master Plans, design recreational areas and to serve as an on-going consultant. In Stafford Township, for example, the firm has been retained for park and open space planning and as an appointed member of the Township's consulting team of professionals, meeting regularly with the Town Planning and Zoning Boards.

"While most municipalities in New Jersey maintain engineers, attorneys and traffic specialists as on-going consultants, using a landscape architect is quite rare," noted Carl W. Block, Mayor of the 47-square-mile township in Southern Ocean County. "But we feel the expenditure has been completely justified in the professional advice, creativity and expertise we have received, as well as the benefits now being enjoyed by our 21,000 residents."

Its position on the consulting team gives Melillo & Bauer Associates the opportunity to comment on development proposals at a very early stage, Mayor Block pointed out.

"That's invaluable when it comes to deciding how to properly plan a new project; what site features to save and what not to save; and how best to ensure that manmade facilities fit the character of the site," he explained.

Melillo and Bauer Associates' review focuses on preserving green space, protecting environmentally sensitive areas and guiding the overall site design, including building location, pedestrian spaces and corridors, and vehicular circulation. The two partners also contribute to the public well-being in their altruistic advancement of the profession by assuming a leadership role in the promotion of landscape architecture as a viable, recognized and respected discipline.

Bauer served as the president of the New Jersey Chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects. Under his leadership, the society produced several educational films aimed at both the general public and, specifically, children. The Society was also instrumental in the founding of the New Jersey Coalition of Design Professionals.

Melillo has been a visiting professor at the Cook College Landscape Architecture Program of Rutgers state university, as have Tom Caran, an associate of the firm, and Nick Cavaliere, a landscape architect with the firm. All three are graduates of the Rutgers program and are committed to retaining a high standard of education for future graduates.

Melillo and Bauer are now finding themselves being called upon again for their experience in rooftop design, though this time for developers of new for-sale and rental projects rising along the exploding New Jersey "Gold Coast" - the Hudson River waterfront.

"The conditions on the New Jersey waterfront are comparable to those in Manhattan," said Bauer. "In many cases, site design is driven by architecture; developers charging high-end prices and rents must soften and even masque views of structured parking. In addition, because of a lack of space, there would be no other way, other than on the rooftop, to provide recreational facilities, be they active or passive."

For The Constitution at The Shipyard, a mixed-use community in Hoboken being developed by Applied Development Company, Melillo & Bauer Associates was commissioned to design a landscaped park on the roof of a three-story, enclosed parking garage which is anchored by two residential towers. The park, accessed by the buildings' fourth floors, consists of a large central lawn panel flanked by both active and passive recreational components, with dramatic views of the Hudson River and the Manhattan skyline. In addition, the firm has designed a street-level public park at the center of the community, using the history of this former Bethlehem Steel Shipyard as inspiration for the site design and detailing.

The firm has also been retained to design several other rooftop recreational areas along the New Jersey waterfront, including Avalon River Mews in Edgewater, The Mariner, also in Edgewater, and The Palisades in Fort Lee.

Melillo and Bauer Associates has returned to its roots not only in rooftop design, but in land planning as well.

"Some of our earliest commissions were on behalf of Leisure Technology, a development company specializing in retirement communities," said Caran. "Over the past several years, we have worked with the K. Hovnanian Companies to develop numerous lifestyle communities for the booming active adult market."

The development firm's Four Seasons Communities have become a recognized leader in planning and design.

"It's kind of ironic that after all of these years, we would be so active in a niche that first helped to launch this firm," said Bauer. "I guess you just never know where the development trends will take you."

Melillo and Bauer Associates is involved in every step of the design process from feasibility studies through implementation.

"We create community designs responsive to the needs of the active adult lifestyle," said Lynn Yahia, an associate of the firm who has been responsible for overseeing the development of several communities along the East Coast. "This becomes especially evident in the entrance image, which gives a sense of security. The pedestrian-friendly streetscapes, and pedestrian spaces linking the community as a whole, foster a sense of neighborhood, and the expansive recreational area, which has been designed with cutting-edge facilities, reinforces the concept of the active lifestyle."

Melillo & Bauer Associates has evolved into a leader in the profession due to their innovative design strategies and professionalism. The firm is also using new technologies in computer drafting and has established a presence on the Internet at www.mba-landarch.com in order to remain on the cutting edge of landscape architecture.

"This new technology allows us to keep current with the other design professionals, yet does not at all stifle our creativity," said Bauer. "We can become more productive as computer programming for our discipline evolves. We still do, however, use the old paper and pencil to create the designs with which we've been so successful."

For Melillo and Bauer, the future remains wide open, as the firm looks ahead to the next 20 years with an unwavering commitment to providing clients with high quality professional service and creative designs in the now highly recognized, respected and valued profession of landscape architecture.