Clark will leave firm he co-founded to join Ryan Cos.
KENT DARR Oct 7, 2015 | 9:35 pm
2 min read time
463 wordsBusiness Record Insider, Real Estate and DevelopmentProminent Greater Des Moines landscape architect and urban planner Brian Clark will leave the firm he co-founded in 1998 to join Ryan Companies US Inc. as director of development.
Clark announced his resignation last week from Confluence architects and will join Ryan in early November.
He leaves a firm that is at the top of its game, ranked among the top 2 percent of landscape architecture firms in the nation, and joins a company that always seems to attaining new heights. Ryan will oversee the construction of Kum & Go LC’s headquarters in the Western Gateway in downtown Des Moines, and it recently completed construction for a new headquarters for Merchants Bonding Co. in West Des Moines as well as work on the $30 million renovation of American Enterprise Group’s headquarters on Sixth Avenue.
“The timing couldn’t be better for me professionally,” Clark said today. “I’ve done all I set out to do with Confluence. They are flush full of projects; they have great people; I’m leaving the company in great hands. … I have one chapter left to write in my career at age 51, and I want to do it right.”
Clark will oversee construction projects and look for development opportunities for Ryan in Greater Des Moines and markets it serves in St. Louis, the Kansas City metropolitan area, Omaha and South Dakota, as well as Minnesota, where Ryan is based.
“He has a lot of experience that complements us,” said Brad Schoenfelder, a Ryan vice president who works out of the company’s office in Clive.
In 1998, Clark co-founded Brian Clark & Associates Inc. with Chris Della Vedova and Ann Reinhart. At the time, the firm had five employees. In 2008, the company began doing business as Confluence.
Confluence currently has 45 employees and also has offices in Cedar Rapids, Kansas City, Mo., Sioux Falls, S.D., and Minneapolis.
“The Confluence family is excited for him personally and professionally. He is making this move at an ideal time when our business is very stable. This change will not impact our day-to-day operations. More than 85 percent of our work comes in the form of repeat business, so our clients are very familiar with the team that has managed their accounts and who will continue to do so in the future,” Della Vedova, who is a senior principal at Confluence along with Clark, said in a statement.
Because of Confluence’s expansion into new markets, Clark stepped down late last year as a member of the city of Des Moines Urban Design Review Board, which oversees projects that receive city development incentives or that are located on city-owned property. The board was formed in 2002 from the combination of the Architectural Advisory Committee, which Clark joined in 1994, and the Urban Renewal Board.
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