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Jonathan Cocker
Owner and principal, Maugel DeStefano Architects
Age: 46
Industry experience: 27 years
This year’s 30-year anniversary of Harvard-based Maugel DeStefano Architects’ founding is accompanied by a transition in leadership. Founder Brent Maugel moved on to a president emeritus and advisory role, shortly after Principals Jonathan Cocker, Mike Kunz and Mark Pelletier became equal majority shareholders and took over leadership of day-to-day operations. Cocker joined the firm in 2001 and is responsible for quality assurance and leads the firm’s health care practice, and oversees the firm’s overall business strategy and expansion along with his fellow partners. The firm has designed over 30 million square feet of real estate projects during its three decades.
Q: How has the firm divided up the leadership responsibilities following Brent Maugel’s transition to principal emeritus this past January?
A: All three of us have different personalities. I’m much more of a technical person, so I’m into the finances and how we put buildings together: figuring out all of the special code stuff. [Principal] Mike Kunz is the outgoing person and likes to do business development, and likes to go out and meet with people. [Principal] Mark Pelletier is somewhere in the middle. He likes to get into the nitty-gritty and business development. He’s been responsible for driving our science and advanced tech business and now also heads up our high-end, single-family studio in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. That was the result of the acquisition about four years ago now. We acquired DeStefano Architects and that allowed us to expand into the high-end homes up in the lakes and coastal communities.
Q: What percentage of your business involves adaptive reuse projects, and how is the push to reduce embedded carbon influencing that category?
A: These days, it’s probably about 25 percent. A few years ago before COVID, there were a fair number of projects that were complete repositioning of office buildings. Today, when I look at adaptive reuse, we’re doing a lot of these in old schools. The one we have right now is the Worcester Boys Club. That is a historic building that hasn’t been used for 10 to 15 years, and we’re renovating it into affordable senior housing. We’re building on top of one of the tunnels in downtown, so adding 64 units. Massachusetts just passed in 2021 the opt-in stretch energy code, which is forcing us into electrification of heating and cooling systems in buildings. The addition to the Worcester project is going to be a complete Passive House project. It is very efficient in terms of the building performance, and that’s what allowed us to go to electric infrastructure with heat pumps and reduce the heat load that’s needed in the building.
Q: Is there still a labor shortage in some portions of the local architecture industry?
A: We have 40 employees now: 32 in Harvard and eight in Portsmouth. In architecture, a designer that has five to 10 years of good experience is still a sought-after position. With more kids coming out of school, the lower-entry level positions have been a little easier for us to fill over the past year, especially with the ability to take on interns over the summer. It’s really that mid-level architect that everybody is fighting over. Every time there’s a downturn, those are the people that leave the industry to find other jobs, and it’s harder to get them back. With the ownership transition, some of the more experienced staff are starting to retire and there is definitely still a labor shortage in that middle market.
Q: What types of technology are changing architects’ daily routine in 2023?
A: For us, it’s all in Revit [software] these days and what that’s allowing us to do. When I first started drafting, it was AutoCAD. Now it’s gone to Revit, which is a 3D model of a building. Now staff are able to see it as they are modeling it. That also allows us to get into things like showing clients better 3D images of what their spaces are going to look like. To be able to express that to a layperson is a huge benefit to us these days.
Q: Has the uptick in Worcester development benefited your firm because of your headquarters’ location in central Massachusetts?
A: We moved here in 2003, and this is our 20th anniversary of being in Harvard. When I started in 2001, we were in West Concord. A lot of the work in Worcester these days is multifamily housing, which has been one of our big market pushes in the last five years. We’ve done three or four larger-scale multifamily projects and another three or four are planned over the next few years. That just speaks to the mix of economic development that Worceter is trying to attract.
Q: What do client inquiries tell you about future demand for the specific commercial real estate categories?
A: Office space is still non-existent for the most part. It’s been really, really light in that world. The office projects within the past year have been banks moving headquarters. In theory they are an industry that still has a lot of office space, but everybody else is in a hybrid environment. There is still a lot of medical office building work, and hospitals are always trying to stay on the cutting edge so that work has been fairly consistent. Life science was going gangbusters for many years, and it’s started to slow down. It’s more plateaued than a full pullback. In multifamily, I haven’t seen a slowdown at all, even with the interest rates. We do quite a bit of industrial and warehouse work, and that has slowed down, but it has not fallen off a cliff.
Q: Are clients asking you to value engineer projects to control costs?
A: The tricky part today is that there are definitely still rising costs. I wouldn’t say it’s as bad as it was during COVID. What I’m seeing more of on projects these days, with the new energy codes coming out, there are a lot of new restrictions on how we put buildings together. Worcester opted into the opt-in stretch code, which requires us to go Passive House on every multifamily housing project going forward. That’s a considerable change for the multifamily industry that they are not used to. It’s great for owners in terms of long-term operations, but it’s a bigger upfront hit that we have to educate them on.
Q: What’s Maugel DeStefano’s growth strategy?
A: Even though we’re hitting our 30th anniversary, we have a lot of young staff here, and I think we’re just hitting our stride in terms of retained knowledge. I see a lot of growth for us in the health care industry. Jeremy Baldwin is an outstanding young design talent and leader in the office that is making huge strides in our multifamily work. He’s looking to expand into the university dormitory work. There’s a lot of growth potential just with the staff we have, but there’s always an outward look to see if we should be going after a different market. Should we be acquiring a firm that helps us expand our design talent? We’re open to all avenues these days.
Cocker’s Five Favorite Hockey Players
- Gordie Howe
- Bobby Orr
- Mario Lemieux
- Wayne Gretzky
- Sidney Crosby
