Berardi Partners

Berardi Partners is a multi-disciplinary architecture firm with offices in Columbus, Cleveland and Detroit. The practice describes more than 40 years of work and concentrates on historic rehabilitation, affordable and market-rate housing, senior living and mixed-use commercial projects. It uses 3D point-cloud scanning and drone survey to document existing buildings, which is the part of the service that matters most on adaptive reuse, where as-built conditions rarely match the record drawings. Berardi Partners is co-architect, with Vocon, on Project Scarlet, the roughly $120 million conversion of Cleveland’s 1902 Rose Building into 156 Marriott-branded apartments and a 121-room hotel. The firm does not publish a founding year.

The firm does publish its founding date, on its About page: it was established in 1979 as Berardi/Plaisted Architects in German Village, a historic district of Columbus. George Berardi founded it. Chris Bruzzese was hired as the first associate in 1981 and became a partner in 1992. The two grew the practice to more than fifty associates and over 900 completed projects.

Six services sit under the architecture work, and several of them explain why the firm keeps turning up on adaptive reuse jobs. Engineering is in-house: the Building Systems Engineering Group has handled mechanical, electrical and plumbing design since 1994, which removes a coordination seam on projects where existing conditions force late changes. Historic consultation is a distinct offering, aimed at owners pursuing Historic Tax Credits, with Joe Berardi acting as the firm’s liaison to the State Historic Preservation Office. Evaluation assistance covers the front-end assessment of commercial structures, churches and schools being considered for a new use. Construction administration is run by an internal group that monitors construction activity, and is engaged often enough by outside parties that the firm takes third-party contracts to observe projects it did not design. Interior design rounds out the list.

The office footprint is three cities. Columbus is on Goodale Boulevard, Cleveland is at 668 Euclid Avenue, and Detroit is on Shelby Street. Project work extends beyond those markets, with current historic rehabilitation jobs in Asheville, North Carolina including Battery Park and the Vanderbilt Apartments.

The portfolio is grouped as mixed use and market rate, historic rehabilitation, affordable housing, senior living environments and commercial. Senior living is the deepest of those by count, with more than 100 projects completed nationally. Named work includes 223 E Town Street, the Jerome, the Columbus YWCA, the Leader Building, Residences at 668, Brookwood Point and Walnut Trace.