Choosing exactly where to open a second office isn’t easy, affinity for California or no. It’s a big investment, and not without risk. But actually opening that office is harder still! Let me tell you this: self-isolation and borders being closed isn't helping at all right now!

Since so many have asked how I came to have an office in San Francisco, I thought I’d tell you a little about it. Though Part 2 of this post should probably have another “don’t try this” disclaimer! It took well over a year before I got my first project, which is in Hillsborough, California, a town I’ve come to absolutely love. But I’m getting ahead of myself…

For six months one of my staff was dedicated solely to research. He found census and building reports, and any other remotely relevant information to be found online, and compiled data for city after city, noting socio-economic conditions, average ages, number and value of building permits in each, and so on. I’ve been lucky to have done home designs across Canada and in the US, so at first I thought that perhaps a city I’d already worked in might be the best place to start; after all, I already had some presence there, even if limited. To help refine the early research, I used Google Analytics to see what parts of the country gained the most traffic on my firm’s website. I also got some great insight from someone at Houzz.com helped identify where people were from who had been saving my photos to their “Ideabooks.” Slowly we narrowed the search until after so many months it came down to three potential cities: New York, Austin, or San Francisco.

Even if I didn’t have California in mind from the onset, which admittedly I did, San Francisco would have been my first choice of the three anyway, if only because it’s a quick direct flight from Calgary. I absolutely love New York--I spent a wonderful week in Manhatten and Brooklyn researching brownstones--but the travel is more than twice as long. I’d never really been to San Francisco before, nor had I had a project there yet, so, before making the final decision, internet research alone wasn’t going to be enough. I needed boots on the ground.

Because of the preliminary analysis done, I had pre-selected a number of cities in the Bay Area, mostly on the Peninsula, that seemed to have a lot of new construction. I think my colleague and I probably drove up and down every single street! I hope this doesn’t get me into trouble, but we may have stopped the car at nearly every home under construction where we could find an open gate. We did get some odd looks, but it’s amazing how infrequently we were questioned when we’d walk onto an active job site pretending we were supposed to be there.

One general contractor in Atherton, CA, though, wasn’t going to have it. He was ready to kick us off his jobsite at first sight of us walking up the driveway. Before I complied, I noticed there was an unusual detail in the framing, a construction method I would never have done. So, I asked him if he’d at least explain why they’d built the detail the way they had. Then I would go. It was perhaps inspired, as it turned out the builder thought that little detail was particularly odd as well, and he seemed quite pleased that I’d pointed it out specifically. It led to a nearly two-hour conversation that day, and has turned into one of my favorite friendships I've made down there. Even if with him I've had some of the worst golf rounds of my life, and I'm pretty sure he's embarrassed to golf with me now!

As much as I loved Los Angeles, I fell in love with San Francisco every bit as quickly, and made up my mind about opening an office there before the end of the first trip. Maybe before the end of the first day. For the six months that followed, I flew back and forth regularly. I might dream big, but I also strongly believe in due-diligence. I really like actually knowing what I’m talking about before I open my mouth to speak! So each month I would visit job sites to study what (if anything) was built differently than at home. I studied local codes, development procedures, and met with many general contractors, realtors, city planners, engineers, and even other architecture firms gracious enough to spend time with me. I gained such valuable insight from each meeting for best practices in the Bay Area.

After about a year into this investigation, I think my good wife, who’s normally quite patient with my propensity to dream, started to question the cost vs. benefit of all this. Regardless if I felt strongly about being there, proof would be in actually finding a first client. After three months of advertising online, and reaching out to every contact I’d ever made the previous year, I still had no success. I started to feel like I was on the little train platform again, and it was time to jump off. So much time and effort; I wanted so badly for it to bear fruit.

Yet by Christmas that year, I’d all but told myself that I was done with it. Well, I definitely told myself that... but I didn’t listen. Instead, I reached out to each Bay Area builder one last time. If only to wish them a Merry Christmas...

It's been a few years now, but I will never forget the look on my wife’s face when I took her out for dinner, waiting until then to tell her that the same builder who’d nearly kicked me off his jobsite was the very one who would introduce me to my first client in the Bay Area. She tried her best, and failed, to hold back a tear after being understandably stressed for over a year with my relentless investment. She was supportive and kind to me, but to her, I think pursuing an office in California was every bit as reckless as running away on a train had been!

The first project was a somewhat modern take on a French Provincial home, a style so admired when I lived in France years before. I know that I've said previously that every time I design a new home, it becomes my favorite at the time, and that’s true. But still, this Hillsborough home truly was special to me. I put so much of myself into my designs… and so now there’s a little part of me that will be in California forever, built with full bed limestone and mullioned glass.