Building Community: On the Retirement of Steve Rice
Steve Rice can be a bit of an enigma. He harbors a certain intensity, suspended in emotional distance. But, get him talking—about those he’s worked with over the years—and that distance quickly dissipates.
As he looks toward his retirement at the end of December, Steve shared how his mentors, clients, peers, and partners shaped him over the course of four decades. They include the new leaders of RFM who have practiced with Steve for years and now take the firm’s mantle of service and sustainability through design as their own.
Namely, Jennifer Fleming and Greg Belding, both Principals and owners, today co-lead the firm’s operations. A firm employee since 2006, Fleming began her career at RFM and served as the lead interior designer of the LEED Platinum, award-winning Rice Fergus Miller Office & Studio. Belding was the firm’s first employee and is recognized nationally and regionally as a leader in sustainable design. He specializes in special needs housing and tribal community projects. Fleming leads RFM’s hospitality and senior housing markets.
Fleming and Belding have helped develop other members of the firm’s current generation of leadership. Gunnar Gladics, Principal, now leads the firm’s robust Fire & Emergency Services studio, with projects in three states. Dean Kelly, Principal, co-leads Senior Housing efforts and joins Associate Principal Angie Tomisser to lead the firm’s Community Impact Studio, which Steve started. Blake Webber and Gena Lee, both Associate Principals, lead RFM’s Healthcare Design Studio, and Travis Hauan, Associate, and Becky Wall co-lead the firm’s educational projects.
Here are a few questions posed to Steve:
WHAT VALUES HAVE YOU AND THE FIRM IMPARTED TO RFM’S NEXT GENERATION OF LEADERSHIP, CURRENTLY AT ITS HELM?
“I’ve always reminded everyone that we are a service organization. We can ask ourselves what we want out of projects, but, at the end of the day, if we aren’t first delivering what users need, then it’s easy for clients to go someplace else. We have a phrase ‘we hold hands very tightly with our clients’ because many of our projects are for groups who might only do a project once, so they need guidance to navigate the architectural project world, too. We’re proud of that, and we preach it. We are a service organization above everything else.”
“In terms of values, two things stand out: I am proud of my relationship with our staff and my partners. Everyone knows that can be a challenge in business, but not in ours. Our trust level is off the charts because we’ve cultivated it. Mike, Dave, and I model trust, same with Greg and Jennifer. As their leadership evolved, it’s influenced the whole firm.”
“I’m also really proud of this building that we renovated. (The firm in 2010 renovated the building that formerly held Bremerton’s Sears Tire Center as its new, LEED Platinum office.) We made a commitment to ourselves and to downtown Bremerton, to reinvest where we’ve always been located. This is where we’ve found ourselves, and we’ve stuck with it. We designed a spectacular sustainable building that’s not only our office, but a hub for community activities. I’m proud of that. It demonstrates our values as a B-Corp., and injected new life into a town that really needed it. Our project would be a drop in the bucket in Seattle; it’s really been felt here.”
WHAT WOULD YOU SAY TO RFM’S CLIENTS AS YOU APPROACH RETIREMENT?
“Thank you. And, I hope you got as much from working with me as I got from working with you. Designing buildings always excited me, but the relationships motivated me the most. Our next generation of leaders is phenomenal, and they are already taking the firm places I never could imagine us going.”
FAVORITE PROJECT?
“It’s hard to choose just one, but my favorite project was a new shelter for homeless women that we designed just before the 2008 recession for St. Vincent de Paul.”
“We got a call from Susie Hamlin at St. Vincent. She invited us to tour the old shelter, a tiny, one-bedroom house with bunk beds and cots tucked into corners in the half basement, under the furnace ducts. They housed eleven women in this little place. It was really cramped. We were shocked.”
“After the tour, she looked at me and asked, ‘Can you help us?’ I said, ‘I think you need a new shelter and, yes, we can help.’ They had no idea where to start. They’d been housing women for more than 60 years on nickels and dimes and had never asked anyone for money. We introduced them to a fundraiser, crafted the story, and went on from there. The money was raised, the shelter was built, and enough money was left over to hold an endowment for maintenance and improvements.”
“Today, the Birkenfeld Stella Maris House shelters 18 women. Some are grandmothers and there are usually kids staying at the shelter, too. I was invited to become a trustee for the endowment fund, and my wife and I have cooked dinner there quarterly since the shelter opened in 2009. To me, this is what a community project is all about.”
WHAT’S A FAVORITE PHRASE?
“Model the behavior you want to see in other people.”
AND WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE TO BE KNOWN FOR?
“That I’ve been super involved. I just got involved with people, and I joined groups. It’s in my nature.”
Pioneering. “I like starting things. I started a firm here. I started a mentoring program between Rotary and the AVID Program at Bremerton High School, and started what will become Quincy Square in downtown Bremerton. Where I saw a need and an opportunity, I tried to do something. I’m proud of those things, but they are all the product of rallying people and then sharing the load. Call it pioneering, I guess.”
Dedicated to community. “My work at the firm has been completely focused here, locally. It fit with my background, and how I grew up. My folks were from Bremerton working class families, but my childhood was split between Parkland, in south Tacoma, and way down on the Key Peninsula. We didn’t have much, and I learned not to prioritize material things. So, I felt comfortable just digging in here. I have always been motivated to improve our community through the work. It’s fun to joke that I’m famous—in a half-mile radius. It fits me.”
Openness. “I wanted a practice that is non-judgmental. I never wanted to be above the work. If you can help somebody, then help them. Most architects have egos, and I do, too, but I channel that as much to helping as to designing.”
Rice Fergus Miller congratulates you, Steve!