Founded in 1853, architecture/engineering firm SmithGroup is continuing to flourish with 20 offices across the U.S., 1,500 employees and a presence in the Midwest that goes back to the firm’s earliest days.

The longest continually operating architecture/engineering firm in the country that is not a wholly owned subsidiary, it was founded as an architectural practice in 1853 in Ohio by Sheldon Smith, who moved the firm to Detroit in 1855. Engineering was added to its services in the early 1900s by Smith’s grandson, Fred Smith. Fast forward to the 2000s and the firm, after going through a couple of mergers that extended its reach to the East and West coasts and a couple of name changes, reverted to its SmithGroup moniker in 2018.

Answering Changing Needs

By expanding its services to meet the ever-evolving needs of its clients, the Detroit-headquartered firm has seen its revenue grow in the Midwest and nationally. Its Midwest revenue increased to nearly $104 million in 2024 from $90.7 million in 2023. Its national revenue soared to $440 million last year from $362 million in the prior year.

Roxanne Malik, managing partner, says the firm’s national revenue has tripled over the last 10 years, which she attributes to its emphasis on understanding and meeting their clients’ objectives.

“The driver of how we’ve gotten to where we are is by being really focused on solving our client’s biggest challenges, whether that’s energy consumption or space utilization [or other challenges],” Malik says.

While it has welcomed growth, Malik says SmithGroup’s success is not all about driving revenue, but about extending engagement with clients and solving their needs, which may go beyond traditional architecture.

“It’s been really about solving those greater challenges [of clients] and making ourselves more capable by providing the additional services that our clients are looking for,” she says.

The services the firm currently offers include campus planning, civil engineering, energy and environmental planning, health strategy, historic preservation, information and communications technology, lab planning, mobility, programming, structural engineering, innovation and technology, research and sustainability.

Its core markets are health care, education, science, technology and workplace. Smaller markets include urban design and cultural or museum work.

“What’s kept us really vital is that we have a nice blend across these different markets,” Malik says. “So as one ebbs and flows, we are able to really balance our workload.”

“SmithGroup is an expert at blending high design with practical and pragmatic  execution.”

—Jason Harris, Senior Design Manager for Infrastructure and Corporate Citizenship, General Motors 

Energy consumption is a hot area, according to Malik, who says clients are asking SmithGroup for help to reduce their energy footprint, which prompted the firm to add services targeted to that need.

“We’ve formed a group called Impact that is our integrated multidisciplinary performance analytics team,” Malik says. “They help clients ask the right questions and then create a master plan for them to solve their energy challenges.”

The firm also has created a Better Building Challenges group that works with developers and educational institutions to understand their assets and propose solutions to minimize their energy consumption.

Tim Tracey, Midwest region director, says having expertise in a range of services has fueled its regional growth. Another pillar of the firm’s success is its emphasis on building long-term relationships with clients.

“Because we’ve been here such a long time, we’ve worked with clients over a long period, and we’re able to do a variety of different projects for the same client,” he says.

SmithGroup tapped into its multiple disciplines to design amenities at Toldeo Class City Metropark, including an outdoor concert space. The park was built on 300 acres of underutilized land along the Maumee River in Toledo.
Image courtesy of Toledo Metroparks

Historic Partnership

One of those long-time relationships is with General Motors—a partnership that is over a century old.

The firm’s recent work with GM focused on a range of projects across their Technical Center Campus in Warren, Mich., including Design West, a 360,000-sq-ft automotive design center that opened in 2024 and houses design studios for Chevrolet, GMC, Buick and Cadillac.

Jason Harris, senior design manager for infrastructure and corporate citizenship for GM, says SmithGroup’s varied areas of expertise are a plus.

“SmithGroup demonstrated an outstanding blend of technical expertise, professionalism and collaborative spirt throughout the multiyear Campus Transformation Program at the GM Global Technical Center Campus,” Harris says. “Their ability to manage complex project requirements and coordinate effectively across diverse stakeholder groups was instrumental in driving the program forward.”

He says that SmithGroup worked alongside GM’s program leadership and senior leadership “to create the vision of the new spaces being constructed or transformed, including creation of new office Workplace Guidelines and a new Global Design Studio.”

Harris adds that “SmithGroup is an expert at blending high design with practical and pragmatic execution.”

SmithGroup’s designs helped earn community support for the Toldeo Glass City Metropark, which now attracts thousands of visitors.
Image courtesy of Toledo Metroparks

Toledo Metropark

Another project that tapped into SmithGroup’s various areas of expertise is the $38-million Glass City Metropark, a 70-acre urban greenspace in Toledo that also features a 9,500-sq-ft restaurant and support building, a 5,000-sq-ft event facility, nature-themed play areas and a 1,000-ft-long trail for ice skating or roller skating called the Ribbon.

Tracey says the project, which is on the site of a former coal-fired power plant on the Maumee River, was an “opportunity for us to bring our integrated design team [and not only do] the sitework, but the landscape architecture and designing the buildings down to the lighting and the interiors.”

The project showed that “our teams are capable of challenging each other across disciplines,” he says. “The spirit of the project was really exciting to me.”

“To fully appreciate where we started on this project, you have to know that there were many other proposals that came and went over the last 30 years,” says Dave Zenk, executive director of MetroParks Toledo. “None of them materialized. When the park system had the opportunity to transform the riverfront, we knew we had to think big. That’s when we reached out to SmithGroup.”

Zenk says no small plans would do. “It could not just be any park,” he says. “To engage the community and collaborators, we had to first inspire them. SmithGroup’s designs brought the wow factor we needed to distinguish this project from anything our region had ever experienced.”

The park opened in 2023 and had a million visitors in the first 18 months.

“The domino effect of public and private investment adjacent to the park and improvements in the surrounding areas have exceeded what most people expected,” Zenk says.

In addition to these projects, SmithGroup’s Midwest regional offices—in Detroit, Ann Arbor, Chicago, Madison, Wis., and Milwaukee—work in partnership on hundreds of projects.

Another example of the firm’s recent work is Michigan State University’s Multicultural Center, which completed in January 2025. Another is the $68-million Martin Luther King Community Center, an 85,000-sq-ft recreation and health clinic in Racine, Wis. A previous project renovated the Edsel and Eleanor Ford House Visitor Center and Administration Building in Grosse Pointe, Mich., which earned a dozen national, regional and local awards.

Looking Forward

Tracey says even as SmithGroup has grown, “it has tried to stay very nimble so that we can be responsive.”

“We’re not trying to build different types of projects,” Malik says. “We’re trying to build relationships with different clients that lead us to different types of projects and where we can help them.”