Boulder architect taps biotech niche.

• Author: Taylor, Mike
• Position: Owner of LS Planning Group Debora Hankinson

DEBORA HANKINSON SET OUT TO BECOME AN architect, not a business owner, but since 2001 she's been both. She is the president and owner of LS Planning Group, a specialty architectural firm in Boulder that targets the scientific and biotech industry.

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Don't look for renderings of housing complexes or scale models of office buildings with miniature shrubs and walkways at LS Planning Group. The task for Hankinson's five-person team typically involves assessing a client's business plan, then coming up with manufacturing areas, offices, labs and warehouse space to meet those business goals. Hence, clients like Amgen, Genentech and Canadian biotech giant QLT usually get charts and graphs from LS Planning Group, not renderings of buildings.

Hankinson, 40, has been developing this niche since she and her husband, software engineer Scott Gosling, moved to Boulder in 1998 after five years in Anchorage, Alaska. Hankinson had been an associate with the Anchorage-based architecture firm Livingston Slone where her work included planning health-care centers in remote Alaska villages. Her biggest assignment was leading the design work for the $35 million Alaska SeaLife Center, a 96,000-square-foot marine research facility built in response to the Exxon Valdez oil spill.

With her move to Boulder, Hankinson's Anchorage employers made her a partner and asked her to create a new branch of the company. She landed some clients, but the company's Alaska roots didn't exactly captivate biotech prospects. That's when the notion of business ownership started germinating.

"When I set up an office here and started doing marketing, the Alaska factor was actually hurting me more than helping me," Hankinson says. "Here I was trying to do battle and compete with a plethora of good Colorado firms. I'd tell people about the Alaska projects, and they'd kind of just look at me like, 'What? Alaska?'"

So in 2001, Hankinson bought out her two partners and became the sole owner and president of her own firm, which she renamed LS Planning Group. She had some anxiety about striking out on her own, but she was comforted with having already secured steady work from one big client, Amgen.

"They're a great client, I do a good job for them, and they always come back for more. I thought, if nothing else, I can keep Amgen as a good return-repeat client. I can make this work," Hankinson says of her decision to buy out her partners...