Shareholders Approve Making HOK Sport Venue Event Independent
HOK Group shareholders have approved a move by the HOK Group BOD and HOK Sport Facilities managers to make the HOK Sport Venue Event (SVE) subsidiary an independent company. The buyout by leaders of SVE is expected to be completed by the end of '08 and will have no impact on clients or projects of HOK or SVE. The new company will eventually launch a new corporate name and brand (HOK). HOK Vice Chair Clark Davis said that SVE principals, who were HOK shareholders, "exchanged their stock for ownership of the firm." In St. Louis, Riddhi Trivedi-St. Clair notes SVE has 500 employees and "likely will transition to being employee-owned -- like HOK" (ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH, 8/29). In K.C., Kevin Collison reports SVE "will operate as a partnership guided by an executive group of 13 partners." SVE Senior Principal Joe Spear said that the deal "requires HOK Sport to continue its current market focus for about 2 1/2 years, after which it can branch out into other types of architecture." Spear added that a consultant "already has been hired to come up with a new corporate name and brand." Spear said of the deal, "We saw it as a way to plan for our future leadership" (K.C. STAR, 8/29).
NOT SURPRISING: Stuart Smith, a spokesperson for Minneapolis-based Ellerbe Becket's K.C. office, said that he "wasn't surprised that [SVE] was planning a spinoff because 'they've pretty much called their own shots and run the [K.C.] office how they've seen fit for a good 10 years.'" The K.C. BUSINESS JOURNAL's Rob Roberts reported HOK Sport "appears to be heading for a cooling-off period in two of its bread-and-butter markets," MLB and the NFL. The firm "has designed stadiums for 30 NFL franchises and 24 MLB franchises," but after "two Minnesota projects -- the HOK-designed Twins stadium in 2010 and the new Vikings stadium that HOK and Ellerbe Becket are competing for -- no more [MLB] or [NFL] projects are on the horizon" (BIZJOURNALS.com, 8/28).
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