Graduate Architect, Weyland Ventures

My name is Ashlyn Ackerman. I'm a graduate architect working in real estate development in Louisville, Kentucky. We tend to specialize in historic redevelopment. We usually get buildings for a dollar or not much money at all, and we put together kind of a diverse use structure to it, so sometimes it's retail, residential, restaurants, all kinds of different stuff that might go into this historic property, and once that project is done, it tends to spur additional development in the area, so we tend to lead with some historic projects but some new construction and additional hotels or office buildings, things like that have come from there. I tend to work more in the front end of projects. I get to do a lot of schematic design and sketching and quick models, whether it's digital models or physical models, things like that. So I get to kind of be the big idea person, which is really fun, and then I kind of from there will manage teams. If a project moves forward, we hire another architecture firm to help us out with the drawings. We hire a general contractor to do the construction. Sometimes I work with interior designers, civil engineers, mechanical, electrical, all those kind of people. So there's a huge creative portion all throughout, but especially at the beginning and then in the later stages of a project, I'm really kind of managing the team and making sure things get done. One of my favorites that I've taken from start to finish is a building that used to be the headquarters for LG&E, which is the Louisville Gas & Electric Company. It was their main office. It was where all of their electrical linemen would go out, and that was kind of their home base. They had trucks and things there. This was a building that was built in the early 1920s. It had been vacant since 1980. It was full of lead paint and asbestos, and they actually did coal gasification on site, so the entire site was contaminated. Another one of those situations, we got the building for a dollar because no one else could figure out what to do with it with all these environmental problems. So we were able to take it and remediate all of the environmental issues, and then we actually did a complete redevelopment of the inside, and it is now offices for the Louisville Metro Government. Cities aren't just a place to work and then drive home to your house in the suburbs. Cities really are a diverse place to live, work, play, all those things, so we're really trying to create those opportunities to bring people back.