A global architect with a hyper local focus on Water Street in Henderson, Windom Kimsey is our guest this week on Nevada Week In Person.

♪♪♪ Support for Nevada Week In Person is provided by Senator William H. Hernstadt.

Welcome to Nevada Week In Person.

I'm Amber Renee Dixon joining you from Azzurra Cucina Italiana on Water Street in Henderson.

Its owner, a key figure in the revitalization of Water Street in Henderson.

Windom Kimsey, thank you for joining Nevada Week In Person.

(Windom Kimsey) Well, thank you, Amber.

Glad to be here.

-So "Restaurant Owner," is that a title you ever imagined having when you moved here some 30 years ago?

-Not in a million years.

It's sort of happenstance how these things happen.

But nope, I never would have thought.

I was gonna be an architect till the day I died, and that was pretty much it.

-And being an architect is what brought you from Chicago to Southern Nevada?

-Correct.

-Okay.

So you have offices here, or had.

I want to say past tense because it was just five weeks ago, you were telling me, that what happened?

-Five weeks ago, I finally retired from the firm.

We had sold it a year and a half earlier and worked with the new owners for a while.

But I, you know, I had a trajectory to retire, not to stop being an architect, but rather than being an architect, you know, running a firm, doing individual buildings, but to have, at least in my estimation, a greater influence on a community by getting involved with development and some other things that could have a greater impact.

-So that is bringing us to Water Street.

-Correct.

-Those offices are here.

You also have a coffee shop here.

-Two.

-Two?

We have one in America First arena too.

So I'm a pretty caffeinated person.

-And then this restaurant.

At what point did you look at Water Street and say, Wow, this could really be something.

this is where I want to work, live, and play.

-There's a little backstory here.

-I forgot to say your home is here too.

-My home is here.

There's a little backstory.

We were selected as architects for the Henderson Space & Science Center, which was a really cool project.

I wish it had come to fruition, but it didn't.

But it was going to go over by the Henderson Hospital.

And I kept thinking, it just seems like a really odd place.

And so I organized with the City and folks in the firm at the time to do like kind of an ideas charrette with the city and Jacob Snow, who was city manager at the time, who I knew from working at McCarran at the time designing the D Gate Terminal.

-About how long ago was this?

-Well, it would have been right before I purchased land.

Probably 2013, 2014, something like that.

At least 10 years ago.

And so we looked at-- I said, Can we test out a test fit for the Space & Science Center here on Water Street?

And you know, the response was very positive.

So I was all excited.

But when the project died, I'm like thinking, you know, why don't we move the firm here.

I mean, we're talking all this like great stuff.

Let's take all the employees and build a building down her for it.

And that had some of its complications to get to that point, but we did it.

-What complications stand out to you that you learned from?

-We had to move from our existing building.

We didn't have a building to work in while we were building it.

So we rented space across the street while the project was under construction.

And mind you, this was after the recession, so I built a smaller building.

And I-- by the time we got done finishing it, we needed more space.

So, immediately, I did an addition to it.

So it was a lot of construction.

But now it's the right size space.

We also-- And you know, it has the coffee shop in it and a tenant, landscape architect as well.

-You bring up the recession.

Its impact on you and your profession, what learning lessons did you take from that?

-Don't quit, because there are days, I promise you, there were days.

And we would look at our staff in the building--and we had a building that at one point it had like, 60 people working in there--and there's 20 of us, and we're working reduced hours.

And there's some days you're like, How are we going to make payroll?

And you know, I'll be honest with you, I can share this.

I don't think I've shared this, but I called my mom.

I said, Can you loan me some money?

And she loaned me some money to get through a couple of the tight spots in the recession.

And that's how-- I even asked her if I could move back home.

I mean, it was really hard on architecture.

I think Nevada, maybe Phoenix, were probably the two hardest hit communities in the United States.

-Very much so.

-And it happened just everywhere.

Everybody's like, What do we do?

But it gave you the resolve to stick with it.

And I think every architect that did really benefited coming out.

Because once it dissipated, there was a ton of work and everybody prospered.

-Did it help you in your reaction to COVID?

-A little bit.

COVID was a whole different set of problems.

And it still has a long-term effect on work anyway, because I-- and maybe that's part of played into the idea to retire.

Because during COVID, there were like-- we were doing the UNLV, the Kirk Kerkorian medical school, and there was three people in office, actually four.

I mean, it was just me for a little bit and then a few more, and we were there for a long time working on stuff without all the other architects.

And I think design is very collaborative, and you miss that.

And now that everybody's gone to remote meetings and things, I knew it wasn't for me.

I mean, and you know, the firm that bought TSK, they're headquartered out of Texas, so we had loads and loads of like Zoom meetings and that sort of stuff.

I'm like, I don't want to do this for the rest of my life.

I'm like, I've lived a good time, because we were very collaborative in the office, and people, they loved that about us.

And, you know, the world is changing, and that's architecture.

And I don't want to be part of the AI wave either.

-Does that scare you?

-It doesn't scare me, because I'm not part of it.

-For future architects?

-It's going to change the profession 100%.

It's already happening, and we'll see where it takes it.

I had a long discussion at dinner about that with some folks on Saturday night.

Yeah, and it's not necessarily a bad thing.

It, I think it has an opportunity to let the creative people be creative.

But some of the mundane stuff that architects do, I can-- when you're out of college, they say, You're gonna do stair details or bathroom detail.

They give you easy stuff to do, and it all has to be drawn.

But say, AI, they know the code, you know, and they can do it.

But I don't know what it does for the young people learning things, but we'll have to see.

But I think it's gonna really change how things are done.

And who knows?

Hopefully, it's better.

-Yeah.

Where did you earn your stripes doing bathrooms and stairs?

-In Chicago.

I went to University of Michigan, and Chicago was a five-hour drive.

And it was just a great place to go work.

And if you're a young architect, being in Chicago is amazing.

You know, Mies van der Rohe, there's Frank Lloyd Wright, there are all these-- it's such a beautiful city, but it has a passion for architecture.

Stop and talk to somebody on the street, and they'll tell you who the architects are for that high rise or this high rise.

Try that in LA or some other places.

It doesn't happen.

Chicago people are very passionate about their buildings.

And it was like a just a wonderful place to be to sort of learn the ropes.

-And you believe that Water Street had some of that same energy?

-I think it has the same energy because the neighborhood was developed in World War II.

You know, this was a basic, wasn't even a city, it was basic management.

And its housing was built for people to work in building, you know, doing stuff with magnesium for World War II.

But the way the streets are laid out, I mean, I don't know if you've heard the term "New Urbanism."

It's like Celebration, Florida, has a big New Urbanist community.

And what it is, is it creates walkability, driveways aren't on the front, you know, everything's alley-loaded.

And so it makes neighborhoods more walkable, and it's not all about the car.

So downtown Henderson has that.

You drive around these neighborhoods, I mean, there's a lot of, like where I live here, you get to your house through the alley.

I lived that way in Chicago too.

-Very cool.

You talked about, off camera, having sold your firm, it allows you to invest more in what you want to do on Water Street.

But let's talk a little bit more about your life as an architect.

A lot of public works.

So a lot of schools, Las Vegas Academy, the Regional Justice Center.

I mean, how do you approach something like the Regional Justice Center, which we both talked about most people going there don't really want to be there.

-You're right.

Courthouses are a lot like that, right?

So what you want to do is try to give them the most uplifting experience you can.

And architecture can affect mood-- a lot of natural light, some sort of soaring space, some connection to the community with the sandstone which was quarried out locally, but you want to, you want to lower people's anxiety.

And architecture can do things like that.

And I think we did a pretty good job on that Regional Justice.

Once you're in the courtroom, anything can happen.

But you know, try to make spaces that lower anxiety.

And it's the same with other public buildings.

Like an airport terminal, you want them to feel the exuberance of, you know-- it used to be train stations in Chicago and New York and these big soaring spaces and celebrated travel.

And when we did the D Gates at McCarran, it was the same thing.

Bob Broadbent was the director, and he wanted something like that.

So that was amazing to be able to work on because you have a client that kind of gets it.

And so you can do these public spaces.

I love going back in them and seeing how they held up, seeing how people are, you know, and just sort of being the silent observer.

-How did you handle the criticism of public dollars?

-Well, let's just say the Regional Justice Center was a very trying project.

It was like three years overdue.

It was-- there were a multitude of issues, and it took years to resolve.

And I still remember.

There was a lot of talk about spending too much, and there was one cartoon in the Review-Journal that made it look like an old jalopy building.

I saved that cartoon.

It's like, Well, it's kind of funny, because there were issues with construction.

But the thing is with public dollars, you know, and I think I can say this now that I've retired, but there's a lot of budgets that are set up that aren't realistic.

People are aspirational clients, and that's a good thing.

But you also have to be realistic about budgets.

And construction costs in my entire career seem to have just always been on a-- it's like it never goes down; it seems to always go up.

And so some of it is like-- we worked for a school district, as an example.

Right now they know what a budget is to build a school, so you're not dealing with someone that's building the building for the first time.

The RJC was a lot of aspirational work with some really good people, judges and with the county, but the reality of construction costs, they didn't quite jive.

And so you create all these pressures building a building, and that one ended up poorly.

It's good now, but it was, you know, it was hard for people.

And so I'm a firm believer in being realistic about the budget.

And that's my-- for public clients, some are better than others at it.

And it's not like we can do miracles with design and make it, you know, the cost of steel is the cost of steel.

The cost of labor is the cost of labor.

-So realistic with budgets you'd like to be; however, when you started on Water Street, there were people questioning your sanity according to that article with Desert Companion.

-All my friends.

I mean, a lot of them.

No, there were some really good friends.

Tim Brooks owned the Emerald Island and the Rainbow casino.

He was a Water Street guy, and he's been successful.

They just sold both of those casinos, him and his brother.

But he was an inspiration to me.

And he kept encouraging me, but, boy, let me tell you, everyone else, they're like, Oh, you shouldn't do that.

-Have you ever faced that before in your career?

-No.

But I'm stubborn.

And if I-- you could probably talk to my wife about this.

When I want to do something, I get kind of caught up in the whole moment.

And so I did it, and I could have failed.

It could have been a disaster, but it wasn't.

And everybody's like, Oh, you're a visionary.

It wasn't a visionary.

It's having a good idea, having some faith in what good architecture and sort of what you can do with it.

And, you know, it's come to fruition that being a good idea.

Do you know how many people told me, Why would you do a restaurant?

Most everybody.

But I just, I don't know, you sometimes get a gut feeling.

There's no science.

They're like, Did you do proformas?

I did none of that.

I don't know if that's good advice for everybody doing development.

But if you kind of know you have something people want or something's gonna work, you know, take your experience and do it.

If you have the money and willing to risk it, right, that is a problem.

-Don't listen to the naysayers.

-I don't.

I don't.

-Windom Kimsey, thank you so much for joining Nevada Week In Person.

-Well, thank you.

I appreciate it.