Foundations + Futures: 1990s with Kevin Shelley & Steve Schaecher

In this third chapter of Foundations + Futures: By the Decade, we step into the 1990s, a decade of dial-up connections, AutoCAD debuts, and a firm that was growing up fast. For Schmidt Associates, it was the era of intention.

Kevin Shelley, chief operations officer and principal, and Steve Schaecher, design architect and firm principal, join host Sarah Hempstead to bring the decade to life.  Both joined the firm at the start of the decade and have been part of its story ever since. Together, they share the stories behind the firm's expanding ambitions and the culture that made it worth staying for. 

Listeners will hear about:

• Just get over the wall: the retreat story that captures Wayne Schmidt's leadership in one unforgettable moment
• The NCAA announcement: a foam basketball, a surprise, a private plane to Princeton, and the firm's first brush with a star architect
• Perry Clark Aquatic Center: the project that quietly launched an entirely new market segment
• Adding disciplines: how landscape architecture, interior design, and MEP engineering transformed the firm in a single decade
• The throughline: servant leadership, owner focus, and the people who made it all possible

This decade was about structure, layering intention onto entrepreneurial energy and trusting that a firm built on the right values could grow without losing itself. The 1990s gave Schmidt Associates its staying power, and you can still feel it in every studio today.

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Transcript

Sarah Hempstead: [00:00:00] The '90s were a decade of big cultural and technological shifts. They changed how we worked at Schmidt Associates. Welcome back to Foundations and Futures by the Decade. I'm Sarah Hempstead, CEO and principal in charge at Schmidt Associates. And in this series, we're exploring the story of Schmidt Associates one decade at a time through the people, projects, and values that shape the firm as we celebrate 50 years of Schmidt Associates and honor 100 years of Aerosmith's history.

Today, we are stepping into the 1990s, a decade where technology was advancing fast, the internet was just arriving in people's living rooms, and collaboration was becoming the currency of the future. For Schmidt Associates, the '90s took the firm's entrepreneurial spirit and gave it structure, intention, and staying power.

Here to help tell that story are Kevin Shelley, chief operations officer and principal, who started here as an intern, and Steve Schecher, design architect and firm principal. Both have been with Schmidt Associates [00:01:00] for 35 years. Welcome, guys. 

Steve Schaecher: Thanks. Thank you. 

Sarah Hempstead: All right. So before we get into the decade itself, let's start with what brought you both to Schmidt Associates in the first place. You both joined about 1990, more or less. And Kevin, let's start with you. 

Kevin Shelley: Sure. We had a competition with our studio for Habitat for Humanity, where we designed a street and had to build several houses for this development. And Wayne was a guest juror, um, for the competition. And met him as part of that.

Just kind of heard what he was about, what he was doing downtown Indianapolis, and just got really connected to him at that point. And at that point, you're just trying to find a job for internship, and that was a great guy to connect with. So yeah, that's exactly how I got here. 

Sarah Hempstead: How about you, Steve? 

Steve Schaecher: Well, my story's a little different. I grew up in Michigan, and I did my internship in Kalamazoo for a firm similar to Schmidt in a lot of ways. But when I graduated, I took the summer off. My mom was moving from Nashville, Tennessee back up to Michigan after my father [00:02:00] died. So I spent the summer helping her move and then decided to look for a job.

So it was more about what city I really wanted to go look for. You know, I was looking at potentially Chicago, and I knew some people in Indianapolis, including Kevin. And, uh, the job market was not real great at the time when we graduated. So as luck had it, I didn't get offered anything in Chicago, and I, I talked to Kevin down here and interviewed here, and it worked out. I ended up down here, and I've been here ever since. 

Sarah Hempstead: So chat a little bit about the transition from being at Ball State, we're all proud Cardinals, to your first job at Schmidt. What was the culture like? 

Kevin Shelley: When I started here at Schmidt, it was like we were 20-ish people, probably 23 by the time you got here. So it was a, just a really family-oriented group because it was just so small. Everybody saw everybody every day. It was just great to be, uh, in a, in a cohort of people, 'cause there was a, the group of us that was two or three years out of school. From starting all the way to two or three years of the, there were several of us in that kind of group.[00:03:00] 

Uh, so we really got a connection with people, good connection to downtown. We were able to, so every day we would go to lunch, take a walk down to the monument, have lunch on the monument steps. It just got really connected to each other and to the city. 

Steve Schaecher: Yeah, it was, there was a good young core of people. It felt like an extension of school in a lot of ways. I made quick friends with a lot of them. I'm still good friends with a lot of people over here when I started, and it was good. It was a fun atmosphere to, to work in. We were doing a lot of things manually. We did have two or three people that were starting to get into AutoCAD that, that were focused on working on floor plans, but like wall sections and stuff like that, we were still doing everything by hand using mylar, and ink, and lead, and pink bars.

Steve Schaecher: Students. So they have no idea what we're talking about. 

Kevin Shelley: But we'd have those deadlines, and as a group we'd be in the office working late nights for a deadline, and after the deadline we would go out on a franny or whatever and have a good time [00:04:00] downtown. It was, it was a good crew. 

Sarah Hempstead: So who was mentoring you both at this time? 

Kevin Shelley: Probably I would say, when you think about as just technically trying to learn what it was to be an architect. I think we'd both say Mark Pering. He was probably the most technically into the weeds drawing guy, so he really taught us how the things should be drawn.

But there was others. Mike Egan at the time. That was probably the next generation above us. Uh, Mike Egan, Steve Alspaugh, were really on that how to put documents together. That, those were the group of people that did that. But then you had obviously Dean Illingworth and the partners, Rick Roberts at the time, and Wayne, that were always just part of every day, right? There wasn't a separation at all. They were pretty involved in everything. 

Steve Schaecher: And Ron. Ron was a great role model. I mean, he was very methodical and logical with his approach, and it was good to work for him. You had different people that you worked with, kinda like we do now. You had different teams, so you kinda learned from the people you were working with directly. Lee Constantine was, was in there as well. 

Sarah Hempstead: So the firm was becoming a grown-up architecture [00:05:00] firm in the '90s, I would say, and you guys were growing up with it. Is that part of why you stayed? Do you feel like part of building the, building it, or was there something else? 

Kevin Shelley: I think that's a real good point, 'cause with any business there are cycles, right? And I do remember a time after one of those little rougher years where you're just working or working a little hard to get the work and do the work. I remember sitting in this room, actually, where we were in a meeting and Wayne was just talking about the market and what's going on, and he wasn't afraid to say, "Hey, we're in this together."

He, he like, "I've never done this before. I've never run a firm of this size before, and so I need your help just as much as you need me. So we all need to do this together." So that really rung with me as it's something there was an opportunity within that- But I really just, it's sucked me to this day, it's like wow, I'm not just working for him, I'm working with him.

Steve Schaecher: Yeah, I would agree. It'd feel very family atmosphere. You really felt a close connection with everybody and that you were all in it together, working together to be as successful as we can, and you didn't feel like an employee really. You felt like [00:06:00] a responsibility for it. As much as they share too, and we still share a lot with our employees, I think that is something that you don't find at other places.

Sarah Hempstead: As I look at the '90s and we were becoming a grown-up firm, we were adding disciplines, we were also adding things like structure. So more strategic planning, more intentional career pathing, more things like retreats where we focus on strategy.
And retreats are one of the areas where I've heard lots of stories over the years. Anybody wanna share a, a retreat story?

Kevin Shelley:  There's probably only a few we can. Yeah, there is that. So one of the ones we can share, we worked hard, we played hard, right, Steve? So even at the retreats, probably one of the best stories I remember from the early retreats is we would do these outward bound activities where we're s- wasn't always in meeting rooms.

We were outside doing team building activities. And the one we did down at Flat Rock, we were separated into groups. I happened to be in a group with Wayne Schmidt. I don't [00:07:00] even remember who else was in the group 'cause it really doesn't matter. But then you would go to the woods and basically and to do different activities, and each members of the group were given different limits.

So some people were not allowed to talk, some people were blindfolded. It just so happened that Wayne was blindfolded as part of this effort. So we come through the woods of this trail, some of us kind of guide him through, but we get to this opening and there is a, a wall that's eight foot tall, eight foot wide, and as a team you had to get over the wall.

Just as simple as that, just get over the wall. Well, in Wayne's mind, he had a blindfold on, he had no idea. We're all standing at this eight-foot wall thinking, "Okay, how do we work together? How do we strategize around getting over the wall?" And the whole time he's just saying, "Just get over the wall. Just get over the wall.

What are we doing? Just get over the wall." And finally we just said, "Wayne, I know you're our boss, but shut up." "Give us a minute. It's not that simple." But yeah, that was kind of the story of that retreat. Just get over the wall, whatever you do. 

Sarah Hempstead: We've kind of kept the just get over the wall. 

Kevin Shelley: Well, it speaks to kind of what he [00:08:00] brought to the firm, is just that in that leadership sometimes you just gotta do it.
Whatever it is, just do it. That's my memory about the 

Steve Schaecher: retreat. Yeah, I've got lots of memory as I remember watching Planet of the Apes late night movie.

Steve Schaecher: I don't know why. I think I brought it. I don't know why. 

Sarah Hempstead: Checks out. 

Steve Schaecher: I remember, I think it was at Eagle Creek, and you may have been there at this time too, but we had to get in a big circle, the whole office get in a big circle, and we had to... And all these team building things, you get uncomfortably close with everybody. You had to sit on the person to your left's knees, and they would do the same. So the, the whole- circle of people was all sitting on each other's knees all the way around. Do you remember that? I do not remember 

Sarah Hempstead: I also don't remember that.

Kevin Shelley: Are you sure that happened? Dreaming 

Steve Schaecher: again. Well, it's all trust. I mean, you're working with 

Sarah Hempstead: Yeah. Yeah, 

Steve Schaecher: yeah. Hmm. Yeah. I think I remember that. 

Sarah Hempstead: So [00:09:00] as we shifted beyond the fun parts of the retreats to the, "We're gonna focus on strategy, we're gonna focus on alignment," did that change how the office operated day-to-day? Did it change the vibe? 

Steve Schaecher: I think that was part of... And it was team building. I mean, all of a sudden you, you felt closer to these people. You experienced something kind of- Yeah ... outside of work but related to work. You had more trust in them. You, you knew that you were working together to make projects better and hit our deadlines and, and work together. So I, I do think it helped with that. And there were people in the office that you might not talk to normally that you would interact with more. So I, I do think it helped out quite a bit with that. 

Kevin Shelley: Became more important when we added engineering, we had the other disciplines. Suddenly you had a lot of different backgrounds coming together, personality types coming together, and it really just was a place where none of that mattered what you did or where you came from, but you still common goals.

Sarah Hempstead: Yeah. I, I think landscape architecture, interior design, and MEP engineering all came about in the '90s- Mm-hmm ... which is a pretty big expansion. [00:10:00] So in the '90s the firm started getting some pretty remarkable opportunities to really grow what we could do, what we were asked to do, including Perry Clark's Aquatic Center, which was our first all-in aquatic center, and definitely started a market segment, and it's still going strong for us.
Steve, you got to work on that one, I think. 

Steve Schaecher: A little bit. 

Sarah Hempstead: So what do you remember, and did anybody know at the time this would open a market segment for us? 

Steve Schaecher: I don't think we were thinking about it as a new market segment as much, or at least I wasn't. I mean, the, I'm sure maybe Rick Roberts, who was the principal, was thinking, "Hey, this could open a lot of doors."

But we were working with Indy Parks on a lot of projects at that time, and working on the pool was new for us. But we had a national consultant that we were working with. It was kind of exciting to see some of their projects that they've worked on across the country, and establishing a relationship with them.

That led us to continue our other aquatic centers, and it, it was fun, 'cause [00:11:00] it was also kind of an entertainment-type thing, right? Yeah. I mean, we're doing slides and- Yeah ... and zero-depth pools and play features. So it was fun to design something like that when you're coming from a lot of the repetitive work that we had been doing with just some typical schools, things like that.

Sarah Hempstead: Well, and you mentioned working with that national consultant, which makes me think of one of the maybe most well-known projects we've done with a national consultant, which is NCAA, which you got to work on with- Mm-hmm ... Michael Graves. 

Kevin Shelley: Yeah. It was a, one of those that nobody knew what was going on in the office. It was just one day, in typical Wayne fashion, he- I'm not sure how he did this. He got, I remember the little pop-up shop foam ball with the hoop. Every- he basically called everybody together and had every- everybody got one, and he, then he announced to the firm, everybody that, "Hey, we got the NCAA project."

Which we're all like, "What? We didn't even know this was-" "We, we'd heard the NCAA was moving to town, but we didn't know what our, that we even had an option of being involved in it." Uh, but that was the first time we had worked with a, well, sure, first time, but for me, with a [00:12:00] national consultant, a star architect with, uh, Michael Graves, clearly one of the movers and shakers in the, in the world of architecture.

So it was a great opportunity just to see a, the broader of what goes on nationally in architecture. Ron Fisher and I worked together on that, which was a, again, it was just a great, great project in that we got to do some things. One of the, part of the story working with Michael was we were meeting in his office, which is in Princeton, New Jersey.
Ron and I went to the airport on a private plane, flew out to Princeton, New Jersey. Never been on a private plane before, but it was pretty nice. I recommend it. So we spent the day out there in what was his office. It was really just a big house. Mm-hmm. But we were in his big room, all the consultants sitting around talking about this project with his team.
He wasn't in the room. In fact, I'm not sure we actually ever met. Uh, but we were in the room, and while we're sitting in there in this conference room, the door kinda cranks open and a dog comes in- ... and just starts walking around the room, all the way around it, just chomping, checking, and [00:13:00] lo- checking people, checking person, just moved right back out the door, and the person we were working with said, "He's looking for Michael."

It was Michael's dog. So it was like, "Okay, I guess that's how the starchitects work." It's like, "We just bring our dog to work and whatever happens, happens." But it was just a great opportunity to just to work with a lot of different personalities, construction people, the architectural team, designers. It was a great opportunity.

Sarah Hempstead: I've heard a story about that project, that someone played a joke on Wayne about tearing out all the metal ceilings. Is that- 

Kevin Shelley: I, oh, I do, I do remember that vaguely. But yeah, like he had some call at like in, in a, in early morning or late at night saying, "Hey, something's wrong out there. This is go..." Again, I don't remember exactly what p- what it was, but it was just something where just he freaked out because something was wrong.
So all the things, everything had to be torn out or whatever. 

Sarah Hempstead: Okay. The, the way I heard the story, and that is maybe just the story, but the way I heard the story was someone got a local radio program- Oh, you, no, you're right. Yeah ... to call- 

Kevin Shelley: Yeah. 

Sarah Hempstead: And we don't like the color, so we're gonna start tearing off the roof of the NCAA [00:14:00] during construction.

Kevin Shelley: Yeah. 

Sarah Hempstead: And that the whole office was listening to the radio program. 

Kevin Shelley: Yes. I do remember that now. That's right. I can't remember what radio show that was, but yeah, he was, back in the day when radio shows were a big thing. 

Sarah Hempstead: Back when we even had radios. Yeah. That's somewhere. Yeah, there is that too. Now you have to listen through your computer, I guess.
I don't know. Yeah, 

Steve Schaecher: sure. 

Sarah Hempstead: Yeah. Um, okay. So the '90s was also pretty transformational with what we got to do in education kinda writ large. From IPS and doing program management, which we still do today, our clients large and small, to starting to work with higher education. So what do you both remember about- opportunities in that K-12 higher education space, and how did that change who and what we were?

Kevin Shelley: Yeah, I guess for me, I think, I, I reflect back to the first of all state projects we did, the residence halls we did. Mm-hmm. It was, uh, the Doherty Complex. Mm-hmm. The first one we'd gotten up there. We've done, what, five since. But it was just the difference in, I'll call it, the complexity of the projects and the complexity of the owner.
[00:15:00] Because at that time, now you're working with... Usually you're working with architects who work for owners. As opposed in the K-12 world, you're working for superintendent school boards. So you're really leading them through the process. Mm-hmm. When you get into higher ed, you're working with peers. They probably, some of them may have graduated with you that are now working on the owner side.

Uh, so there's a lot more understanding of what's going on. So there's a different challenge in that, in working that way. But it was, uh, just opened up a lot of different building types as well. There'd be residence halls, academic buildings, engineering-type buildings. It, yeah, it just really changed or created another whole portfolio for us.

Sarah Hempstead: Well, and fine arts, you know- Fine arts, yeah ... to tackle, like, things like Indiana State University. Mm-hmm. Yeah. What about you, Steve? 

Steve Schaecher: Yeah, so I feel like Indiana State, when we first started, we had some Indiana State projects that were going on with the concert hall there, and then we had- Goshen was at the- Yeah theater as well. Goshen as well. And I would agree, it's a different type of client, and the way you work with them- Mm-hmm ... is a little different. And you've often got more [00:16:00] consultants that you're dealing with- Mm-hmm ... that, that have expertise. Like, with the Goshen College Music Hall, we had Athas Briere out of New Orleans who was coming up here for meetings, and we were meeting with them.

Like, we, we have all-day meetings with them once every two weeks. And it was a lot more emphasis on the design of the project than some of our other projects at the time. So- 

Sarah Hempstead: Sure ... 

Steve Schaecher: just more focused effort. 

Kevin Shelley: And that's back when you had to actually fly places or drive places- ... not just get on a Teams meeting.

Sarah Hempstead: That's right. That's right. 

Steve Schaecher: Which we did. Yeah, I mean, that, that is a big difference between now and the way we used to work. We were out of the office meeting in person on job sites once a week, once every two weeks, and now you can do it on Teams. 

Sarah Hempstead: So how were you sharing files? 

Steve Schaecher: We... Yeah. Mail. Take drawings with us. You roll them up. 

Sarah Hempstead: No, I mean, that's kind of crazy, right? Like, that's not that long ago, and- 

Steve Schaecher: Yeah ... 

Sarah Hempstead: that was the way you would share a file was have, you finish drawing it, then print it- [00:17:00] 

Steve Schaecher: Mm-hmm ... 

Sarah Hempstead: and mail it. 

Steve Schaecher: Yeah. Wait for the mail to 

Sarah Hempstead: arrive. Drive it over. 

Steve Schaecher: Sometimes you would present- Or the fax machine ... you would present your drawings to them, but you'd end up taking them back because you had comments with them.

So the owner really is just remembering what you showed them in that meeting and won't see them again for another two weeks. Because we didn't give them plans at the end of every meeting. Sometimes we would, but- Mm-hmm ... they might not have the comments that were discussed in that meeting right then. It 

Kevin Shelley: could be weeks before they would see a change, as opposed to- Yeah
days. 

Sarah Hempstead: Something that's really cool if you look at clients in the '90s, you look at the IPSs and Goshen Colleges, and ISUs, and Ball States, and IPSs. I mean, we still work with those clients today, so that's pretty neat. 

Steve Schaecher: It's neat, too, when you find connections that were on those projects still there, too, and they remember you working on those back then.

Sarah Hempstead: Yeah. That's a... Have you gotten to renovate something that you did 35 years ago yet? 

Kevin Shelley: I know at least one of my buildings was torn down. Which one? The Teddy Bear Daycare. No way. Yeah. It was a [00:18:00] cool project. It was. Brand new building, and it got torn down. Now I think it's the, uh, Topgolf is about right where that was, about the same location.

Sarah Hempstead: Well, it's been a minute. 

Kevin Shelley: Yeah, it's been a minute. 

Sarah Hempstead: It's been a minute. All right. So you both walked into Schmidt about 1990-ish. It's getting on 40 years later. 

Kevin Shelley: Whoa. 

Sarah Hempstead: Uh. 35. 

Steve Schaecher: 35. 

Sarah Hempstead: 35. I'm rounding. I'm rounding. So not exactly the same place that it was. So what's changed besides size? 'Cause size is vastly different, but what's changed, and then where do you think that throughline is?

Steve Schaecher: Well, technology's changed. That's probably the biggest thing, and that's why everything's changed. Because the way we produce drawings, the, the speed that we work, the way that we communicate, it's all different than it was 30 years ago. 

Sarah Hempstead: Sure. 

Kevin Shelley: Yeah. I think adding the Louisville office, it is the diversity, again, diversity of personality, diversity of backgrounds, uh, people from UK, from University of Dayton, so we get a lot more...
Back in the [00:19:00] day it was probably Ball State and nothing else here in the office. Yeah. Where now we have universities that are represented all within the office. Uh, but it... So that's, I think that's a lot of the change. But I think the throughline in all that, though, and this goes back to Wayne, it's client-focused.

Whatever we're doing is client-focused. We gotta make sure that's what we're doing, and everything else is irrelevant, really. We gotta solve the problem for the client. Mm-hmm. 

Steve Schaecher: Our credo of servant leadership is passed on through the whole thing, which, I mean, when we first started, that was what we talked about.
You know, in the orientation, we still had 90-day orientation like we do now. 

Kevin Shelley: Sure. 

Steve Schaecher: And we had books to read and things like that, and we did talk about servant leadership at that time, and it's still used with our orientation today, and I think it still rings true with everything we do and the way we handle our clients.
The size of projects that we have now versus what we had when we started, I mean, we had, like, a $5 million school project was huge at the time. 

Kevin Shelley: Mm-hmm. 

Steve Schaecher: I, I think two years after I started, we had [00:20:00] Harrison and McCutchan and Tippecanoe that were going on at the same time. Each one had a different CM, and they were about maybe $10 million each, which was, those were big at the time.

Those were, those were monsters. Yeah. And now, I mean, some of the sizes of our projects just dwarf those, and, and we can handle it. And then it's been kind of interesting growing up doing those smaller projects and the attention to detail you have when you're doing that- Mm-hmm What you do on the bigger ones nowadays 

Sarah Hempstead: We talked in the very beginning about mentors and how you learned to be an architect. So if somebody's listening who is, uh, thinking about architecture or maybe is just trying to figure out if they should stay in this profession, what would your advice be to them? You're the old people now. 

Kevin Shelley: Exactly. Thanks a lot for 

Steve Schaecher: that. I, I like to, I like to tell people that are interested in architecture that there's really tons of things you can do within the field of architecture.

If you're, if you're not great at design but you still [00:21:00] enjoy being in this building industry, there's still a lot of things you can do. You can detail, you can become proficient at the specifications. If you're into math and formulas, you can work on the programming. 

You know, th- there's just, there's a lot of things that can be done that aren't necessarily related to being able to look at the big picture and figure out kinda the shape of the building and how it's going to feel.

So I think technology's actually helped in a lot of ways. There's things you have to still ask the right questions, but there's tools nowadays that can help overcome not being able to draw well with your hands or having natural abilities that way. 

Kevin Shelley: Yeah, I think I, I use, look, tell people, and this really goes back to why I've been here for 30, 36 years this month. It goes back to opportunity, right? If you look for opportunities, be prepared for opportunities, and when they come, take it. And whether that's the NCA project that I always got to work on or becoming COO, [00:22:00] all that was because of seeing an opportunity, setting goals, and taking it. And that's what I would tell anybody. Tell all the, our young staff I meet with. 

Sarah Hempstead: Just say yes. 

Kevin Shelley: Yeah, just say yes. Yeah, there's, yeah. 

Sarah Hempstead: Then you figure out how you're gonna do it afterwards. 

Kevin Shelley: Exactly. Fake it till you make it. 

Steve Schaecher: Something like that. Which kinda goes back to servant leadership. Yeah. I mean, when you're talking with an owner, you wanna help them meet their vision as much as you can, so you wanna do everything you can to help them do that, so you don't really tell them all the things, all the reasons it's not a good idea.

You, you wanna tell them why that is a good idea and enhance it. And same thing about your own career, you know. If you've got opportunities, what you, what are you gonna do to make it better? Just look to do that. 

Sarah Hempstead: So 35 years. That's, that's 70 years together. That's a pretty good commitment. Good job. Wow. High five. Wow, you think you'd be better at that. Um, so the '90s were proof that intentional growth is about more than size. It's about staying true to what matters, [00:23:00] being creative, allowing relationships to grow, services to grow. And then you both talk with a lot of love about the people in the firm, too, and I think that's something that's stayed with us, is care for hiring the right people.

Taking care of them. Uh, they're, they're our best asset, our greatest asset, and probably why our clients continue to work with us for so long. So thank you for both of you for being here today and for 35 years. And that's a wrap on the '90s. So next time we're gonna step into the 2000s, a decade which tested our firm's resilience and deepened our commitment to the communities we serve.

And if you're enjoying this series, follow Foundations and Futures by the Decade on your favorite podcast platform. Connect with us on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn @schmidtassociates. Thanks for listening!