Dykeman Architects & Interiors

Leadership: K. John Jones, CEO, vice president; Craig Thompson, president; principals Joel Niemi, Gary O’leary, Tim Jewett, Michael Barthol, Tim Twietmeyer

Specialty: Retail, commercial, office, education, interiors

Year founded: 1967

2002 revenues: $5.6 million

Projected 2003 revenues: $5.1 million

Largest current projects: Bothell High School, Jackson High School, Camano Commons, Krispy Kreme/Icon LLC corporate offices

Image courtesy of Dykeman Architects Dykeman is designing corporate offices and a doughnut shop in South Seattle for Krispy Kreme.

If the backlog for Everett-based Dykeman isn’t what it used to be, the firm is at least keeping busy.

Principal Tim Twietmeyer rattled off a litany of sizeable projects that included a performing arts center at Bothell High School, a mixed-use complex on Camano Island, an office building in Stanwood, and Krispy Kreme’s two-story corporate headquarters in Seattle’s Sodo district.

Just over half of Dykeman’s portfolio consists of education projects.

With much of its work coming from repeat customers such as local sch

ool districts and the Lynden-based Peoples Bank, Dykeman has decided it’s time to raise its profile. “We’ve been trying to boost up our public image,” Twietmeyer said. “We’ve been doing it quietly.”

Part of that effort has focused on expanding Dykeman’s reach in the public sector, responding to RFQs for projects such as a Lummi museum, administration building and tribal cultural center.

“We wouldn’t have pursued that a few years ago,” Twietmeyer said. “That’s one of those project types we’d like to do.”

Interiors is another area that’s being groomed for expansion.

“It’s been a component of our work, but we would like to have it develop its own identity,” Twietmeyer said.

That could mean setting the department loose to work separately with other architects, but, Twietmeyer admits, “it’s a tough market to do that in right now.”

Twietmeyer also spoke of pursuing more retail and mixed-use projects.

The firm is joining forces with Designs Northwest Architects to design a 3.3-acre “third place” on Camano Island where people can meet and mingle away from home and work. Plans include constructing five or six retail and office buildings situated around a central plaza with an amphitheater. Site work got under way last month.

Icon LLC, the regional Krispy Kreme franchisee, is building a two-story corporate headquarters at First Avenue South and South Holgate Street in Seattle that will include a street-level doughnut shop. Dykeman’s challenge, Twietmeyer said, was to mix corporate gravitas with Krispy Kreme’s cheerful atmosphere.

“We used a lot of glass,” he said.