Infrastructure: It's Not Just Housing

SANTA ANA, CA-Ernesto Vasquez's new position as CEO and chairman of MVE Institutional, the institutional and design firm that he founded 10 years ago as part of MVE Group, is no accident. Vasquez tells GlobeSt.com that his passion has always been for public/private partnerships and coming up with community solutions to benefit society in general—principles on which the splinter firm is based.

“My change was one of the two partners of MVE Group buying me out so I could move my efforts 100%—if not 150%—toward this public/private institutional effort,” says Vasquez. “From my end, what I'm doing is not new since I'm continuing to do what I love. I'm just putting all my effort into this arena. We built this good name in the industry, and I'm excited to work with our public client base and combine it with our private client base.”

The firm, which focuses on public/private partnerships with universities, cities, county governments, housing authorities, transit authorities, K-12 schools, mixed-use complexes and international developments, is finding an interesting dilemma, Vasquez says: “Infrastructure still needs creative solutions. So we're leveraging in some of our non-profit clients to service our public clients in many ways. New market tax credits is a new way to help. There are creative ways to develop mixed uses to help socially challenged communities.”

While MVE Group will continue to focus on the private sector—it is one of the Irvine Co.'s premier architects—Vasquez will pursue these economic challenges and urban issues. “I was more focused on the social infrastructure. Affordable housing is very much a passion for me, and I'm very much concerned with how they deal with it. I was the non-Irvine Co. guy,” he says with humor.

Bringing in private clients to help with public projects such as schools, senior and affordable housing, student and faculty housing, transportation and transit-oriented design, has resulted in projects that enrich neighborhoods—including projects the firm has done with Bridge Housing. These projects, he says, are solving some of the social community issues that certain areas have had for many years. It's offering a “broader band of services that are more urban design or community-focused design,” Vasquez explains.

Vasquez will continue to work with the same team he has been collaborating with since the start of the company, and he says he's ready to join them full time. “To me, it's all tying together. I don't see how the public or the private sector can do it alone. Our firm has been known for and continues to expand on that.”

Perhaps most importantly, Vasquez says dealing with infrastructure is about more than just housing. “It's how do we get jobs, and how do we provide education? It can cross over into those aspects. It's not solvable by just solving housing. We weren't meeting it quite well enough by just solving it via the housing authority.”