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Local Expert Shannon Gordon Joins BSB Design
June 15, 2020
With over 30 years of landscape architecture and planning experience, Shannon knows Kansas City. He’s ready to put that experience to work for the KC homebuilding industry, and his knack for capturing your vision during conceptual design can help you create successful, appealing neighborhoods.
Shannon’s Take on the Current Kansas City Market
Strengths
Kansas City has a rich history of homebuilding and storied neighborhoods with great architecture, landscape and community connectivity. The area also has the perfect mix of large, national homebuilders and small to mid-sized “semi-custom” builders, offering buyers a ton of options at nearly every price point. The City of Fountains offers the culture of the Plaza and the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art, professional sports teams on national display and the best barbecue in the country. With all these amenities to offer, who wouldn’t want to call KC home?
Challenges
As Kansas City area home buyers begin to dip their toes in the water again post COVID-19, providing high quality design that can compete with the coasts is the best way to continue the migration to the Midwest. But many floor plans and community designs being offered today aren’t much different than they were 15 years ago. Sure, these traditional plans impart a certain sense of nostalgia, but in the end, today’s new home buyers will appreciate new, innovative and creative.
Biggest Opportunities
Community design in Kansas City is a mostly untapped but highly valuable resource. A lot of developments in Kansas City in the past treated green space as an afterthought where required drainage areas doubled-down as “parks” (except no one can access them because they are in back yards). Builders and developers who find a better way to make open space an integrated, accessible part of their new communities will rise above the competition.
We see the opportunity to create wonderful community hubs for each development by providing the kind of connected green space that enhances property values. Neighborhood parks can be integrated into the very fabric of each new development, designed to allow for social distancing and for gatherings of family groups. These parks can become the outdoor offices, exercise rooms and recreation spaces that will help entice buyers to your new community.
About Shannon
As a licensed landscape architect, Shannon has extensive experience in illustration, design and management of landscape architecture and planning projects throughout the world. But regardless of the location or client, his goal is to use that experience in tandem with his artistic ability to produce ever-improved solutions for the built environment.
Shannon began his career on the east coast as the “hot hand” for a legendary planning firm before bringing that same creative energy to BSB Design in 1988 (then called Bloodgood Architects and Planners). His ability to quickly visualize concepts and generate hand-drawn illustrations during meetings was a perfect fit for BSB Design’s in-person design consultation, still being used today.
That same hot hand and client-service approach brought Shannon back to BSB Design after a long career leading his own firm and heading up others, primarily in the Midwest. Now living in Kansas City, MO, he is excited to bring new energy to BSB Design’s efforts in the region. His goal is to provide builders and developers with design solutions that do more than just earn a profit. Shannon wants to create the kind of long-term relationships that will help his clients build a legacy.