ETM Associates, LLC is a full-service landscape architecture firm specializing in public space design, public space management, and project management. ETM has gained national and international reputations as a public space management consultant for numerous projects in the United States and overseas. We work with clients around the globe to ensure the parks and spaces that are being planned, designed, and built can be maintained and managed for the long term.
The full range of services we offer include:
Public Space Design
- Comprehensive design services from schematic design through construction administration
- Park design
- Public space design
- Historic site design and adaptive reuse
- Historic site assessment and evaluation
- Ecological design
- Short- and long-term site evaluation and planning
- Maintenance planning
- Master planning
- Post-construction maintenance manuals
Public Space Management
- Maintenance assessment and planning
- Maintenance facility planning
- Maintenance budgeting
- Operational planning
- Activation planning – events/programming
- Revenue opportunities
- Expense planning
- Total asset management planning
- Operating model development and structuring
- Public/private partnership planning
- Short- and long-term non-profit organizational planning
- Funding and revenue planning
Project Management
- Owner’s representative
- Project oversight
- Non-profit short- and long-term planning
- Operating model consultation
- Public/private partnership roles and responsibilities
- Public/private sector contracts
- Non-profit organizational planning
- Non-profit financial planning
- Staffing recommendations
- Funding
- Expense and revenue planning
Public Space Design
ETM Associates, LLC provides comprehensive landscape architecture and public space design services. Our multi-faceted skills enable us to deliver designs that are innovative, detailed, and developed with long-term success in mind. Our extensive experience in the public realm with community leaders, public agencies, and private institutions provides a strong foundation to develop successful and implementable designs.
We partner regularly with engineering, cultural resource/archaeological, and site remediation consultants to tackle a wide range of projects with complex needs. Our expertise includes urban design, ecological design and restoration, historic restoration, rehabilitation, and adaptive reuse.
ETM achieves the highest possible design standards while also addressing issues such as cost control and maintenance. We provide professional design services through all phases of a project, from schematic design through construction documentation and construction supervision. We bring experience, expertise, creativity, sensitivity, and enthusiasm to every project.
Public Space Management
The goal of ETM Associate’s public space management work is to work collaboratively with our clients and design colleagues to develop site-specific operations and maintenance plans to help prepare for the ongoing management of the site and to understand the resources needed to successfully operate the public space. While the planning, design, and construction process of a project is exciting – often generating public interest and financial support – operating parks and public spaces is an ongoing process, considerably less “sexy”, and more difficult to secure support for over the lifespan of a project. Ultimately, caring for a project will cost significantly more than the capital expenditures used for design and construction. ETM’s services act as the “back-of-house” support for the organization, ensuring the right resources are in place when the park is fully operating, and that the capital investment is protected. We also investigate opportunities to generate revenue to offset operating costs as well as innovative operating models.
We recognize that while most public spaces share similar issues such as budget cuts and management/leadership tensions, each site has its own unique qualities that require individual attention. Therefore, ETM works closely with the design team and the clients to target specific challenges that arise. It takes more than picking up litter to ensure public spaces are clean, safe, programmed, and serving the needs of the community. To this end, some common services that ETM provides include:
- Maintenance strategies
- Identifying what is needed (tasks and equipment) for maintenance
- Planning, organizing, and directing resources (personnel and materials)
- Staffing strategies: in-house vs. contracted services
- Identifying equipment and facility needs for in-house staff
- Gap analysis: existing resources vs. where we need to be
- Management strategies
- Organizational chart (re)development
- Developing a new nonprofit organization
- Funding strategies
- Estimates of annual operations and maintenance budget and revenue projections
- Funding opportunities
- Business planning/feasibility study
- Activation and security strategies
- Development of public programs, what, when, and where they should go
- Special event guidelines
- Security recommendations
Funding for public spaces is critically important for ensuring the long-term success of a project. ETM continues to help our clients develop strategies for obtaining and utilizing funds based on the unique needs and circumstances of each project.
Project Management
ETM Associates, LLC is a recognized leader in consulting on the management and governance of parks and the public realm and public/private partnerships. We work to create and implement innovative operating strategies that help ensure complete connectivity between an organization’s vision, management, and public sector goals with capital investments and ongoing operations. We believe successful public/private partnerships’ governance and management of public spaces stem from a realistic understanding of organizational and public sector goals and a long-term plan to achieve them. We provide comprehensive consultation and management planning to ensure the goals are reached and sustained.
Leadership and Communication
We work with many non-profits and leading design and public sector professionals throughout the United States, and strive to develop workable plans for both capital renovation and ongoing management. Our clients represent some of the most innovative public and private sector organizations in the country. We fully acknowledge the importance of their community presence, and it is among our foremost responsibilities to uphold and to help achieve their goals and aspirations.
Financial Sustainability
We understand the difficulty of achieving both capital and operational financial sustainability. Financial sustainability is a particular challenge, and we work closely with our clients to identify innovative revenue-generating ideas to help sustain continuous operations. We are seeing more and more “entrepreneurial non-profits” that operate like small- to medium-sized businesses, seeking innovative ways to generate earned revenue to support ongoing operating costs. We focus on our client’s opportunities for generating annual revenue. We look for the full range of revenue-generating opportunities and believe that most “entrepreneurial non-profits” need a variety of revenue sources, not only to generate revenue for ongoing operations, but to also “protect” the organization if one source fails or declines. We call it “revenue allocation”.
Governance
ETM provides workable solutions to the ongoing management/governance of public spaces, which includes non-profits and the public and private sectors. Understanding the roles and responsibilities of all parties, as well as the continuous financial commitments, is critically important. Firm principal Timothy Marshall brings decades of experience with non-profit governance to ETM. While with the Central Park Conservancy, Mr. Marshall experienced first-hand how the public and private sector roles can change over time; how the increased operational responsibilities can impact a non-profit; and the challenges of funding those increased commitments.
An increasing number of non-profits are transitioning from solely funding capital projects, which are “one and done”, to being responsible for the ongoing maintenance and management of the public spaces they helped create or improve. This requires ongoing operational support that typically increases from year to year. These increasing operational responsibilities not only impact fundraising but also the makeup of the Board of Trustees, the overall staffing, and the organization’s focus. ETM works with non-profits to help navigate this transition and plan for sustainable operations for long-term success.
