Downtown Detroit-based Giffels Webster hires 18

Giffels Webster has added 18 people to its staff over the last year, and the planning and engineering firm is becoming more entrenched in the Motor City each year.

The 62-year-old company moved its headquarters from the burbs to downtown Detroit a couple years ago. Since then it has been actively trying to hire more Detroit residents. “We would live to increase that representation,” says Scott Clein, president & partner of Giffels Webster.

Giffels Webster specializes in placemaking. That ranges from providing civil engineering services to landscape architecture. It still has satellite offices in Birmingham and Washington Township. Of its 18 hires over the last year, about 40 percent now work in downtown Detroit and another 40 percent work in Birmingham. The balance works in Washington Township.

Giffels Webster has a staff of 71 employees and two interns. Most of the new hires work in engineering and planning. About six of them are recent college graduates.

“We believe within the next few months we will be looking for another 3-5 hires,” Clein says.

Chances are many of those new hires will be working in downtown Detroit. Clein explains those people will be headed toward downtown because of the growing amount of redevelopment work cropping up in the Motor City.

“There continues to be a ton of opportunity in Detroit,” Clein says. “It’s an exciting time.”

Source: Scott Clein, president & partner of Giffels Webster
Writer: Jon Zemke

Read more about Metro Detroit’s growing entrepreneurial ecosystem at SEMichiganStartup.com.