25 Years Later, We’re Just Getting Started
At the corner of Queen and St. Paul Streets in downtown St. Catharines, in the banking hall of a former branch of the Royal Bank of Canada, a dedicated team of design professionals are hard at work preparing drawings for a project near you. Since 2012, this has been the home of Quartek, Niagara Region’s leading multi-disciplinary design firm, now celebrating its 25th year under that banner. With a quarter-century of experiencing both the highs and lows of working in the design industry, this anniversary presents an opportunity to look back, reflect, and celebrate.
The company that would become Quartek began in 1979 as a Niagara branch office of F.J. Reinders and Associates Canada Limited, a Brampton based engineering office. The Niagara branch remained under the umbrella of F.J. Reinders for over a decade, all the while establishing themselves in the local design and construction industry. In 1992, the Niagara branch spun on a new and independent company, MPS Reinders Niagara. In the following years, under the leadership of President Patrick MacNeil and partners Doug Peters and Henry Swinkels, the firm developed into a thriving engineering and architecture office operating throughout Niagara and beyond.
With the addition of Architect Robert Mackenzie in 1998, the MPS Reinders team began to envision a new professional partnership, combining mechanical, electrical, structural, and civil engineering with architecture and planning services under one banner. Over the next couple of years, that vision came into focus, and in 2000 the new Quartek brand was officially launched, establishing the region’s only fully-integrated, multi-disciplinary professional design firm. The name “Quartek” is derived from the four disciplines that make up our core services – Engineers, Architects, Planners, and Project Managers – as well as a recognition that buildings are the result of a marriage between art and technology. Quartek is the embodiment of that marriage, both in name and practice.
Twenty-five years on, the founding vision to provide quality, efficient, collaborative professional design services for all manner of building and infrastructure projects lives on in the architects, engineers, planners, project managers, technologists, draftspersons and administrators that continue to build on the legacy of those that laid the groundwork. With the perfect blend of seasoned veterans and motivated young staff, working under the leadership of co-founder and President Doug Peters, Quartek continues to be a leader in the professional design community. It is this ongoing pursuit of excellence that we celebrate this year, the 25th anniversary of Quartek.
We invite you to join us over the next several months as we mark this occasion. You can follow along here on our website, on Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. We will be revisiting old projects, recognizing the contributions of team members through the years, and looking forward to what the next 25 years will look like.