21-27 November 1997 
Puget Sound Business Journal, Seattle, Washington
STRUCTURES

Degen and Degen has knack for good timing


By Joe Nabbefeld
Staff Writer

Newlyweds Jeffrey and Anita Degen were fast asleep very early in the morning in their new Madrona home when "The Call" came in.

"It's the one thing that changed our lives," says he. "A lightning bolt from the blue," says she.

One of those good news lightning bolts.
She heard through her sleepiness a British voice on the phone and automatically dumped it off to Jeffrey: "It's a landscaper."

He mumbled a few routine "uh-huhs." Then they both jolted up as he heard him say: "Well, we had no plans of working in Europe."

The business of designing the insides and outsides of luxury hotels has been like that for the Degens, now back from Europe and set up in downtown Seattle as the small architecture and interior design firm of Degen & Degen.

Soon after that 5 a.m. call in 1992, a friend was renting their new house and they were working in Berlin.

He managed the design of new hotels throughout Europe as chief architect and director of technical services for Penta Hotels, then a division of Lufthansa Airlines. She renovated old East German castles into luxury hotels as an interior designer with S&S Hotel Innenarchitektur GmbH.

New ownership took control of his company two years later and they returned to Seattle and that Madrona home. Now they're in the right spot and the right time again, this time to ride the surge in hotel renovation and construction here and nationwide being fueled by the economic boom.

"If you look at the industry, it's very strong right now," says Scott Woroch, Westin Hotels & Resorts's senior vice president for worldwide development, who considers the Degens friends' "They're obviously well-positioned."

Their husband-wife combination makes working with them "interesting," he said. "They each have strengths that complement each other."

So far, the biggest project they have going is in the Puget Sound area is the $7 million, 80-room expansion and renovation of the Bellevue Hilton, on which they previously did interior work.

They're also working on the McKinley Village Resort at Denali National Park in Alaska, two hotel renovations in Vancouver, B.C., one in Calgary, one (the Lakeway Inn) in Bellingham, a $4 million renovation of the Radisson Plaza Hotel in Lexington, Ky., renovation of the Midland Hilton Towers in Midland, Texas, and renovation of the Houston Medallion hotel.

The firm, working on the 11th floor of the Vance Building in downtown Seattle, now consists of four architects, four interior designers, one structural engineer and two support people. They estimate it will grow to 20 employees sometime next year.

They also designed a renovation of the 152-unit Capitol Hill Suites in Washington, D.C., and a refurbishing of the Lake Quinault Lodge and Kalaloch Lodge on the Olympic Peninsula.

They designed the renovation of Digicolor's new downtown offices, and worked on a $2 million renovation of the Riverside in Portland, owned by Starwood Lodging Trust.

"We've come from a corporate environment, so we run a professionally managed office, but we want to stay small enough to have freedom," she said. "We're young enough to still be open to new ways of doing business. We're big enough to do high-end quality work, but small enough to be innovative."

Westin's Woroch agreed.

"They've got some things people look for," he said. "They've got big firm experience, so they understand how corporate development works and can appreciate those issues. Yet they're on their own now, so they're much more nimble and entrepreneurial. You get to work closely with the principals."

Anita Degen, 34 was born in San Diego and studied interior design at Virginia Commonwealth University, after which she began her career at Marriott Corp. in Washington, D.C.

Jeffrey Degen, 44, was born in Sheboygan, Wis., and received his bachelor's and master's degrees from the University of Utah, which he said he attended to get closer to the good skiing out west.

After seven years of designing computer and laboratory buildings for MBT Associates in San Francisco, he joined Marriott in Washington, D.C., too.

That's where they met. He managed the overall design of the first 12 Marriott Suites, on which she worked on the interior design.

"Everybody in the office thought we should be dating before we were," she recalled. About when everybody gave up on that, they started dating, but never let on.

"It got harder and harder to conceal when we come back from weekends with matching tans," he said.

Four years later, in 1990, Westin Hotels & Resorts brought him to Seattle as a project manager. She became a lead designer in Callison Architecture's hospitality section; her projects included the interior of the Renaissance Madison Hotel in downtown Seattle, then called the Stouffer Madison.

They married in 1991. "We went from complete secrecy (at Marriott) to Degen & Degen," she said. They bought the Madrona house.

Six weeks later, the call from Berlin came.

So they bring to their own firm a strong set of connections to Marriott, Westin, Starwood (which is buying Westin) and CapStar Hotel Co. - all in serious growth modes here and elsewhere.

Yet their new company's first client came from none of that.

When they moved back to Seattle, Jeffrey Degen's father shipped them out some furniture, but a mixup resulted in it going to a Tacoma plumbing fixtures firm called Rosen Supply.

They got to talking to the owners when they went for the furniture and "They said, 'While you're here, we need a better showroom," recalled Jeffrey Degen.