©2022 Saratoga Photographer.com
By Jill Nagy
Landscape architects do far more than decide where to lay sod and plant flowers. Companies like the Saratoga Spring landscape architecture firm CLA SITE—which is celebrating 25 years in business—are far more complex.
Among its projects was the redesigned of the concession area at Saratoga Performing Arts Center, including siting the new buildings and redoing the stormwater management plan. The company is also working with Envision Architects to develop a new indoor/outdoor market complex in Glens Falls.
It is also redoing part of Albany’s Empire State Plaza to alleviate drainage and stormwater problems.
“Lawns are for entry level folks,” said Peter Loyola, the company’s founder and principal.
Today’s landscape architect combines aspects of civil engineering, architecture, and urban planning, as well as environmental permitting. The full name of the company reflects that pedigree: CLA Site Landscape Architecture, Engineering, and Planning PC.
Loyola started the company in order to work on technical problems like stormwater management, drainage issues, subdivision site plans, and master plans for residential subdivisions. CLA can site the houses, plan the roads, look at driveway features, and, when they have it all planned out, make a presentation to a planning board and get the site plan approved, Loyola said.
In Corinth, for example, the company is incorporating “green infrastructure” into a road construction and streetscape improvement project. In Fort Ann, they are engaged in a remediation project to allow a stream filled with silt to run free again.
The growing challenges and variety of his field inspired Loyola to start his own company. After more than a decade working for another company, he said, “I wanted to take a shot on my own and make it a company bigger than myself.”
The biggest change Loyola has seen is not anything technical. It is the growing need to maintain flexible schedules and maintain a good work/life balance amid a different culture of work.
“That has never been more important,” he said. For CLA, a company where many people already worked from home, “it was a fairly easy transition” when the COVID pandemic disrupted traditional office routines.
Not that he hasn’t seen—and benefited from—technical improvements. He noted that computer software and technology have greatly improved, making both design and research easier. Photo simulation techniques have also improved.
The company has grown to a nine-member team of licensed landscape architects, site civil engineers, a market coordinator and an office manager.
“We have great professional capabilities for such a small office,” Loyola said.
In recognition of that, CLA SITE received the Upstate Chapter of ASLA Merit Award and People’s Choice Award in 2022 for its design of the Pedestrian Art Plaza in Rome, N.Y.
CLA SITE celebrated the silver anniversary with a party on July 12 at the Cantina in Saratoga Springs.
Loyola grew up near Stowe, Vt., and graduated from the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse. He is a registered landscape architect and a member of the American Society of Landscape Architects.
The company is located at 58 Church St., Suite 200, in Saratoga Sprigs. The telephone number is 518 584-8661. The website is www.clasite.com.