Minority business owner of the Year

Barrientos builds on a solid foundation

By Jennifer Pfaff

Norman Barrientos President and owner of Barrientos Design & Consulting Inc., Milwaukee

Perhaps Norman Barrientos doesn’t know the meaning of status quo.

As president and owner of Milwaukee-based Barrientos Design & Consulting Inc., he seeks projects that present unique challenges and creative solutions.

Barrientos Design & Consulting provides architectural and design services for a wide variety of commercial, public and community-based projects.

The firm’s work earned it the 2004 Hispanic Business of the Year Award from the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce-Wisconsin. It’s name is attached to everything from a $20 million apartment complex planned for a West Allis redevelopment area to the playful La Causa Child and Family Development Center on Second Street in Milwaukee. On top of that, Barrientos will design two developments in Milwaukee’s Park East area.

The breadth of Barrientos’ past work, coupled with his ambitious plans for the future, made him Wisconsin Builder’s Minority Business Owner of the Year.

Some who have worked with Barrientos’ firm said its success is tied directly to his hands-on attitude.

“He actually gets out into the community and talks to all members of that community,” said Chuck Taylor, vice chairman of the Urban League of Greater Madison Inc.’s board of directors and academic dean at Herzing College. “He talks to local and state officials, industry leaders and stakeholders.”

All that talking helps the firm respond to changing market conditions, facilitate building processes and, most important, create a project that meets the needs of the client, Taylor said.

The Urban League, an organization focused on providing services to low-income people, is working with Barrientos on a feasibility study for the construction of a 50,000-square-foot Center for Economic Development in Madison. The group envisions a three-story complex offering one level of income-generating businesses,
one level to house a variety of free social-service agencies, and a third level to function as the Urban League’s headquarters.

“We sent out a request for bids, and we interviewed three to four firms,” Taylor said. “[Norman Barrientos] blew everyone away. He was very thorough. He anticipated our needs and questions and already had created options for us to consider.”

Barrientos has stayed involved throughout the process, and his involvement has made an impression on those who hired him. Taylor had a list of reasons why Barrientos is an effective businessman.

“His professionalism, his vision, his leadership, his ability to get people to sit together and discuss a common vision and to stay focused on it,” Taylor said.

And it doesn’t hurt that Barrientos can draw on the name of his father, Taylor said. Barrientos, a Madison native, started his business in 1988 after purchasing the architectural part of his father’s business, Barrientos & Associates. His father, Julian, was born in Bolivia.

Barrientos has benefited from his father’s legacy and gone on to create his own, Taylor said.

“He has a track record, and his father before him has a footprint on this state,” he said.

Barrientos Design & Consulting now has 15 employees but plans to hire another five in the next year.