Cloning Your Practice: One Office Isn't Always Enough (Practice‪)‬

Michael Woodley, AIA, leads a double life. An avid ice hockey fan, he has season tickets to see the Colorado Avalanche in Denver and the Mighty Ducks in Anaheim, Calif. He's an active member of the AIA and the Building Industry Association in Orange County, Calif., and he plays on an ice hockey team in Littleton, Colo., where he also coaches his 13-year-old daughter's soccer team. "For a long time, people didn't realize I wasn't living in California, and some still don't," says Woodley, whose firm, the Woodley Architectural Group, operates out of Littleton, Colo., and Costa Mesa, Calif. He moved his family from California to Colorado eight years ago and splits his time between the two offices, bouncing back and forth about three times a month. While most architects probably don't think of themselves as full-fledged members of two communities, doing business in more than one place has become easier than ever. Thanks to cheap airfares and technology like BlackBerries, laptops, and networked offices, it matters less and less where architects with wide-ranging practices operate these days. Woodley happens to work for production builders all over the country, so the Colorado base puts him closer to his clients. Other architecture firms are setting up satellite shops to hone multiple specialties such as planning and mixed-use development or to take advantage of new markets.