To help support its growth, Treanor has acquired multiple legacy firms throughout its history, strategically expanding its capabilities from both a staffing and geographic perspective. In 2024, the company rebranded simply as Treanor, to reflect its unified, multidisciplinary practice.

In the Midwest, a steady stream of work in the public sector, health care and education have helped the firm thrive. Its 2025 regional revenue hit $51.5 million, up 9% year over year.

“We had more success in 2025 than we anticipated, which was wonderful. Our diversification of different project and client types, and the markets that we’re located in, has really helped to even us out,” Coleman adds. “And luckily enough for us, we had selected some of those markets that saw an increase in work and not a slowdown. All the stars aligned.”

Located in Racine, Wis., the 70,000-sq-ft Jonathan Delagrave Youth Development and Care Center is a trauma-informed, education-focused and treatment-centered youth justice facility.
Image courtesy of Treanor

Justice for All

When Jeff Lane, a principal on Treanor’s justice design team, first started with the company more than 25 years ago, much of his team’s work focused on jails. “Today, what we’re seeing a lot more of in corrections, detention and juvenile work, is how do we engage behavioral health,” he says. “Being able to think about behavioral health first and being out in the forefront of that on the justice side has really helped our business.”

State and city entities are also contending with new needs and deteriorating facilities after not spending as much on infrastructure over the last decade or so, Lane adds. That slowdown has resulted in a race to catch up and a bit of a justice boom in the Midwest.

“We’ve been really, really busy. We’ve seen work in Wisconsin, here in Kansas and Missouri. We’ve done a lot of work on the juvenile side in Kentucky,” he says.

Repeat clients have also contributed to Treanor’s success. “One of the first projects we did that actually started our justice team was in the early 1990s with Douglas County, Kansas. And we’ve continued to do work with that client from that point forward,” Lane says.

Treanor is currently working with Douglas County to reimagine its Judicial and Law Enforcement Center as a modern justice campus. Located in Lawrence—right across from Treanor’s headquarters, in fact—the $82-million renovation and expansion will bring new courtrooms and strategic upgrades to the 158,000-sq-ft facility.

Completed in May 2025, the Delagrave Center houses 48 youths in six eight-bed residential units. Racine County worked with Treanor and Wisconsin-based Ramlow Stein to create this case study in trauma-informed design.
Image courtesy of Treanor

Over in Racine, Wis., Treanor recently designed the 70,000-sq-ft Jonathan Delagrave Youth Development and Care Center, the design of which embraced a trauma-informed, treatment-focused approach. It replaces a traditional detention model with residential units.

“In the early 2000s, it was about beds. Today, it’s about specialty,” Lane says. “We’re talking about interior materiality, daylighting, sun studies and sustainability within our facilities. So because we’re able to show those things to our clients, they are starting to see benefits, both with the staff and with the folks that are coming to those facilities.”

Although Treanor’s teams are seeing some design-build projects trickle through, most of its regional work is delivered as CM at-risk, notes Coleman, “which is good because it kind of holds those larger projects together. And then we’re seeing clients, particularly county level clients, who are tackling their entire justice system at once.”

One of those was the Saline County Jail and Sheriff’s Operation Center, completed in late 2023. Treanor designers used analysis programs to evaluate natural daylighting to inform the building’s orientation and glass placement, creating a healthier and more efficient building.

But when it comes to working with clients who have done little to no work for extended periods of time, decades in some instances, education quickly becomes a priority.

“That process of helping clients understand what state-of-the-art looks like and what the going trends are within the juvenile or courts or detention facilities is really tough,” Lane says. In addition to ever-present budget concerns, assumptions require careful navigation as well.

“With some of the things that are going on within our world today, such as the ICE facilities, we’re combating those conversations because our clients see that on the news and think that’s what justice is doing. That’s not who we are. We don’t do any of that work,” Lane emphasizes.

Treanor facilitates site tours with summer interns to show them how to safely navigate a construction site.
Photo courtesy of Treanor

Design Priorities

What sets Treanor apart is its commitment to its clients, Lane says. “If you look at our website and our architecture, I don’t think any one of those pieces of architecture are the same, because they’re driven by our clients. We understand what their needs are, and we determine what that looks like from an architecture perspective,” he explains.

Erik Theis, court administrator with Jasper County, Mo., agrees, saying that Treanor stands out because its teams take the time to understand both its clients and the systems in which they work.

Theis, who has worked on two major projects with Treanor on behalf of Jasper County, calls working with the firm a very positive experience. The Jasper County Juvenile Services Center was completed in 2019 and the Jasper County Courthouse followed in 2023.

“In both projects, Treanor guided us from the earliest design stages through construction. They helped solve problems as they came up, which is essential on projects of this size,” Theis says. “Treanor’s role went far beyond designing the building. It was a true partnership. They helped us communicate the vision for the project to our community, guided us through the planning process and worked with stakeholders to build consensus around the operational goals of the facilities. They understand that large public projects are about relationships and trust just as much as design.”

While justice projects continue to dominate across the region, another recent project was the Pi Beta Phi Sorority at the University of Missouri. Treanor also designed the Kansas City Proton Institute, a 40,000-sq-ft outpatient cancer center in Overland Park, Kan., that is the first physician-led proton therapy center in the Midwest.

Treanor employees volunteered for Habitat for Humanity and renovated a local residence in the Kansas City area.
Photo courtesy of Treanor

People at Heart

Although Treanor began as a sole proprietorship, today the company is owned by 25 individuals. “Over the last 10 years, we’ve really paid attention to what our succession plan is. We’re on the third generation of ownership transition,” Coleman says. “When you have 15% of your company as owners, that broadens that responsibility, and it just makes the firm stronger.”

Outreach is another priority: Treanor’s employees volunteered more than 1,400 hours in 2025. Every year, the company closes all its offices for a day so that employees can volunteer at local charities. The summer of 2026 will mark the 10th anniversary of this initiative.

Employees also provide specialized services to individuals and communities in need. For example, Coleman helped Pendleton’s County Market owners Karen and John Pendleton assess and design renovations after their historic home was damaged by an EF-4 tornado in 2019.

Additionally, each of Treanor’s principals is allotted $5,000 annually, totaling $145,000, for local fundraising and charity efforts. Some beneficiaries have included the Willow Domestic Violence Center, the Ballard Center and Junior Achievement of Kansas.

“We love our communities—it’s interwoven into our weekly lives,” Coleman says. “We also think it’s important to our profession and our practice areas to volunteer with professional organizations. So we have national, state and local participation with the AIA. In the Midwest, areas that are really strong for us are historic preservation and justice, so we work with the Association of Preservation Technologies and the American Association for Justice.”

Culture also plays a role in helping Treanor attract and retain talent, as does offering flexible career pathways. “We aren’t pigeonholing people,” Lane says. “Giving staff a lot of different opportunities and the ability to explore other things, especially younger staff, is really important.”

Treanor gathers the entire company for an annual in-person meeting called Connect, where employees celebrate the year’s achievements. “It really helps people know that they’re a part of something bigger,” he says.

Coleman believes the future looks bright for Treanor. “As an architect, you’re always kind of concerned if the market will dry up,” she says. “We’re leaning into our multifaceted approach, going where growth is happening.”