Photo by David Ellis
Founder, Principal, Creative Director, Shea Inc.
By Stephen Regenold
The sight of 400 twinkling beer bottles hanging in the air is at first alarming. Catch a glimpse out of the corner of your eye and you might step back. But then you’ll realize the mass of bottles—levitating, Grain Belt Premium brand, swirled up and casting light though labels and glass—is a chandelier, a lighting fixture welcoming you to a dining room, warm and inviting out past its strange glow.
This is Harry’s Food & Cocktails, a newly opened restaurant on Washington Avenue in Minneapolis, named after the co-owner’s grandfather, Harry Snyder, a semifamous mid-20th century St. Paul cook. It was designed by architect David Shea—from the chandelier on up.
Indeed, Shea, the 60-year-old founder, principal, and creative director of the architectural design firm Shea Inc., had his hands in all but the most minor of details after Dwight Bonewell, co-owner of Harry’s, hired Shea’s firm last March.
“David was there from the start helping us with the concept and theme of the place,” Bonewell says. “He recognized that we had a great story with my grandfather’s history, and David helped us build it from there.”
In less than five months, Shea and his team assisted in transforming the space at 500 Washington Avenue South into an open, clean and modern restaurant and bar, though bolstered with a warm dash of nostalgia that includes poster-size black-and-white photos and tile work over the kitchen, a kind of contemporary supper club. Shea considered all facets of what the dining and drinking experience would entail at Harry’s then built a plan from this vision: Shea and his team designed the restaurant’s layout, including the seating arrangement, the circular bar, and an open kitchen design; picked a color scheme and fixtures; created the Harry’s Food & Cocktails’ logo; researched the history of Harry Snyder for a bio on the Web site and quotes painted on the wall above the bar; designed the menu’s graphic look; picked lighting, including the chandelier and other beer-bottle-based table lights; and assisted with a marketing plan.
It is this holistic approach—one that takes a vertical view to blend architecture, interior design, marketing communications, and consulting—that distinguishes Shea Inc. “I like to be involved with the earliest stages of the brand,” Shea says. “If I can help develop a strategy, help create a brand, a name, make the graphics, choose colors, research the customer base—all those pieces—then the architecture and design will come more naturally.”
Shea calls this approach marketing-based design, or the “vertical branding design” process. “I’m not sure if it has an official name,” he says. (The company boilerplate reads: “Shea is a marketing and design firm integrating expertise in marketing, architecture, and interior design. Shea blends diverse perspectives, skills, cultures and knowledge into solid creative strategy for clients.”)
With an office in Butler Square in downtown Minneapolis, Shea Inc. employs 35 full-time people, and in its ranks there are graphic designers, architects, marketing and public relations workers, and interior designers. Shea runs the company with Tanya Spaulding, a principal. Services offered range from full architectural design for banks, retail, public spaces, and restaurants, to the creation of company letterhead and marketing campaigns.
“Shea is a unique local firm,” says Christopher Hudson, editor of Architecture Minnesota, published by the American Institute of Architects Minnesota. “The interior branding and design, the marketing and communication work is unusual, but it’s what can make a firm like this respected in their niche.”
Indeed, many of the top restaurant and hospitality spaces in the Twin Cities bear the mark of Shea, including, to name a few: Solera on Hennepin Avenue in Minneapolis; Bella in Blaine; Crave, a new American-fusion eatery at Edina’s Galleria; Minneapolis’ Midtown Global Market; the Block E mall in downtown Minneapolis; the Rainforest Café at Mall of America in Bloomington; the Buca di Beppo chain of Italian restaurants; the Dakota Jazz Club on Nicollet Mall; the new Chambers Hotel in Minneapolis, among literally hundreds of others. Masthead clients include Macy’s, TCF National Bank, Morton’s of Chicago, Wells Fargo and Midcontinent Communications.
The 29-year-old firm didn’t start as a marketing-based design company. Shea came to Minneapolis by way of the University of Minnesota, and Boston before that. He started his firm strictly as an architectural venture, though it quickly evolved. “I’m an architect by trade, but early on I kept seeing every project needing more,” he says. “There was a better way to do this business.”
Shea believes his company’s approach—basing the architecture on the brand and the brand on the architecture—is where parts of the architecture and design industry are going. “Clients get the whole concept, the package, in one place,” he says. “We can meet the client’s needs better with more arrows in our quiver.”
Phillip Koski, a local architect and principal of the Minneapolis firm Inland Office for Tomorrow’s Architecture, says Shea Inc. has built a niche as a top firm for Twin Cities restaurants and hospitality venues. “I call companies like Shea Inc. ‘production firms,’ meaning they focus on the same type of project and become known as the experts.”
Projects like Brasa Rotisserie, a Caribbean-style chicken shack on East Hennepin Avenue in Minneapolis, are Shea’s specialty. For this project, which involved renovating a former service station previously occupied by Betty’s Bikes and Buns diner, Shea worked with owner and chef Alex Roberts to create a name, a theme, and other branding elements.
Brasa’s design is clean and warm, with big glass-and-steel garage doors that open onto a patio. Working with the construction team of Site Assembly Inc., Shea incorporated punchy color and faux painting techniques and created a building shell that resembles a Caribbean shanty. This look is juxtaposed with modern fixtures and furnishings. “Alex Roberts is a well-known fine-dining chef, but with this project he was looking to reach normal people out for lunch or dinner,” Shea says. “I think we nailed that with Brasa.”
