Patrick Chraghchian is the founder and chief executive of Adept Urban, a vertically integrated architecture, development and construction firm based in Pasadena. Chraghchian, who graduated from the University of Southern California as a civil engineer, first started Adept as a construction company in 2003 and eventually grew it to encompass three business lines.

Today, the firm specializes in multifamily and mixed-use residential projects and is especially nimble withinthe city of Pasadena. Adept has two active projects in the area, The Affinity and 388 Cordova, and just unwrapped another – Colorado 77.

Adept Urban is not just an architecture firm, but in many cases designs, develops and constructs its own projects. Why does Adept choose to take the lead on all three?

We think being able to have control over the entirety of a project gives us an edge and an advantage in terms of being able to do projects that perhaps could be a little more difficult. We have an advantage where we can see the big picture, starting very early on because everything’s in-house. It also allows us to have efficiencies which you’re not going to get if you have competing interests. It’s all about collaboration and there isn’t that conflict because, at the end, it’s just one entity.

Does the firm focus on any specific asset types?

Over the last 20 years, we’ve done predominantly mixed-use residential and urban infill type projects, as well as adaptive reuse. We started doing adaptive reuse back in 2003 and, since then, we’ve converted a number of other asset types including mid-rise office buildings to residential and other types of buildings to residential. But our core business is the residential side of the market, the residential mixed-use.

Adept is based in Pasadena and is also very active in the city. What do you like most about doing business in Pasadena?

Pasadena is a unique place. When you look at the map of Southern California, we have a lot of world-renowned educational institutions. We have a significant presence in the arts scene. There are a number of different interesting things about Pasadena that make it very unique in Southern California. It’s a very walkable city. It’s an old city with a lot of good, interesting, historic fabric, as well as a lot of new and innovative buildings. There’re not that many other places in Southern California that can offer the variety of things that make Pasadena so unique.

How have you seen the city evolve over time?

In a lot of different ways – going back 20 years, Pasadena was one of the first cities that adopted the mixed-use ordinance that allowed areas like Old Pasadena to develop and be what they have become. And then as things have changed and we’ve gone through Covid and we’re trying to get back to normalcy, we see a lot of other things, including technology moving into the city, as well as other forms of residential that perhaps are somewhat newer.

Adept is a strong advocate for adaptive reuse. Why?

It makes sense and we need it. As we all know, the office class has been underperforming in the last few years so there’s been quite a bit of opportunity to take a product that hasn’t lived its complete life yet but is obsolete in terms of use and try to find unique ways of utilizing what is already there. It’s something that we want to do because of the lesser impact on the environment, but also the need for things like housing. And it’s not just housing, but other types of uses. Pasadena offers an opportunity like no other city because there is a lot of diversity in the real estate food groups.

Adept recently unwrapped Colorado 77, a mixed-use project featuring 77 units of housing and 65,000 square feet of retail in Pasadena. What can you tell me about its design?

Going back, I think 15 years, there was a department store, Macy’s, that was built over two stories of parking that happened to be owned by the city of Pasadena. When we were asked to look at this project, we were asked to look at developing a project that was already entitled, but the owners of Paseo Colorado approached us to see if we could build this mixed-use project. And what we did was come in and we started building over the existing parking garage and we built two stories of retail for the retail track owner and then, on top of that, we built 77 condominiums.

Tell me about one of Adept’s active Pasadena projects you’re particularly excited about.

388 Cordova is a conversion of an eight-story office building into a mixed-use residential and office (project). We were approached to look at this building initially by the original owners, I think like five or six years ago, when they were trying to reposition the office building. When we saw the building, we sort of fell in love with it, made an offer to buy it and, in the process, we converted the upper floors into residential. We kept the lower two floors as office – we are based on the second floor, that’s our home office – and at the end of the process, we added some penthouse units.

And then, what we did with the (detached) garage – which was sort of an eyesore, it was just a parking structure in a somewhat residential environment – we wrapped the garage with residential units, added a floor to the garage and built two stories (of more residential units) on top of the garage. So now, when you pass by the building, there’s no way to know that there is a parking garage there because it’s all very human scale. It’s activated the street and created this very interesting, unique environment next to this more modern, high-rise building without getting rid of any of the parking units that are there. We are doing the final touches and getting ready to start selling those units.

What do you like most about your job?

The diversity of it – it’s never the same. Every day is different. It’s the kind of job that evolves very rapidly, but I would have to say that I get the most joy in interacting with people that are in this industry – whether it’s people that we collaborate with on our design team, whether it’s our clients, whether it’s the investors or people who live in our buildings, people who buy our for-sale product, or people who rent our units. The people are the most interesting and satisfying thing about what I do every day.