Kidder Architect

Levi Evalt _{on Google}

Sep 8th, 2019

Last year my wife and I contracted to have Kidder and Wachter design a dental office downtown in Erie. Their estimate for the job was close to $20,000 for blueprints and for being a liason for us in raising capital and working with local representatives and community leaders to help us get tax credits toward our plans. After over two months of meeting with Chip Wacther, our bill was over $25,000 with almost nothing to show for it. Blueprints had not included the changes we spent hours discussing from the week before. Week after week we met and it became very clear to me that we were not going to be able to reach the end of the project without at least an additional $25,000 based on the time it was taking to get through the changes needed. I have personally designed and built two different dental offices with architectural fees ranging from zero to $10,000. I have had good experiences with architects but this was not one of them.
When I asked them to discontinue the case, a week later I received another bill for $5,000. The bill was for a visual rendering of the building that I never asked for. We hadn’t even completed the structural and building layout. There were still many egregious interior errors still needing corrected before any exterior design could be accurate.
It has been over a year since I stopped my project with them and to this day it bothers me that I spent a single dollar with this family.
I would not contract with this firm to have them do work for you.