Meet the Team and Consultants
Dover, Kohl & Partners
Dover, Kohl & Partners Town Planning was founded in 1987. Their firm’s expertise lies in balancing the visionary ‘civic art’ of city planning with the practical consensus-building needed to make the built environment successful and to protect the natural environment. Working on revitalizing historic towns, retrofitting suburbia, and designing new towns, they focus on creating and restoring walkable, livable neighborhoods. Their experience includes a national and international portfolio of work. The common thread linking all their projects is a holistic approach to community building, with plans that emphasize complete neighborhoods as the basis for sound communities.
Dover, Kohl & Partners believe that design is the missing element in contemporary town planning, and their work centers on re-introducing form and design into easy-to-understand plans, visualizations, and development regulations that focus on the physical aspects of future growth and conservation. Their process has helped communities across the country to visualize change before it occurs and has been the subject of studies by the National Charrette Institute, the Form-Based Codes Institute and others.
Victor Dover serves as principal-in-charge for many of the firm's design and planning projects. He has led more than 150 charrettes. Victor lectures widely around the nation on the topics of livable communities and sustainable development and was national chair of the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU) from 2010 to 2012. He recently coauthored, with John Massengale, the bestselling book Street Design: The Secret to Great Cities and Towns (Wiley 2014). Victor has been awarded the John Nolen Medal for contributions to urbanism, and is an adjunct faculty member at the University of Miami.
Jason King serves as Principal and Senior Project Director at Dover, Kohl & Partners. He has directed multidisciplinary teams around the country and has served as the project director and prime author on over 200 plans for cities, towns, neighborhoods, and corridors. From the first plan he worked for the Tarautao Islands of Thailand, to the multiple plans he authored in Coastal Louisiana, and finally to Seven50 the Plan for Southeast Florida that he directed and continues to advise on, Jason’s work has focused on social, economic, and climate change resilience. Jason’s work is featured in numerous planning texts such as Sustainable Urbanism and Form-Based Codes and he has been interviewed by the New York Times and National Public Radio.
Meredith has a background in town planning, downtown revitalization, community development and historic preservation. Meredith has developed a unique understanding of urban planning; especially as it relates to street design and public space activation, connectivity, community engagement, and grant-funded street and building projects. Her understanding of both urban and rural communities is influenced both by her experience as the Director of a Main Street Program for seven years and by her time spent living and studying outside of the United States in locations such as Copenhagen, Denmark; and Nairobi, Kenya.
Robert Gibbs serves as GPG’s president and managing director. Gibbs is considered one of the foremost urban retail planners in America. For more than two decades, his expertise has been sought by some of the most respected mayors, renowned architects, and successful real-estate developers in the country. Profiled in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Urban Land, Gibbs has, writes The Atlantic Monthly, “a commercial sensibility unlike anything possessed by the urban planners who usually design downtown-renewal efforts.”
Alex is an urban planner and economist with a strong foundation in geographic information systems (GIS). His experience in scenario planning and housing policy allows him to fulfill a broad range of project needs – from urban design to redevelopment analysis. Alex’s work focuses on corridor analysis, housing, and economic development. He has experience working at a range of scales, from site-specific redevelopment projects to regional visioning efforts.
Spider is a Missoula resident and founder/owner of Six Pony Hitch, a Montana Brand Identity and Web Design firm that uses the power of carefully crafted positioning and smart design to help great businesses and organizations tell their story to the people that matter.
Mark has been a resident of Missoula for over 30 years. His Civil Engineering background is founded in site development, planning, design, permitting, and construction oversight for civil improvements serving commercial and residential subdivisions. Mark has extensive experience with innovative design and permitting of onsite public sewer and water systems, roadways, commercial grading plans, storm drainage structures, and municipal sewer and water extensions.
Mr. Burns is a Senior Practice Builder and Regional Vice President Kimley-Horn and Associates, Inc., a multi-disciplinary engineering and planning firm. Mr. Burns has over 28 years of parking operations, management, consulting and strategic planning experience. In the past several years, Mr. Burns has made municipal parking programs a special area of focus. He has also lead national research and analysis efforts in the areas of parking system organizational development, parking as an economic development strategy, parking system strategic planning and parking system branding and marketing program development.
Jon has almost 20 years of experience as a civil engineering and neighborhood planning innovator, and is a recognized leader in the area of New Urbanist planning and engineering. Jon is a 2006 Knight Fellow in Community Building at the University of Miami’s School of Architecture, a co-founder of the New England Chapter of the Congress for the New Urbanism, and on the faculty of the Form-Based Codes
Institute. Jon’s project designs have won numerous local and national awards, including a CNU Charter Award Honorable Mention, the Rudy Bruner Award for Urban Excellence, and the Boston Society of Landscape Architects Honor Award.