If Robert LeBlanc had been born into a different family, he might have become a surgeon or an artist. But the specialist in green community planning and design was destined to be his own boss

When Robert LeBlanc graduated from Dalhousie University in 1989 with a degree in biochemistry, he had every intention of becoming a doctor. Somehow, he ended up going on to NSCAD University, where he planned to study graphic design but left with a degree in environmental planning. By the time he had earned a master’s degree in landscape architecture, he was more clear about carving out his own path.

The entrepreneurial spirit runs deep in LeBlanc’s family, after all. “It was rammed down our throats from birth,” he says with a laugh. His father, Roger, found success with a cellular company, Coastal Communications, before selling it to another son, Paul. He then opened a Chem-Dry carpet-and-upholstery cleaning franchise and now owns Apple Courier in Dartmouth. Paul left the cellular world behind to create a successful creative agency, Extreme Group. Meanwhile, straight out of grad school, LeBlanc landed a job teaching landscape architecture at the University of Canberra in Australia. But it only took a year for him to realize he needed to go into business for himself.

“There really weren’t many places to work in Halifax,” says LeBlanc, now 43. “There were only a couple of firms, so I figured with what I’d learned in Australia I might as well start my own company. Paul was launching Extreme, and my dad was starting a company at around the same time. So we all hung our shingles out in the same spot in Burnside.”

Ironically, LeBlanc’s first contract under his Ekistics banner drew more on the graphic design courses he had taken at NSCAD than on landscape architecture; he created a series of interactive, interpretive, touch-screen panels for the Borden Gateway Centre in P.E.I. “It’s not often that you open your doors and two weeks later land a $100,000 contract,” he says. Quickly specializing in creating touch-screen applications, he decided to set up a second company, Form:Media, to complement Ekistics’ urban planning and landscape architecture practice. “There’s a cross-pollination of different design talents that makes it more multi-disciplinary than a standard landscape architecture company,” he says.

While the two companies are housed in the same homey digs in downtown Dartmouth, Form:Media’s 11 employees take a new-media approach to signage, interpretive experiences, and interactive iPod-based tours. When they work on projects—as they have recently, creating downtown plans for the Nova Scotia towns of Amherst and Yarmouth—the 11 other employees at Ekistics handle the urban planning and landscape architecture elements, while Form:Media deals with signage and civic branding. Both companies are obsessed with the idea of sustainability in their work, and both have focused on that theme since day one.  

Mantra for the masses

“Sustainability is everything,” says LeBlanc. “It’s our mantra here: people and ecology combined with natural systems. Ekistics is a Greek word that means the science of human settlement, so it’s all about how to live with nature.”

Two high-profile jobs are the post-Hurricane Juan rejuvenation of Halifax’s Point Pleasant Park and the expansion of Bedford’s waterfront. For Point Pleasant Park, Ekistics partnered with NIPPaysage of Montreal to win an international design competition. The $10-million, five-year master plan to revitalize the large urban green space also includes a park-management plan for the next 100 years and earned the company a Canadian Society of Landscape Architects National Award in 2008.

For the Bedford contract, Ekistics has built design guidelines into the plan for green roofs and the use of rain gardens to deal with storm water runoff in a more ecologically sound way.

“We’re actually building these green principles into the plans for communities,” says LeBlanc. “That’s the new carrot. So if you want more height, more density, more whatever, you have to include these greener principles. And the reality is that it doesn’t cost any more to develop these solutions. In some cases, you can even save money.”

LeBlanc is spreading his mantra of sustainability overseas as well. Ekistics has developed a waterfront-development plan for Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, has created master plans for new cities in Libya and China, and has won a large contract to design the first green city in Morocco. Through its subsidiary RLA Golf Architecture, the company has also designed sustainable golf courses and golf communities across Atlantic Canada and as far away as China and India.

The international work was hit hard by the recession, yet LeBlanc decided 2009 was the perfect time to open a U.S. office in Bangor. “There were so many companies going under, and the whole consulting landscape was changing rapidly,” he says. “Before the recession, the fees in the U.S. were almost double what they are here. Now they’re significantly less, plus the U.S. dollar has gone down. Right now the Bangor office is paying for itself. When the economy improves, we’ll be a household name there.”

The Bangor office has already been working on a couple of high-profile contracts, including the biggest planning project in Maine: creating the master plan for redeveloping the decommissioned Brunswick Naval Air Station. It’s also working on the Maine Green Downtown program, developing a strategy to green the downtowns of seven communities: Augusta, Bucksport, Farmington, Lisbon Falls, Millinocket, Norway, and Presque Isle. “It’s everything from improving bike trails, greenway networks, and mass transit to creating green roofs and making the downtowns more people friendly,” says LeBlanc.