ENTREPRENEUR
SUMMER 10
BUILDING SUCCESS FROM OUR HERITAGE Buildings are in his blood, he says, which is why Peter Stienlet takes such pride in preserving some of our finest architecture. He talks to Brian Nicholls Right, we’ve all shared the joke about that Yellow Pages cross-reference: “Boring, see civil engineers”. But two civil engineers you don’t typecast like that are Peter Stienlet and Mark Turner. Stienlet earlier studied three years towards a medical degree; Turner’s an ex-paratrooper and driller roughneck on oil rigs. Not quite the Odd Couple perhaps, but certainly civil engineers out of the ordinary – and business partners now in Patrick Parsons Ltd. It’s a firm Stienlet started out with at 17 and now, at 41, runs as managing director. In two
BUSINESS QUARTER | SUMMER 10
years its workforce has more than doubled, and he predicts a 40% rise in turnover as he discusses opportunities in the Far East with a Chinese architect. Buildings are in his blood, he says. Patrick Parsons indeed has recently won the conservation accolade in the RICS North East Renaissance Awards, for its part in developer Gentoo’s refurbishing and converting (to apartments, offices, a restaurant and surgery) the Grade II listed Irvin Building, a major landmark that was once a bonded warehouse on North Shields fish quay.
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Following the family pattern he might have been an architect. His great great grandfather, who came from Belgium to set up ship’s chandlers along the road from the Irvin Building, had a son Pascal. The firm later became known as Pascal J Stienlet and Son when Peter’s grandfather took over. It fuelled speculation that Peter would follow suit. Pascal J Stienlet, after all, laid notable landmarks in Newcastle, designing Byker’s Apollo cinema in 1933. That was bombed eight years later. But a new Apollo by the same practice rose on the same site in 1955.