Paul Mellblom likens himself to a border collie. “I do try to herd and organize,” he says with a laugh. “I like to move things along—to get the job done.”
In June, Mellblom became a principal at the Minneapolis architectural firm of Meyer Scherer & Rockcastle. “Paul is tireless,” says Managing Principal Jack Poling. “He’s diligent, meticulous, and thorough. He’s absolutely trustworthy, absolutely devoted to the firm. And he acts on the belief that we share our talents for the greater good of society.”
Case in point: When the firm took on the pro-bono restoration of the Alvar Street Branch Library in New Orleans last February, Mellblom volunteered to head the project. He did it on his own time, working nights and weekends to complete the job before the American Library Association’s convention in New Orleans in June. The library, neglected for years before Hurricane Katrina, was transformed into a 21st-century learning center with 22 computer stations. Mellblom says, “We saw the need for a place to inspire—a beacon of hope in the neighborhood.”
Volunteer work “gets my juices going,” he says. He’s recently served on four nonprofit boards: Clare Housing (for those living with HIV or AIDS), YouthCARE (educational services for urban youth in the Twin Cities), The Link (serving at-risk youth), and Community Solutions Fund (a workplace-giving federation). He also heads the building and grounds committee for St. Stephen’s Catholic Church in the Whittier neighborhood of Minneapolis.
Mellblom is particularly proud of his work on a Clare Housing apartment building in Minneapolis. Seven years of volunteer work resulted in 32 units of housing for people with HIV or AIDS. “It was a good education, dealing with something big and messy and not quite so completely controllable,” he says. “But I tend to be very tenacious. We all recognized that if we didn’t do it, nobody would . . . and we’d be failing to make the world a better place.”
Mellblom grew up on a farm in rural New Jersey, then earned a degree in mechanical engineering at Tulane University in New Orleans. But after working for four years at Hughes Aircraft in Los Angeles, he left to get his architectural degree at the University of Texas at Austin.
“My mechanical-engineering training has been invaluable,” Mellblom says. “Engineers tend to think in linear processes; architects tend to think in circular processes. It’s been a very good thing to have both. It makes me a little distinctive.”
Poling says Mellblom is “a quiet leader. He doesn’t jump into things and act authoritatively if he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.” As a principal, Mellblom is now charged with helping the firm grow its business, which includes work on residential, commercial, institutional, and historical structures.
One of his biggest projects to date has been opening the firm’s first satellite office, in Maryland. He helped write the business and marketing plan, then directed the renovation of an old building into new office space. “It was a very big task, but it was a discrete task,” he says, “and I work very well with those kinds of things—get the business plan done, get the office built, and get it open.”
Mellblom says, “I don’t tend to be entrepreneurial as much as managerial. One of the ways I motivate others is to recognize that I’m not the smartest person in the room. Like the Enron executives—they were the dumbest guys in the room, because their hubris canceled out all of their wisdom! Good leaders know how to motivate people to produce something that everyone agrees is desirable. You need to listen to all of the feedback and adjust based on how other people feel.”
