Tom Feazel spends a lot of time in grocery stores.
As the newly hired director of food retail for ArchitecturePlus International, Feazel is responsible for overseeing design teams working on plans for new retail grocery stores.
There might be 15 such projects under way at a time, Feazel said, and depending on the extent of design, a single project might last up to six months. Basically, ArchitecturePlus designs two types of retail food stores - where the equipment and display areas are predetermined and when they're not.
Most retail food stores will range from 30,000 to 60,000 square feet, he said. "If we do a store and the equipment layout, that's very labor intensive," he said. Feazel is a registered architect in six southeastern states, including Florida, which means he can sign and seal architectural drawings in those states. But his focus is on Florida, particularly the West Coast.
Feazel grew up in Memphis. He served in the Air Force from 1965-69, then graduated with a bachelor's degree in architecture from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville in 1974, just in time for the oil embargo.
"I went straight into unemployment. It was awful," Feazel recalled. "Architecture is the leading edge of a building project, and when you have a huge recession, the first thing companies do is cut back on their building programs."
Feazel said he has weathered four such downturns in the architecture industry in his career.
When times were tough, Feazel turned to freelance photography. He spent two years with a weekly newspaper in Knoxville before joining a series of architectural firms in Memphis. He bought the first architecture computer-aided drafting, or CAD, computer in the city for $240,000, he said, and then joined the firm that made the equipment and software, InterGraph, in 1984.
In 1989, Feazel moved to Greenville, S.C., to join another architectural firm. In 1994, he joined Publix Super Markets in Lakeland, moving to Polk City, where he still lives. From 2001 until this year, he was a partner in his own consulting firm before joining API.
API, founded in 1990, offers design concepts for the retail and hospitality industries, including restaurants and "anything that has to do with food service and food retail," Feazel said.
"I feel like architecture is really my calling," Feazel said. "It's an amazing feeling to drive down the street and see a building you've designed and then go inside.
"Architects can visualize in their minds what a building is going to be like when it's there as a physical presence, but actually going in and seeing the thing in 3-D is an amazingly rewarding thing."
In his nearly seven years with Publix, Feazel was architect of record for approximately 250 stores, many of them prototypes, he said. One of his favorite is the Citrus Park Publix in Tampa, he said.
"Most people think of (a grocery store) as a big box with shelves in it. The support systems for all of those things are very complex - refrigeration, traffic flow, getting people in and out, motivated to buy. All those things are a part of it," he said.
Feazel, 58, is a single father with two adult daughters and two grandchildren. He enjoys spending time at his lakeside home, opposite the Fantasy of Flight attraction. "I enjoy the activity over there," he said. "I cruise around the lake at 3 mph on my pontoon boat" taking photographs, he said.
"I love Florida," he said. "The weather is hot but not disagreeably so on the lake. I love Polk City. Polk City doesn't have a traffic light."
