Daily Record

One of Baltimore’s oldest architecture firms, Cochran, Stephenson & Donkervoet Inc. has announced that it will close its doors.

The firm blamed the economic crisis, and especially the lack of funding for senior housing developments, which it specialized in, for its decision to begin the process of dissolution.

Tom Spies, CSD’s chairman, said that both private financing for continuing care retirement communities and demand for such developments had dried up.

“They’re privately financed, and banks just are not lending,” he said Wednesday. “The second thing is, for people to go into a retirement home largely depends on people being able to sell their homes for a price that they think it’s worth. Many, many people who otherwise would be excellent candidates to go into a retirement home are postponing the decision, and doing what they call aging in place.”

CSD, which was founded in Baltimore in 1947 and had offices in Dallas, designed a large portfolio of senior care facilities, healthcare facilities and educational buildings all over the country.

In Baltimore, the firm won design awards from the Masonry Institute of Maryland and the American Institute of Architects for its work on the Our Daily Bread Employment Center, a soup kitchen on Fallsway near downtown. The firm also helmed the design of the expansion of the Baltimore Convention Center.