Architectural Firms Disclose Merger Plan

Welton Becket Associates, Santa Monica, and Ellerbe Associates Inc., Minneapolis, are planning to merge, a move that will place the new firm among the five largest design companies in the nation.

MacDonald G. Becket, chairman of the Becket Group, and John J. Labosky, president of Ellerbe, have signed a letter of intent to merge their companies by late this year. A name for the new firm has not been chosen, a Becket spokesman said.

Founded in Los Angeles in 1933, Becket ranked 13th in Building Design & Construction magazine’s July, 1987, survey of the nation’s leading architectural and engineering firms. It had 1986 revenue of $24 million. Ellerbe, founded in St. Paul in 1909, ranked eighth, with revenues of $34 million.