Mike Allmendinger is the President of Kilbourne Group, with offices located downtown Fargo in the Loretta Building. Mike previously served as President and Founder of Land Elements, which he sold in 2019 after doing business for 15 years. Mike is an NDSU graduate with a Bachelor of Science degree in Environmental Design and Bachelor of Landscape Architecture degree.
After graduating from college in 1998, Mike traveled to Denver and Chicago to interview for landscape architecture professions with established firms. He received a job offer and strongly considered taking that role, but instead had the opportunity to work for the founder of Kilbourne Group, Doug Burgum. He started his entrepreneur route from that point where he started his own company, Land Elements.
When sharing his experience with starting his own business, Mike shared “I grew up in a family construction business and went to school for landscape architecture because I was passionate about it. At the time there wasn’t a professional license in ND when I started Land Elements and it was a great achievement to bring that together.”
As he then shifts his focus to how Kilbourne Group was started, he shares “The idea of Kilbourne Group was built around the community master plan that was put together over 25 years ago. Our founder, Doug Burgum, saw the city’s vision and put a team together to work on it. We’ve been dedicated to this overall strategy of redevelopment in downtown Fargo for more than 15 years.”
Kilbourne Group is a catalyst of inspiration and action for vibrant downtown communities. They serve people that want to live in a walkable neighborhood. They achieve that by creating mixed use buildings and really focusing on the goal of having a lot of people on the sidewalks with an 18-hour city.
“Personally I love creating unique experiences for people when they come and visit the spaces we have the opportunity to build, whether that is landscape or a new building, Broadway Square or transforming a surface parking lot into mixed use spaces for new residents and businesses. When designing and building projects, creating unique opportunities that people will have is at the core of what I believe in. This also creates great memories and if you build great memories for people that’s a way to build a strong sense of community.”
As he reflects on the high and low points throughout his career Mike shares low points such as “challenges of building a team, focusing on what services to offer to clients and figuring out the business model that works long term and be a sustainable business.” However, the high points he shares include “creating missions and visions for businesses such as creating unique experiences on every landscape project we had the opportunity to work on. This spills over to Kilbourne Group as well, creating vibrant downtowns in the projects that we build by utilizing mixed uses.”
When he thinks of ways the community can support the Kilbourne Group in their next stage of growth, Mike says “It’s about supporting an 18-hour city – If you are at a point in your life where you want to live in downtown Fargo there are places to own and there are places to rent, we’d love to have you living in downtown. If you have free time there is retail, food and beverage, and hundreds of small business locally owned entrepreneurs taking a lot of risk; come and support them in downtown Fargo. We would not have a unique downtown without all of the businesses that are taking risk in downtown Fargo. Lastly, bring your business downtown Fargo, there is so much culture and collaboration that your business can take advantage of in being downtown.”
You can learn more about Kilbourne Group here, as well as on social media platforms. Additionally, you can view office space openings here, and apartment listings here.
