About

Charles "Chooch" Pickard, AIA, is a preservation architect and creative-placemaking facilitator with more than thirty years in historic preservation, urban design, and community-minded downtowns across Tennessee, Arkansas, and Mississippi.

As the first Executive Director of the Memphis Regional Design Center, he led four years of work on walkable, bikeable development and creative placemaking in the city.

The practice works as a convener rather than a solo operator: shaping the plan, assembling the right team around it, and bringing hands-on historic tax credit experience to the financing — while keeping the community in the lead. Where a project needs a grant writer, a structural engineer, or a specialist consultant, they are brought in rather than approximated.

A standing offer, at no charge: walking a vacant building with an owner or a realtor to talk through what it can and cannot become. Most buildings can carry more than people assume, and the constraints that matter are usually not the ones being worried about.

The Columbian Mutual Tower at Court Square Center, Memphis.

Registration: Licensed architect in Tennessee, Arkansas, and Mississippi · NCARB certified
Standards: Sustained work under the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for Rehabilitation, and the federal and state Historic Tax Credit programs through the Tennessee Historical Commission and the National Park Service
Training: NCI Charrette System™, National Charrette Institute
Networks: American Institute of Architects · Creative Placemaking Communities Network · Urban Land Institute
Education: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign — Master of Architecture, preservation specialization, and Bachelor of Science in architectural studies; Versailles study abroad

Service

Thirty years on the boards and committees that shape how Memphis gets built.

AIA Memphis: President 2010; Past President 2011; President-Elect 2009; Secretary 2007–2008
AIA Tennessee: Director 2005 and 2009
Memphis Area Transit Authority: Board of Commissioners 2010–2016
Memphis Stormwater Board: Chair 2012–2014; member since 2012
Coliseum Coalition: Vice President since 2016
Memphis Heritage: Board of Directors; Architecture Auction co-chair
BLDG Memphis: Policy Committee 2011–2020
Unified Development Code: Review Committee 2010–2012

Recognition

2024: Memphis Business Journal — Best Renovation, medium category
2022: Inside Memphis Business — Power Players
2019: AIA Memphis Presidents’ Award
2018: AIA Blueprint for Better Communities Champion
2009: Tennessee Historical Commission Certificate of Merit · AIA Tennessee Award of Merit · Memphis Heritage Paul Gruenberg Commercial Rehabilitation Award · J. Timothy Anderson Award for Excellence in Historic Rehabilitation
2003: AIA Memphis Presidents’ Award — first recipient