Lance, Cheely RLA, MBA, LEED AP

Director of Landscape Architecture

What I Do:

I am an entrepreneurial landscape architect with a personal mission of making people’s lives better through landscape architecture. This personal mission fuels all my professional life.

My philosophy is that landscapes should be beautiful, but they shouldn’t stop there. Landscapes also should be put to work. From low-impact and restorative environmental design to traffic calming and complete streets, effective landscape architecture that incorporates creative thinking about how a space could work on many levels can propel good projects into greatness.

That’s why I love public space and pursue every opportunity to apply value-added landscape architecture to all public projects. To me, landscape architecture is about the experience of outdoor space. No project exists that can’t benefit from landscape architecture that delivers an improved user experience.

As part of CRANSTON’s senior management team, I see staff development as my top priority. My staff represents my own little work community. The more my staff grows and internalizes the vision, the more our outside community partners benefit through smooth, professional, creative, and cutting-edge project delivery.

My Professional Experience:

I have developed my professional skills through early-career work at a multidisciplinary AE firm, attending MBA school, and owning my own practice, and now I’m leading a growing multi-site team of landscape architects. I have extensive career experience in parks and recreation, public space, streetscape design, and multi-family amenity design.

I also am passionate and knowledgeable about the use of native plants, especially perennials, and cutting-edge research on establishing native wildflowers from seed. I am committed to delivering great landscape architecture that empowers communities across the heart of the south to thrive.

My Education:

  • Master of Business Administration degree, Georgia Regents University
  • Bachelor of Landscape Architecture degree, The University of Georgia

Why “empowering communities to thrive” is so important to me:

When CRANSTON envisions empowering communities throughout the heart of the Southeast to thrive, I see a world of possibilities to use landscape architecture to push forward that vision. I believe in making all people’s lives better through landscape architecture — my clients through the design process, our stakeholders through the project lifetime, my staff through career development and job satisfaction, and my family and I through provision and professional fulfillment.

Email address: lcheely@cranstonengineering.com