Robert Miller was working in a family-owned ice cream shop when the owner’s son, who was pursuing an engineering degree at LTU, told him he should be an architect.
Miller recalled his friend saying so many years ago, “You’re always building models, always drawing, and doing creative things. Every time I walk through the architect building, I see them doing all that stuff.” Of course, architects no longer draw by hand, but after touring LTU’s campus in the ’90s, his fate was sealed, even though he didn’t know anything about architecture.
That led to taking classes in community college to “really get an understanding of architecture” before enrolling in LTU two years later.
It’s a decision he doesn’t regret, even if he didn’t fully appreciate the more tedious aspects of design, like material specifications, for his classes. “I didn’t want to do that; I wanted to design cool-looking buildings!” the ’98 alum said.
But it was exactly that training that serves him well today, especially now that he owns his own design firm, M Architects, in Northville. The firm, formed in 2017, has grown from one employee to 10 since 2020, when he hired his first employee. And he has an excellent recruiting tool in Sigma Phi Epsilon—the fraternity that served as his social outlet—often hiring LTU students for their strong “practical sensibilities” in addition to their conceptual abilities.
LTU alum Brian Eady (BSArch ’08, MArch ‘12) joined him last spring as a partner, bringing a robust technical background to Miller’s focus on constructability and design. The firm is working on the Northville Downs property, the former horse racing facility that closed in February 2024, alongside other developers and architects. Plans to redevelop the site have been on and off for about eight years, with M Architects’ involvement beginning about three years ago.
The Downs will be a community of single-family homes, townhouses, row houses, apartments, condominiums, and small businesses—plus 15 acres of public parks and green space.
“There’s no other project in the country of this size or magnitude that I know of with such proximity to a small downtown,” Miller said. “It nearly doubles the size of the downtown.”
Miller has an “immense love of historical architecture” and is sensitive to preserving the contextual importance of the site, which opened in 1944. Instead of “a standard cookie-cutter subdivision,” the design and development teams are weaving the overall appearance into the fabric of downtown Northville, diversifying the architecture and style of each home they design. The Downs—which spans 48 acres of land—is slated for completion in 2027.
“We’re very aware of the responsibility we’ve been given, so we want to make sure we’re doing the right thing for the Northville community, and we really hope in the end it will be.”
By: Pam Houghton
