Big Moves and Small Business

Rita Baron is a go-getter who hails from Lebanon, spent her formative years in Las Vegas and started her own 417-land design firm.

(page 1 of 2)

Rita Baron, principal designer at Baron Design & Associates, is from Lebanon. If you’re thinking, “Yeah, I have a cousin who lives in Lebanon,” there’s a pretty solid chance you’re thinking of the wrong Lebanon. She’s from the Middle Eastern country, not the small Missouri town.

Baron Design & Associates is responsible for several recognizable buildings in 417-land. She is the creative mind behind the Hamra Building, The Butterfly Palace, The Foot Doctor’s PC, Washington Senior Housing, Tuscany Village, City Hall in Pierce City and the Gallery II shopping center, OakStar Bank and other projects. Quite a many projects for a 4-year-old company. “For a small firm to get these projects is lucky. Well… you make your own luck,” Baron rethinks aloud. “We’ve worked hard at it.”

So what is it that sets the five-person team at Baron Design & Associates apart from the abounding options in the area? Her clients repeatedly point to her ability to complete a project inside and out. She not only designs the plans, but also, courtesy of Baron’s years of studies in interior design before switching to architecture and then transfering to Drury University, plans and outfits the interior spaces. “I’m a control freak,” Baron says. “I like to be in on every level. I even bought the towels in Sam Hamra’s bathroom.”

Baron’s design has a contemporary feel. She loves stainless steel and often uses wood and brings in exterior light to help keep spaces feeling warm. Having a small firm allows everyone to get involved at every level, which is one of the things that Baron loves the most about being a small office. At a larger firm, you work on a very specific fragment of the project and probably don’t get to see it through to fruition.

Few people can pinpoint the moment in childhood that inspired what, decades after the event, helped define their sought-after careers. At age 10, Baron and her other Catholic friends decided to build a shrine to St. Elias in their Lebanese neighborhood. The four girls raised the money, got materials donated and had a local contractor teach them how to construct their shrine. It was in the design and the physical building of the monument that Baron became engaged, and from there it stuck.

Baron was born in Lebanon. She lived there until she was a 13, and she’s noticed that a lot of people think it’s desert. “There are four seasons,” Baron says. “It has a beautiful climate. Beautiful mountains and ocean. Beirut, the capitol, used to be called the Paris of the Middle East. It’s a lush country.” Today she still has a slight accent in the same way natives of southwest Missouri have a slight drawl but not a full-blown southern twang. She is the youngest with three brothers and four sisters. There is a 20-year difference between Baron and her oldest brother, whom she lived with when she moved to Las Vegas. “It was heartbreaking for [my mother],” Baron says. “Because of the war in Lebanon, the country wasn’t stable back home, and school would stop for long periods of time. She knew it was best.”

Get 417 Magazine in your mailbox every month! Click here to subscribe now!