WDS Commercial LLC

WDS Commercial LLC is a KB-1 General Contractor assisting Business Owners with Commercial Projects including Tenant Improvement, Mall Tenant, New Construction and Design Build in Phoenix AZ. Our Founder, Mike Marden is a third-generation Arizonan. As...

WDS Commercial LLC is a KB-1 General Contractor assisting Business Owners with Commercial Projects including Tenant Improvement, Mall Tenant, New Construction and Design Build in Phoenix AZ. Our Founder, Mike Marden is a third-generation Arizonan. As a Registered Architect and Licensed General Contractor, his love for creating art and using his imagination first started as a child, where he would spend every spare moment on the floor with crayons, paints or pencils. In his teens, he began applying his love for drawing to buildings. He placed regularly in local art competitions and then won a final class project in high school. That gained him entry to a Career-Discovery program at Arizona State University, where he soon confirmed his one-day occupation would be that of Architecture. The summer before university, he worked with a friend of his Dad's performing some jobsite labor. It lasted about a week as he found it boring, wanting to contribute more than pushing a broom. After barely graduating from ASU with a 2.6 GPA , he decided it would be important to travel overseas, so he joined with a classmate and together they reached 15 countries. They set out to see nearly all the buildings they had studied in school. Upon returning to the US, he completed a Master's Degree while working part time for an architecture firm, the third of his office experiences. Fast forward through two more firms after graduation, he started Western Design Studio, Inc in 2002 as a small house-drafting business. After finding out first-hand how incredibly difficult it is to run a business, he fell out of love with Architecture and went to work for a series of Construction Companies. These companies were each unique, from Developer, to Design-Build, to Bid-Build. Soon came The Great Recession. Fortunately, he had obtained his Architectural registration a few years earlier. This was the impetus for a second try at starting his own architecture firm, WDS Architecture. The next five years brought success and the firm grew to 9 people. After struggling to get paid and keep staff onboard, he realized he dint know how to run a business and folded the company. Done with Architecture, Mike decided to quit. Thats when the story took an unexpected turn. He began receiving phone calls from people asking for help permitting their business locations. Mike fell in love again and never looked back. He credits the exposure to hundreds of these entrepreneurs for his mastery & love of Business. He has truly become a student of it and in 2020 started a second successful company, WDS Commercial LLC (General Contractor) where he and his team now also build what they draw for their Clients!