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By Brent Hoffmann, Class of 2005

 “In 2020, I gave a river tour in the snow,” said Lisa Pickell. “It was mid-April, at the beginning of the river season, with six inches of snow on the deck.  There were just 10 people on the boat.  The crazy part was that all of them had bought their tickets on the dock just before the tour, while it was snowing.  And one of the women didn’t even have a coat.  She was wrapped in a blanket, and said she was from Hong Kong.  Instead of staying on deck, in the open, I talked to the group down in the lounge.  The windows were frosted up, so it was hard to get good views, but we still had a good tour.  It turns out that mine was the first scheduled river tour of the day, and all the other river tours were cancelled because of bad weather.”

As well as a weather-worn docent, Lisa’s been a frequent promoter of our tours on TV and radio.  In 2018, she was televised leading a boat tour with Roz Varon, a reporter for Chicago’s ABC, channel 7.  She’s also done three radio interviews with WGN-AM host John Williams, promoting CAC tours as well as her home-building company.  “On my 2021 interview with John,” she explained, “I talked about how much of Chicago’s architecture is new, in contrast to the buildings in the older cities of New York and Los Angeles.  And I was able to throw in the Mark Twain quote that I often tell at the end of my tours.  Twain said, ‘It is hopeless for the occasional visitor to try to keep up with Chicago.  She outgrows his prophecies faster than he can make them.  She is always a novelty, for she is never the Chicago you saw when you pass through the last time’.”

Trends in housing

Lisa was recently profiled in the recent CAC zoom presentation “The Women of Mid-Century Modernism.” She’s the president of the Orren Pickell Building Group, a family business that designs, builds, remodels, and maintains custom houses in the Chicago area. In reviewing the trends she’s seen due to the pandemic,  she said, “Many of our clients are doing more of their work from home.  They’re able to build further from their regular workplaces in Chicago.  So, if it’s a remodel, they want to add an office in the house.  They’re also looking for more outdoor space than you can find in a big city, so we’ve recently built houses and done rehabs in West Bend, north of Milwaukee, and in New Buffalo, near the south end of Lake Michigan.”

She wasn’t always a home builder.  “I was a bagel maker at the Bagel and Deli Shop in Oxford, Ohio, when I was in college,” continued Lisa.  At Miami University in Oxford, she earned a business degree in marketing and a minor in art and architectural history.  Included was a semester in Florence, Italy, studying art and architecture history at Scuola Lorenzo de’Medici.

After college, one of Lisa’s first jobs was as a project engineer at Behal Sampson Dietz, a residential remodeler in Columbus, Ohio.  Then she joined her family’s company, Orren Pickell Building Group, as a remodeling division manager and, in 2017, was named president of the Wilmette-based construction company.

In 2015, Lisa certified as a docent, having been encouraged by Dorothy (Dot) Edison, her great aunt and a class of 1996 docent, now retired.  Although the river tour is her favorite, Lisa also enjoys leading the Chicago Icon and West Loop Pub Crawl.  “The crawl is particularly interesting and convenient,” she admitted, “because I live in the Fulton Market District.”  She’s been a coach and certifier for the River Cruise, is on CAC planning committees, and was recently elected to the Docent Council.

In 2017, she was recognized by Constructech magazine as one of the nation’s leading women in construction. She was named remodeler of the year by the Home Builders Association of Greater Chicago in 2009, and, in 2011, was selected as one of Professional Remodeler magazine’s 40 Under 40.

Lisa is a member Vistage Worldwide, the world’s largest peer advisory group. She’s also active in the Executive’s Club of Chicago; serves on the advisory board for Revolution Workshop, which provides carpentry and woodworking workforce development for unemployed and underemployed people; and with the Lake County Tech Campus, Grayslake, a high school technical training center.

Shedd diver, dog walker

“I’m a volunteer diver at the Shedd Aquarium,” Lisa continued. “I’m certified as an open-water scuba diver.  My job is to help clean and maintain the cold-water mammal tanks.  A dive takes about a half-hour.  And, no, I don’t get to touch the dolphins and whales.  They’re sequestered in holding tanks during the cleanings.  It’s fun but, unfortunately, I haven’t been able to dive because of COVID.”

She’s been a volunteer at PAWS Chicago, a no-kill pet rescue and adoption center.  Said Lisa, “That’s where I adopted my dog Franklin. He’s a mixed breed who weighs in at about 90 pounds.  I walk him near one of the favorite places on my river tours: the nearby River Walk.”

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