Jake Wrazel – Design Manager
Growing up in northwest Arkansas and spending a lot of his childhood on job sites, Jake fell in love with construction and architecture at a young age. With his grandfather being a developer, father an electrical contractor and mother an engineer his passion for construction and architecture was in his genetics.
In 2012 Jake attended the University of Arkansas studying architecture and construction. During his time in college Jake worked part time designing retail stores across the United States. His most memorable location at this time was the Johnston & Murphy on Madison Ave in NYC and a local Comedy Club.
Shortly after graduating in 2017 Jake moved to Chicago, Illinois to help shape his career path. For the next 4 years he worked at SGW Architecture and helped design a wide variety of commercial buildings but specialized in mixed use, multi-family housing and climate controlled self-storage. He credits most of his knowledge and achievements to his mentor Chris Michalek of SGW Architecture.
In 2021 after the Covid pandemic Jake became interested in modular construction after working on a few modular A frames for a local contractor. This landed him a job at 7 Brew Coffee. Over the next 3 years he helped create prototype and shop drawings, build guides/ spec books, oversaw the site design of over 4,000 locations and helped grow the store count from 11 to +270. Also getting his Commercial General Contractors License he was able to be in the field and gave him a whole new insight to the different trades.
In 2024 Jake joined the Citadel family. With him comes 10 years in the construction and design industry from ground up design to rinse and repeat prototype builds. His adverseness in developing and reading construction drawings, renderings and modeling and understanding constraints in the field has helped speed up projects to get into permitting.
Jake currently resides in Rogers, Arkansas with his wife, Katie, of 5 years, daughter Magnolia, and two dogs Charley and Winnie. He loves spending time out doors biking, hiking and kayaking and working on his old cars.