John Courtney
BLA 1990
Landscape Architecture
John Courtney, ASLA, LEED-AP, QSP/QSD, BLA 1990 is a landscape architect in private practice continuously since graduating in the class of 1990 from Robert Reich School of Landscape Architecture at LSU. John currently serves as the Managing Director of the Sport+Recreation Practice Area of LPA Design Studios, based in Irvine, CA with studios in Sacramento, San Diego, San Jose, Dallas and San Antonio. John’s career has focused on being the lead manager of multi-disciplinary A/E teams to create parks, recreation facilities, sports venues, aquatic centers and large site development projects. In his role as leader of community outreach and engagement he deploys techniques pioneered by the late Lawrence Halprin to facilitate community-inspired public spaces and design solutions. Inclusivity, equity, resiliency, transparency and life-cycle sustainability are foundational requirements studied and maximized for every project and every design process that John leads.
Recently John leads the design efforts of multidisciplinary teams to program and design community wellness, recreation and aquatic centers in Carlsbad, Davis, Escondido, Rancho Cordova, Woodland, Pico Rivera, Los Angeles, and El Segundo, California as well as in other communities such as Payson, Arizona, Pendleton, Oregon, and Round Rock, Texas. Based on skills he learned during his senior year final project at LSU, John provides visionary policy and roadmap documents for communitywide parks, recreation, trails and open space master plans. These are 25-year master plans that provide CIP budgets, sustainability goals and conceptual plans for an entire City’s recreation facilities and programs.
John’s home is in Roseville, California where he lives with his wife of 32 years, Liz Evans Courtney and with whom they share parenting responsibilities for a golden doodle named Maggie and three beautiful daughters Gillian, Indie and Isabel who are all in post-graduate or undergraduate studies across the US.