Fifty years ago, BA Group started operations in Toronto.
BA Group has a rich history. Our firm started as the Canadian branch office of the Chicago based Barton Aschman-Associates (BAA). Barton-Ashman Associates was a specialist transportation firm in the Chicago area that was founded on the idea that the fields of transportation engineering and transportation planning had become too isolated from each other. Transportation engineers and transportation planners needed to come together to create the best solutions to the complex challenges that come with urban land development. It was George Barton, a traffic engineer, and Ted Ashman, a transportation planner – that came together in 1960 to form Barton-Ashman Associates.
In the late 1960’s BAA had started to establish a growing base of work in the Greater Toronto Area. BAA had become involved with the transportation planning for several of the major regional shopping centres in the GTA. One of these projects was a transformative project in downtown Toronto that later became known as the Eaton Centre. To accommodate this BAA hired its first Canadian employee in 1969 – Edward Levy. A few years later, it had become abundantly clear that BAA needed to establish a permanent Canadian office in the Toronto area in order for the business to continue to grow. And thus, thanks to a forceful recommendation from Edward Levy and Dick Gern, BAA opened a new Canadian office on Avenue Road in February 1974. That small Canadian office of BAA, which later became a wholly independent Canadian firm in 1987, is now known as BA Consulting Group Ltd.
Since our beginnings in 1974, BA Group has grown to become one of the GTA’s leading transportation planning and engineering consultancies for land development projects. Our team now features more than 100 individuals who specialize in solving complex transportation problems. While other transportation consultants work from within large, generalist engineering firms, BA Group has, for 50 years, continued to focus purely on transportation issues in support of high-quality urban environments. And perhaps most importantly – BA Group continues to approach our work in the way George Barton and Ted Ashman envisioned: through close collaboration between landowners, architects, designers, engineers, and planners to seek the best outcomes.
To commemorate our 50th Anniversary, BA Group will be sharing several exciting announcements over the coming months. Our 50th Anniversary celebrations will culminate in a corporate celebration held this fall. Stay tuned for more news to come!
