Courtesy Saratoga Business Journal
By Rod Bacon
The mantle of leadership of a highly respected longtime area business is in the process of being passed to the fifth generation of the family.
Within approximately 60 days, Pat O’Connor, who is currently the president, will take the reins of 120-year-old E&T O’Connor Construction from cousins Brian O’Connor and Kevin O’Connor.
“Brian and Kevin came to me a few years ago and said ‘You’re the next one to take over if you want to,’ so I’ve been preparing for this for quite some time,” said Pat. “They continued to run the company until now.”
In 1905, Thomas O’Connor started the business hauling dirt between Glens Falls and Ticonderoga with a horse and wagon. The earliest services offered were earth moving and site development using cable excavators for building contractors.
By the 1940s, ownership had passed to Thomas’ two sons, Edward and Thomas Jr. They continued to do site development so contractors could pour foundations for buildings in Glens Falls, one of which was the First National Bank. They also did site preparation for the Glens Falls Civic Center in the 1970s.
Around this time the third generation, consisting of Edward’s son Russell and Thomas’ son Jimmy, had taken over, and they decided to expand the reach of the company by taking on some larger commercial work. They did site preparation and paving for a number of McDonald’s restaurants in the area. They also successfully bid on jobs in Queensbury, Saratoga, Brant Lake, and Whitehall. In addition to paving parking lots and retail centers they branched out into road paving and industrial drive lanes.
During the mid-1990s the present owners, Brian O’Connor and Kevin O’Connor, assumed leadership of the company. They are the sons of Russell and Jimmy, respectively. During their tenure services have been expanded to include retaining walls, sports courts, and the use of GPS modeling.
One family member who was never an owner but worked for the company for more than 30 years is Pat Sr., who was paving foreman and now runs the shop.
Significant site preparation and paving projects the company has done during the past several decades include Highland Park Country Club; most of the Schermerhorn developments in Queesnsbury and Hudson Falls; school districts in Glens Falls, Queensbury, Whitehall, and Fort Ann; and many housing developments in Queensbury and Saratoga County, including those for the Michaels Group. Just last month they completed repaving the Glens Falls site of Greylock Storage.
“We generally do one subdivision a year,” said Pat.
A major project recently was the reconstruction of parking lots, concrete curbs, and sidewalks at Glens Falls Hospital in preparation for the expansion of the Sheridan Emergency Department, which is currently underway.
They are also working on a solar farm for Green Sparks Solar, which is located in the former Ciba Geigy plant in Queensbury.
During the past couple of years the company has started accepting some smaller residential paving jobs.
“There’s only so much commercial paving out there so to keep the crews busy I’ve taken on some smaller jobs,” Pat said.
Another service the company offers is retaining walls that are not only functional but aesthetically pleasing. They are constructed from either natural boulders or engineered Redi-Rock systems they get from Carroll Concrete in New Hampshire. They come in 1,000-pound to 3,000-pound precast blocks with limestone, cobblestone or New England ledgestone facing.
“We can build some pretty massive retaining walls that can hold back a lot of earth,” said Pat.
Within the last decade the company added the construction of sports courts, which include tennis, basketball, and pickleball courts as well as running tracks. E&T O’Connor Construction would build them but had to subcontract the coating and painting. In 2016 they formed a sister company called Adirondack Sports Surfaces with a dedicated crew to apply the coatings. This company does driveway sealing and line striping as well.
In the early 2000s the company implemented GPS modeling to ensure its projects are done to the most exacting specifications possible. Pat explained that when preparation of an undeveloped site is called for they import a Computer-Aided Design (CAD) from the engineer into hand-held units that the foremen can carry as well as units in the bulldozers and excavators to guide the operators.
“The operators can see the entire job in three- dimension so they know what they’re cutting or filling,” Pat said. “It shows them to within an inch or better exactly where they are on the project.”
Obviously, site preparation and paving are the main services the company offers, but land clearing and demolition play important roles as well. Pat said that if a client simply wants his land cleared of trees, stumps and bushes they cut them down and truck them away. Demolition might involve the destruction of a building standing in the way of developing the parcel. An excavator would knock the building down and they would haul it away.
E&T O’Connor Construction has 30 employees who specialize in the company’s various services. There are seven full-time workers on the asphalt paving crew. There are numerous other crews that are experts in retaining wall construction, underground utility work, and sports court construction. The company does about 50 projects a year.
Pat earned a two-year construction degree from Hudson Valley Community College and finished his four-year degree in construction management at SUNY Delhi.
He has very ambitious plans for the future of the company. Currently, they accept jobs within an hour’s radius of their Glens Falls headquarters. He hopes to grow to $100 million worth of work by expanding the customer base to a three-hour radius.
“I’ve got a big vision for the company,” he said. “I’d like to see it grow as much as possible and I can only do that with the help of good people.”
E&T O’Connor Construction is located at 147 Meadowbrook Road in Glens Falls.
For more information about the service the company offers go to etoconnor.com.