San Francisco construction company, Swinerton, announced it is entering the New York market for the first time in the firm’s 133-year history.
Ranked among the top general contractors in California, the company said it has accelerated its business plan by five years to capitalize on the city’s post-pandemic recovery.
“Despite the uncertainty due to the pandemic that adversely impacted New York City, particularly in the office market sector, Swinerton sees opportunity in crisis,” said Eric Foster, CEO of Swinerton. “We build nationally and will connect with our long-standing clients to serve them best in one of the hardest hit areas of the country.”
The company has signed a five-year lease for 6,035 s/f of office space at Vanbarton Group’s 292 Madison Avenue in a deal brokered by a team from JLL. Interior Architects (IA) is currently building out the space to accommodate a team of 20 employees to be led by Andrew Pearl, a former New Yorker returning to his roots from Swinerton’s California headquarters division manager of the new operation.
The company is currently working for Fortune 500 Corporate Services clients in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Washington D.C. and Virginia, and has already secured work in New York City completing on an interiors renovation project for a national financial tech client.
According to Pearl, Swinerton is hiring and setting its sights on the NYC office market segment as the company anticipates a need by its Fortune 100 clients to reconfigure corporate interior spaces as workers return to offices.
“At Swinerton, we don’t see New York City at the end of its glory days in construction and real estate growth, and one would just need to look to Facebook’s 730,000-square-foot lease at Farley Post Office this summer as proof,” said Pearl.
“As others see a decline in urban centers, in a post-COVID climate, we are targeting corporate interiors as a sector presenting for change with many more hard-walled offices as opposed to open spaces. As people return to the city, the spaces in which they live, work, and learn will need to be re-configured.”
The employee-owned Swinerton has grown to a $5 billion national commercial construction company with 20 offices in nine states across the country. Ranked #18 on the ENR 2020 list of top contractors in the country, it has been a 100 percent employee-owned company since 1985 and nearly 5000 employees now share in the company’s profits.
Added Pearl, “Being in the New York market has accelerated the company’s 15-year business plan to expand both geographically and through sector diversification. For now, we are bullish on office interiors as our target sector and fulfilling our East Coast expansion plan.”
