CCI celebrates its 25th year anniversary this year

Mark Koestner MKoestner@News-Herald.com

Even as fledgling contractors running a business out of their home, the Smalls thought big.

They didn't, however, necessarily foresee Cleveland Construction Inc. becoming all that it is today.

"We didn't really look at things, as far as what we ultimately became, as a goal," said CCI Chief Financial Officer Mark Small, who 25 years ago started the business with his father, Richard, and brother, Jon. "We had a business philosophy, though, that was somewhat different from our counterparts."

That philosophy involved recruiting talented personnel to handle large projects. A project manager who could handle an $8 million job and get it done in a year was more valuable than one who could handle two $1 million jobs in the same year.

"Our business plan or model was we didn't really wish to do small projects," Small said. "We wanted to get the best people we could get and utilize them on some of the larger work in the market."

That is exactly what the Mentor-based corporation has done.

The first large project was a 10-story renovation of a building in Columbus. Then came a J.C. Penney Insurance building in Westerville. Walt Disney Co. became a client, so did the U.S. Government.

Wal-Mart, for which CCI is currently working on projects in Madison and Chardon, has eclipsed the $1 billion dollar mark spent with CCI, which is currently working on about 80 projects in almost every state east of the Mississippi River.

There is one way, Small said, to land a $1 billion account.

"With the first $5 million contract," he said. "With the first couple jobs with Wal-Mart, we lost money. Our goal was not to necessarily make money - although that is a fundamental goal of any company - but our main thing was to turn over a quality project. And not late."

The company will celebrate its silver anniversary with a party. Everyone working out of the 42,000-square-foot facility CCI occupies at 8620 Tyler Blvd. will be invited, and Small expects 750 or so people to show up.

In all, the company and its subsidiaries - Best Supply and Tellings Inc. - employ a total of about 1,750 people. The corporation had revenues of about $500 million in 2004, Mark Small said. CCI has operations in Columbus, Orlando, Fla., and Raleigh, N.C., but remains a family business. Jon is the company president, and vice president brothers Tim and James Small join him and Mark as principals.

Keith Ziegler, who grew up in a house behind the Smalls, was among the first employees of the company. His office was the first on the second story of CCI's modern facility. It was a second level that Mark Small at one time thought the company would have to rent out to a tenant, not occupy itself.

Ziegler, upstairs alone as he was for a while, wasn't so sure.

"We were a pretty ambitious bunch - young, energetic," said Ziegler, now a vice president. "The owner, Richard, was unafraid to take risks. We were pretty much able to venture into anything we thought was good at the time."

Youngsters at the time, the brothers found plenty of good, and the energy and enthusiasm of men in their early 20s helped build a successful foundation in a 1980s business climate that wasn't kind to small businesses.

Today, 25 years later, there is still energy and enthusiasm.

"It's never the same day," Ziegler said. "You get up in the morning and you look forward doing new things and coming into work."