Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Sale ends an era for family roadbuilder

J.W. Conner & Son Inc. got its start in the Depression. The latest generation is focused on land investment.

By JAMES THORNER
Published September 27, 2005

Back in the Great Depression, when J.W. Conner and Cole B. Conner started their roadbuilding business, the revenue-starved state often paid contractors in IOUs.

Florida didn't stay poor for long. The IOUs were redeemed. And the Conner brothers became some of the region's premier dirt jockeys, laying asphalt on megaprojects such as Interstates 4 and 275.

But after 70 years, J.W. Conner & Son Inc. is calling it quits. APAC-Southeast Inc., the regional division of one of the country's biggest road contractors, bought the family partnership in a deal that closed May 19.

In its purchase of its smaller rival, APAC inherited dozens of trucks and pieces of equipment, Conner's outstanding road projects, 120 employees and the family's Delta Asphalt plant in east Hillsborough County. Neither company disclosed the purchase price.

The next generation of Conners - president Donald Conner and his cousin, CEO and secretary Doug Conner - remain at the company's Seventh Avenue headquarters near Ybor City in Tampa with a skeletal clerical staff.

"We're just kind of winding down operations here," Doug Conner said.

The cousins plan to focus on the family's land investment business. It has been lucrative: In 2002, Dallas developer Terrabrook bought the Conners' 8,000-acre central Pasco County ranch for tens of millions of dollars.

Much of the ranch will become a proposed "new town" in Land O'Lakes called Connerton. Plans call for 8,700 homes surrounding a downtown shopping and business district that Terrabrook plans to create from scratch.

Money from the Connerton sale was shared among 27 heirs spread over three generations. But few if any of those heirs showed interest in taking over the contracting business.

And in an industry heavy with multinationals like Hubbard Construction Co. and Granite Construction Inc., it was time for the Conners to sell.

"We've been here a long time, so we've got mixed emotions," said Donald Conner, president since his cousin, J.W. Conner Jr., died in 1994.

"Doug and I are both 62 years old and don't really have anyone in the family coming up behind us to pull the reins."

[Last modified September 27, 2005, 02:45:31]