LUNCO Corporation, one of northern New York’s premier construction firms, is celebrating its 25^th anniversary in 2010. Over the last quarter century, LUNCO has been responsible for building everything from veterinary clinics and hotels to auto dealerships and office complexes. Some of LUNCO’s more high-profile projects include Car-Freshner Corporation’s headquarters in Watertown; Otis Technology’s manufacturing plant in Lyons Falls and the Carthage Savings & Loan. When asked about the success of the firm, Michael Lundy, president, said two things stand out―“We ask a lot of questions,” and, “I really care about our reputation.”

LUNCO’s reputation actually got its start in 1962 when Lundy’s father and mother, Erin and Sally, launched the business. originally named Erin Lundy Contractors and specializing in residential work. During the mid-1970s, the company took on commercial projects and a new name, Lundy Construction. After Michael Lundy received an engineering degree from SUNY Canton, he joined the family business, now incorporated as LUNCO Corporation, which is located in Jefferson County near the village of West Carthage.

“I came on board in ‘85 and we really took the business to a different level,” said Lundy. “We started doing more and more industrial work, which got us more involved with the Butler building franchise. Dad had done work with Butler in the ‘70s, but not anywhere near the level that we were heading for. Then in the late 1980s, we decided that we were going to do just design/build, where we would oversee complete turnkey design and construction.”

“We have the highest level of affiliation you can have with Butler,” said Lundy. “We actually own the Butler building franchise for Jefferson, Lewis and St. Lawrence counties.”

Butler Manufacturing offers a pre-engineered steel building system, which is the nation’s leading construction method for single-story buildings that comprise less 150,000-square feet. Between 75 and 90 percent of LUNCO’s projects use the Butler system

Before construction on any project begins, Lundy assembles a group of trusted professionals and asks the client plenty of questions. “We create a team approach where the architects and engineers are part of our team,” Lundy said. “We assemble the team specifically for each project. If it’s an industrial project, we’ll probably bring in someone who specializes in material handling. If it’s a medical project, we may bring in a consultant on the medical side of the business. We spend a lot of time with the owner and the people that work for the owner. We’ll spend a lot of time getting a handle on how they do things. We even help them install their equipment, right up to handing them the key to start manufacturing.”

As a result of painstaking research on building projects, Lundy becomes an expert on his clients’ line of work whether it be gun cleaning kits at Otis Technology, Little Trees air fresheners at Car-Freshner or kidney dialysis at Nephrology Associates of Watertown. Lundy said, “With our way of doing things, we often end up under budget, the jobs get completed ahead of schedule, and owners can move in earlier. That creates a good relationship.”

Lundy says LUNCO gets a lot of repeat business from clients thanks to the close relationships they build together. “When our clients are ready to expand, they often just pick up the phone and call us. We offer fair pricing and we treat the second and third job as carefully as we do the first.” said Lundy.

Because of Lundy’s commitment to quality and his team approach to building, he doesn’t build projects for municipalities, school districts or Fort Drum because, by law, public contracts must be awarded to the low bidder. “We saw the pitfalls of being involved with low-bid work,” he explained. “Typically you’ll find the project is awarded based solely on the low bid, with no consideration given to quality workmanship or good ideas.”

He also noted that, when projects are bid against a specified budget, the bids may come in much higher than expected. At that point, everyone has to start making cuts, and that’s not Lundy’s idea of a good way to do business. “It doesn’t create a good relationship. It can create an adversarial relationship between the architect, the owner and the contractor,” said Lundy. He added, laughing, “What’s odd is there’s nothing else in life you do based on a low bid. Can you imagine selecting your dentist based on the low bid?”

Lunco said, “We like dealing with private companies, whether it be a physician, the owner of a manufacturing company or the owner of a retail store. That’s really our niche. That’s what we’re good at. We’ve been fortunate that we’ve been busy enough that we don’t need to stray from that philosophy.”

In an average year, LUNCO’s gross revenues range from $5-8 million through its projects. Lundy has created four other divisions to better serve his clients and develop new customers. They are CCI Building Services, Washington Summit Associates, Lundy Development and Northern Developers.

Northern Developers was the original design/build/lease company created in the 1990s to meet the needs of clients who needed a building, but did not want to own the property. Lundy explained, “We would treat the building as if it was theirs. We would design and decorate it to their specifications. They just pay rent instead of a mortgage.”

“CCI was initially created really to take care of buildings that we own. We thought a good spin-off of that would be taking care of buildings that we built for other people,” said Lundy. “Since then, we’ve really expanded on that. Now, every time we build a building, we do a maintenance agreement with CCI, so that after the project is completed, the client has peace of mind knowing that we’re backing up our work. If there’s a problem with the building, they just call us to care of it. In fact, we’re going a step beyond that now―doing annual inspections.”

Washington Summit Associates was created within the past five years to develop a 52-acre property on outer Washington Street in Watertown. “We saw a need in the medical community for better quality medical space. This gave us a great opportunity to design/build medical facilities and lease them to various practices,” said Lundy. The business leases to Samaritan Medical Center, a dialysis facility and several physicians. The company is currently constructing a fifth building for a medical tenant.

Lundy Development, managed by Lundy’s sister, Colleen, began as a spin-off from Washington Summit to manage the company’s tenants. “As we look at doing other design/build/lease opportunities, we’ll probably do them through Lundy Development as opposed to any of the other entities,” Lundy said. “We’re currently building a 10,000 square feet spec building in the Jefferson County Corporate Park to lease to a future industrial client.”

Lundy employs 30 people and works with two to three dozen carefully chosen subcontractors. Some of the subcontractors have been with him for well over a decade. “We’ve worked hard to create solid relationships with not only our clients, but also with our subcontractors and suppliers. Quite frankly we couldn’t have achieved such success without them,” Lundy said.

Lundy’s father retired from the business in 1993, but his mother still works for LUNCO. “Sometimes she’ll be here 70 hours a week and sometimes she’ll say, ‘I’m going with your dad for a week on vacation.’ She can kind of come and go as she pleases,” said Lundy, “and it works out well.”

Lundy is amazed at the changes he has seen in his business in the last quarter century. “Everything is computerized now,” he said. “The drawings are all computerized. We communicate with our guys in the field via email and Blackberry and, 20 years ago, that stuff just didn’t exist. We never dreamed our business would rise to this level of technology.

He thought for a minute, then said, “It’s kind of surprising how fast the time has gone. To look back and realize we’ve been doing this for 25 years―wow, it has gone by fast―and it’s still fun!”

Article written by Diane Rutherford