Brasfield & Gorrie Celebrates 50 Years in Business, 15 Years in Jacksonville
September 17, 2014
Brasfield & Gorrie Vice President and Division Manager Erik Sharpe
Jacksonville, Fla. (Sept. 17, 2014) – As Brasfield & Gorrie observes its 50th anniversary in 2014, the company is also marking a milestone in the Jacksonville, Fla., community, celebrating 15 years of business presence in Jacksonville this month.
The company completed its first construction project in Jacksonville in 1989, established a business presence in the city in 1999 with the construction of the Winn-Dixie Distribution Center on I-10, and has since completed more than $400 million of projects in the area.
Committed to hiring locally and investing in the local community, Brasfield & Gorrie’s Jacksonville office strives to be a responsible corporate citizen. The company has been involved with a range of Jacksonville organizations including NAIOP, the Commercial Real Estate Development Association; the Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC) Florida First Coast chapter; the Jacksonville Chamber of Commerce; Jax Sports USA; and the American Heart Association.
“As our company celebrates a half-century of business success, we are also marking a longstanding history in the Jacksonville community,” said Brasfield & Gorrie Vice President and Division Manager Erik Sharpe. “We have not only built buildings; we have built relationships with our clients, business partners, subcontractors, employees and the local community.”
In its 15 years in Jacksonville, Brasfield & Gorrie has demonstrated its core values of integrity and commitment to excellence through work for high-profile clients including St. Vincent’s HealthCare, Gate Resorts, Flagler Development, CSX, the U.S. Navy and the University of Florida (UF), among others. The company has completed notable projects in the area including the Jekyll Island Convention Center; multiple projects at Ponte Vedra Inn & Club; Marina San Pablo Condominiums, Marina and Yacht Club; Memorial Hospital; and the UF O’Connell Center.
Brasfield & Gorrie was founded in Birmingham, Ala., in 1964 when a 28-year-old Miller Gorrie used his life savings, earned from smart investments in IBM, to purchase the construction assets of the Thos. C. Brasfield company. Miller purchased the name of Brasfield’s company and then built his own corporation from the ground up, changing the company’s name in 1967.
At its outset, the company was sustained by small commercial renovation and repair work, but over time, Brasfield & Gorrie experienced substantial growth, expanding to new market sectors and geographic areas and completing landmark projects.
As Brasfield & Gorrie evolved, Jacksonville became an attractive region for new construction opportunities and business expansion.
Today, Brasfield & Gorrie marks an opportunity to celebrate a true American Dream story—the story of a young man who began with a small company and, through hard work, strong values and a commitment to hiring the best people, built it into the Southeast’s largest general contractor. During those 50 years, Brasfield & Gorrie has grown from only a handful of employees and annual revenues of $800,000 at the end of 1964 to a $2.3 billion construction leader with more than 2,600 employees working in 19 states.
The company has completed landmark projects across the Southeast, including the Orlando City Hall in Orlando, Fla., the Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta, Ga., and the Country Music Hall of Fame Expansion in Nashville, Tenn. The company is also constructing the Emory Proton Therapy Center in Atlanta and is part of American Builders 2017, the joint venture team selected to build the new home of the Atlanta Braves, SunTrust Park.
As the company marks 50 years in business and 15 years in the Jacksonville community, it looks to the future and thanks its clients, business partners, and employees for helping the company reach these milestones.
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About Brasfield & Gorrie
Celebrating 50 years in business, Brasfield & Gorrie is one of the nation’s largest privately held construction firms, providing general contracting, design-build, and construction management services for a wide variety of markets, including healthcare, commercial, institutional, federal, municipal, industrial, infrastructure, and water/wastewater treatment. We serve clients from offices in Atlanta and Columbus, Georgia; Birmingham, Alabama; Dallas, Texas; Jacksonville and Orlando, Florida; Nashville, Tennessee; and Raleigh, North Carolina. Brasfield & Gorrie has approximately 2,600 employees, and its 2013 revenues were $2.3 billion. Engineering News-Record ranks Brasfield & Gorrie 22nd among the nation’s “Top 400 Contractors” for 2014.