Market voices: Construction outlook Anne Koons, CEO, Vineland Construction

Anne Koons

CEO Vineland Construction

I’ve seen people want more outdoor space and definitely a home office or two. Thirty years ago, people bought a house for a family. Today, the parents are working and if they have kids, they need a separation of space, especially with the schools being closed.

In terms of commercial real estate, there needs to be more industry coming into Vineland. When I was growing up, there were a lot of trucking companies, glass manufacturing and farms, and some of those companies have either closed or they were bought by larger companies and no longer exist. Route 55 was supposed to open up the whole quarter and bring businesses down to Vineland but that never really happened because the businesses never went beyond Washington Township.

When we entered the pandemic, we had a decent backlog. Most of our work has been focused on healthcare and we work for several of the region’s largest healthcare providers. In the past year, we helped several of our clients cope and transform by modifying many of their ambulatory sites to meet the safety and operational needs of the pandemic. We helped one of our clients roll out a new patient information format across all of their ambulatory and hospital sites.

We’ve focused on healthcare for the past several years because we recognized the demographic pressures that were happening with the population getting older. That population segment is continuing to increase, so there is a need to grow infrastructure in that area. As a result, we see opportunities and that’s where we’ve been focusing our marketing as well as our support efforts, although we continue to work in other segments as well.

In terms of the pace of activity, the market has started loosening up with more projects coming out that were slowed down by the pandemic.

Louis Mueller

Principal BWM Construction LLC

Mike Regina

Principal & co-Founder Big Sky Enterprises

Last year was about controlling the controllable, which is having an understanding of what I can and can’t control. I did better in the real estate business last year compared to the 2008 crisis. In 2008, we were only about 5 years old and we just assumed that every year was going to be great. Last year, we were in a lockdown and we didn’t know what that even meant or how an entire economy could shut down. We started making decisions a lot quicker instead of just assuming that everything was going to be fine. We started cutting expenses and implementing the changes and adjustments that were necessary from a cash flow perspective. We controlled the controllable and that’s all you can do at the end of the day.