for it as well. When asked if I had ever built a road my response was, ‘Absolutely’ even though I had no idea what a crown was, nor did I know how to build it. I took on the challenge, learned how to run a grader, made a few mistakes, and in the end, successfully built the road. I embraced the challenge and never looked back.”
Joe knew that Nick brought valuable contributions to the business. He recalls, “Nick worked here for six or seven years and then became a partner, and we’ve been together ever since. We haven’t had one argument. We both share the same work ethic and we’re excellent partners. We’ve been very fortunate.”
Nick graduated from Memphis State University in 1976 with a degree in Civil Engineering. He worked briefly as a consultant, but ultimately came back home to New Jersey to work for the City of Clifton and then again as a consultant in Paramus. As Nick tells it, “Joe convinced me to get into construction. We had a meeting and he told me if I worked in construction, I’d get winters off. My wife loved that point, although I don’t think we’ve really had a winter off in 40 years. I told myself that if I don’t like construction, I could always go back to consulting, but it’s been 40 years and I haven’t gotten tired of it yet.”
Cover Story
“That was the first time I did something really big,” Joe contin- Nick recalls that early in his career, when on a vacation with his wife, he took away the NJ State Specificaued. “When I started, the company was doing tion “Green Book.” He read the book as one less than $150k a year. After the first year I would a novel, and when his wife questioned took over, I doubled the business. I worked nights and weekends tirelessly. My father “Each year, you take on a little him about his unusual choice of reading, Nick responded, “I have to understand evjoked, ‘I ran this business for 25 years and I bit more work and you get erything in this book, because we’ll run into never stayed in the office as long as you do — more experience; you do it it sooner or later.” why are you working at 10 o’clock at night?’ But that’s what I did. I just worked hard.” PRUH HIÀFLHQWO\ DQG \RX JURZ Nick’s skills and background as a professionSure enough, 40 years later, al engineer enabled the firm to take on more In 1975, Joe told his father he wanted to technical work, beginning with an $864,000 buy into the business. His father laughed at \RX·G EH LPSUHVVHG µ site improvement contract for the Clifton first, but ultimately gave Joe a third of the - Nick Genchi City Hall. This project took the firm well ownership. When his father passed away in beyond its paving niche as it also included 1977, Joe continued to pursue ownership of electrical installations and landscaping. That Smith-Sondy, buying out his mother in 1980 project acted as a springboard for more public work, and a few and then Joe Sondy in 1987. years later, Smith-Sondy took on their first multi-million-dolJoe’s current partner and vice president Nick Genchi joined the lar job for the State of New Jersey on Getty Avenue in Paterson. firm in 1981. His grandfather was an Italian contractor and home From there, the duo was well positioned to take on an increasing builder who worked with Joe’s uncle. Nick’s grandfather intro- amount of public work, further diversifying their portfolio and duced the two at Nick’s father’s millwork shop, and that fateful solidifying their reputation as a premier paving operation in the interaction set the stage for the following four decades of growth. state. “I did a lot of marketing with the engineers, and when Nick came on board, he helped me sustain that,” Joe recalls. “We’ve been fortunate to maintain the reputation that my father built, which has carried us into the industrial work and commercial work, and ultimately to the municipal and state work.” Smith-Sondy is generally focused in New Jersey North of the Raritan River, and they’ve proudly worked for some of the biggest names in the industry such as Russo Development, Gale and Wentworth, and Joseph M. Sanzari, in addition to performing a considerable amount of work at Teterboro Airport for Jet Aviation, Meridian, and Signature Flight. Nick says, “In the past, the firm concentrated on grading and paving as a subcontractor to larger construction companies, but over the years, developers would prefer to give out one contract, and that’s basically when we started building up our sitework expertise. We started to take on the crews and performed much of that work ourselves.” Now, with about 100 employees, Smith-Sondy continues to build upon its legacy. They’re currently finishing up a State Department of Transportation project on Route 23, working on a project for Amazon in Carlstadt, and have just completed a 50,000ton paving project for Union County and a 40,000-ton project for Essex County.
Utility & Transportation Contractor | april| 2021 55
