Alliance turns 25

LOVELAND – Fitting that Alliance Construction Solution’s silver anniversary bash on Feb. 8 was a “zero-waste” affair.

Biodegradable plates and utensils, recyclable beverage containers and mostly compostable foods were the order of the day at the company’s headquarters at the Rangeview One office building at Centerra, one that Alliance completed in 2002.

The company that five years ago blazed a trail by announcing it would become the region’s first “sustainable” construction business has made energy-efficient construction and construction-waste recycling its hallmarks. An eco-friendly birthday party was appropriate.

Alliance president and CEO Clayton Schwerin set the course for Alliance’s “green team,” as the 21 LEED-certified construction specialists are known. LEED, Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, is a national standard-setting program for environmentally conscious building techniques, fostered by the U.S. Green Building Council.

“A lot of us were happy when Clayton took the initiative to become a sustainable contractor,´ said Brian Weinmaster, an Alliance vice president who heads the company’s busy Cheyenne office. “It was the right thing to do for our environment, and the right thing to do for our future as a company.”

Alliance posted $54 million in revenue in 2005, landing it in the No. 6 spot among Northern Colorado’s general contractors, ahead of Drahota Commercial LLC and behind The Neenan Co., according to Business Report research.

Schwerin said that, despite predictions from some economists that the region’s construction sector would slow in 2007, the outlook for Alliance and other contractors is as bright as at any time in recent memory.

Booming commercial sector

“The commercial market right now is as good as anything we’ve seen,” he said. “We’re seeing so much vibrancy in different marketplaces. Medical continues to spend money. Mixed use, it seems, just keeps on going.”

Projects on Alliance’s horizon, and those under construction now, represent the business niches that Schwerin has developed since he took the reins from company founder Ed Baldwin in 1993.

For example, the $20 million Allied Health & Sciences building that is taking shape on the Greeley campus of Aims Community College combines Alliance’s expertise in the health-care and education sectors.

After breaking ground last fall, Alliance has lost only two construction days to storms that dumped nearly three feet of snow on the site.

“We just kept plugging on this,” project manager Mike Barbee said. “We took 39 dump trucks full of snow out of the site.”

The 65,000-square-foot laboratory, classroom and office project that Barbee calls “the most complex building I’ve seen in 20 years” will open in August, in time for a new class of students.

Housing science programs such as chemistry, biology and physics, the building’s primary purpose will be to groom students for careers in nursing, radiological technology, surgical technology and emergency medical services to supply a booming health-care market.

Other Alliance projects – recently built, in progress or planned – include two $10 million Hilton Garden Inns, one on Harmony Road in Fort Collins and another in downtown Denver, and two elementary schools for the Thompson School District in Loveland at a cost of $7 million to $8 million each.

Repeat customers

Schwerin and company hope that the school district, Aims and hotel developers will join the Alliance clients that have driven the company’s repeat business and referral rate above 90 percent.

An example is Fort Collins developer Stu MacMillan, who has hired Alliance for projects that include two southeast Fort Collins Marriott hotel projects, the Courtyard Inn and Residence Inn. Alliance also worked for MacMillan on the complex remodeling of the Fort Collins Marriott Hotel.

“Clayton has the ability to look at the big picture and put it all together,” MacMillan said, adding that Schwerin’s early jump onto the now-crowded “sustainability” bandwagon.

“That’s a matter of being able to look into the future,” MacMillan said. “A lot of contractors are doing green building now, but Alliance has been more aggressive than others. It’s a good thing, because big national tenants are asking for it, and most institutional building contracts these days require it.”

Schwerin and MacMillan have shared “activist” business careers, both holding leadership positions in the Fort Collins Area Chamber of Commerce and the Northern Colorado Economic Development Corp., each chairing the boards of both groups.

Community commitment, Schwerin said, translates into a corporate culture at Alliance where other employees also find ways to contribute to the future of the region while making a good living with their company.

“We have a bunch of well-grounded people, who make a profit in an ethical fashion,” Schwerin said. He credited his friendship with the late Fort Collins developer Bill Neal as helping steer his approach to business.

“Bill and I both had so much in common in our backgrounds,” Schwerin said. “We were both looking at the interest of the community, not at our own back pockets.”

on Facebook on LinkedIn