A Rochester construction company averaging $700 million annually in building projects will expand its operations in the tristate region with the acquisition this month of C.W. Brown Inc. in Armonk.
The deal, announced Monday to employees at the 31-year-old Westchester construction company, makes C.W. Brown a division of LeChase Construction Services LLC, a construction management and general contracting company that has grown to approximately 700 employees at 10 offices in upstate New York, Pennsylvania and North Carolina since its founding 69 years ago in Rochester. The Armonk company has averaged about $50 million annually in construction projects over the last several years, according to a company spokesman.
The C.W. Brown workforce, which includes about 25 office employees and a core construction crew in the field of 40 to 45 union carpenters, will be retained by LeChase, said William H. Goodrich, LeChase president and CEO, and Renee Brown, president and CEO of the Armonk company, in a joint interview Tuesday.
- William H. Goodrich, LeChase Construction Services president and CEO, and Renee Brown, president and CEO of C.W. Brown Inc.
Active in the Capital Region, where it has maintained a Schenectady office for 10 years, LeChase plans to expand its reach in the Hudson Valley with the acquisition that took effect April 1. “Being in Westchester is very strategic for us,” said Goodrich. “It”™s a great fit.”
LeChase has done construction projects in the health care, education, industrial and manufacturing, science and technology, commercial and multiunit housing sectors. LeChase also has built affordable housing developments throughout the Northeast in a joint venture partnership with another Rochester-based company, Conifer Realty LLC, the developer of the planned Chappaqua Crossing affordable housing development in the town of New Castle.
Launched in 1984 by Renee Brown and her late husband, Charles W. “Charlie” Brown Jr., in the basement of their Somers home, C.W. Brown Inc. has specialized in high-end interior alterations and renovations for commercial clients in New Jersey, New York City, Fairfield County, Conn., and Westchester, Putnam and Dutchess counties in the lower Hudson Valley. Its customer base includes PepsiCo Inc., Fordham University and Biomed Realty Trust Inc., owner of The Landmark at Eastview and Ardsley Park life science campuses in Westchester.
“What”™s really great about the marriage between C.W. Brown and LeChase is that we are already in the same markets” for construction work and have a similar company culture built on strong employee relations and sustained relationships with customers. At both companies, said Goodrich, “The philosophy is, travel anywhere for your clients.”
Brown said the acquisition “wasn”™t something that we sort of pulled out of the hat a couple weeks ago.” Before her husband”™s death in 2011, they had talked about exit strategies.
In 2008, as part of their business succession plan, the Browns had formed an employee ownership stock plan that gave their office staff a collective 10 percent share in the privately held company. That deferred-compensation benefit plan has ended, and employees have received distributions that have been rolled over into a 401(k) plan, she said.
“It was most important to me that the company carry on, that it continue to grow,” said Brown, who added her late husband’s title as president while serving as CEO of the certified woman-owned business enterprise.
Brown and Peter Belmont, chief financial officer at C.W. Brown, met for the first time last June with LeChase executives in their search for a buyer. “That was a great meeting,” said Brown. “The rapport, the culture, the values, the relationship with clients. ”¦ For me, I knew there was going to be continuity and opportunity here for our employees.”
Those employees learned of the acquisition at a Monday meeting. “The way that they embraced it, the synergies and the buzz in the room was amazing,” said Brown. “I knew we had done the right thing and I knew that Charlie would be really happy about it.
Goodrich said with the acquisition, C.W. Brown”™s employees “can stay and continue to grow with the organization.”
Brown said she has made a three-year commitment to remain with LeChase as vice president of its Westchester region.
