After a $35 million remake, the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum in Hyde Park was expected to open its doors to the public June 30, beginning with a VIP reception.
Joe Kirchhoff was at the more intimate opening for 130 invitees June 20. He built the place.
Rebuilt it, actually, through his Dutchess County construction company: “A gut renovation,” he said.
With Kirchhoff, interesting library facts abound. FDR designed it. The outside is a cape; the inside a ship. “It has steel floors,” he said. Trim at 51, Kirchhoff maintains a boyish enthusiasm for the job he says he loves: “The rivets are visible in the basement stacks. It”™s so cool ”“ we restored everything.”
The FDR job was also a logistical tour de force. “They maintained occupancy for the two years we were there,” he said of the National Archives and Records Administration, which oversees FDR”™s papers and memorabilia there. “The requests don”™t stop and they don”™t stop. With 15 million pages of documents, maintaining the climate was an ongoing challenge. We brought the climate wherever we needed it.”
Kirchhoff is CEO of Pleasant Valley-based Kirchhoff-Consigli Construction Management (KCCM), which also maintains an office in Albany. A co-owner of KCCM is Anthony Consigli. Consigli, in turn, is CEO of Consigli Construction, with offices in Hartford, Conn. and in Massachusetts and Maine. The Kirchhoff and Consigli names factor in a cat”™s-cradle of 51 independent business entities the men use to build and sometimes, depending on the deal, to develop and manage the likes of education centers, health care centers, dormitories and banks.
“Everything but roads and bridges,” Kirchhoff said. “We”™re turnkey construction.”
One of just 70 KCP projects nationwide that have housed 15,000 students to date, the new $13 million, 165-unit housing at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park offers a window into focused needs and how they play out. The developer is Kirchhoff Campus Properties (KCP). KCCM did the hammer-and-nails work and now KCP manages the units.
“The architects at CIA were Noelker and Hull out of Philadelphia ”“ phenomenal work,” Kirchhoff said. “We work with the top architects: César Pelli, Robert Stern.”
A sampling of regional projects under the Kirchhoff-Consigli imprimatur includes:
Ӣ the 140,000-square-foot mixed-use Oakwood Commons in Poughkeepsie,
Ӣ the 56,000-square-foot Mid-Hudson Medical Group Office Building in Poughkeepsie,
Ӣ the Rhinebeck Savings BankӪs 4,700-square-foot branch in East Fishkill, and
Ӣ integrating GoogleӪs three Cambridge, Mass., towers into a unified headquarters via a 50,000-square-foot addition.
The Hancock Building at Marist and the Vogelstein Center for Drama and Film at Vassar are among Kirchhoff”™s favorite projects. He is effusive in praise of education and notes the company just built the new $100 million dormitory at Pace University in White Plains. The new 96,000-square-foot SUNY Albany School of Business building ”“ a KCCM project ”“ opens in September.
Education constitutes half of KCCM”™s coming push into Westchester County where Kirchhoff expects to open an office “soon,” as he put it.
Medical work is the other half of the Westchester-bound equation.
In 2011, Kirchhoff began Kirchhoff Medical Properties (KMP), building on decades of medical facility development and construction experience. “We develop and own and lease medical real estate in the Northeast U.S. market,” he said.
“Westchester is our next target growth area,” Kirchhoff said. “We think the opportunities are there in health care construction and development and in college campuses.”
The 2011 KMP founding follows the 1905 founding of Consigli Construction Co. Inc., the 1991 founding of Kirchhoff Construction Management Inc. and the 2009 creation of KCCM. All entities are privately held.
Kirchhoff is deft with details on any number of the 20 to 25 projects he oversees at once. “I don”™t get out of the office as much as I”™d like to,” he said, “But I do get to every project at least once a month. Our president, Greg Burns, plays a large role in the operations of the company.
“We have a very good understanding and eye for how something is supposed to be done and how it”™s supposed to look when it”™s finished,” he said.
“Being hyper-focused on quality is part of it. The other part is we do whatever it takes to get the job done right. We do what”™s right and if you do what”™s right all the time, very good things happen ”“ both with clients and with employees.” Locally, KCCM employs 140 full time, while New England-centric Consigli employs another 400.
Clients need not build hospitals or banks. Pleasant Valley-based KCCM Custom Builders builds new homes, restores old ones; restores while you live there, and builds unique residences of the sort that drop jaws and that, like everything Kirchhoff builds, are designed to stand beyond 100 years.
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