Owner hangs on as construction biz gets hammered

MILWAUKIE, Ore. – Six days a week, Mark Matthews rises at 5 a.m. After a quick shower and a cup of coffee, he braces himself for another 16- to 18-hour workday of, not only swinging his hammer, but constantly scanning the horizon for work opportunities, “bidding like crazy,” and hustling just to keep his once prosperous company, Pacificmark Construction, alive.

“Sleep deprivation and aching muscles are becoming the norm,” said Matthews, whose business partner is his wife. “But we still have our dreams and that is what keeps us going.”

Matthews is far from alone in his scramble to survive in the worst economic slump in decades: The construction industry lost 17,200 jobs between February 2008 and February 2009, according to Oregon Employment Department data.

But considering how far Matthews has come, he’s not giving up yet.  The 46-year-old has weathered difficult situations before, all too many times.

When he was 6 years old, his family of 22 moved to Oregon after the seasonal work they’d found in Eloy, Ariz., meager to begin with, shriveled up under a blazing heat wave.

Matthews, 16th in birth order, helped pack a battered school bus and the family headed north, to a migrant camp in Parkdale, Ore., a tiny (pop. 266) unincorporated community in Hood River County.

“We’d stop along the way, in cool shady places, to eat our beans, rice and cornbread from the cook trailer we towed behind the bus,” he said.

In Parkdale, the family lived in small cabins and the kids pitched in with chores while their father toiled in the fruit orchards from sunrise to dusk.

Eventually the family scraped up enough to buy their own small farm, adding cows, pigs, chickens and a vegetable garden and fruit orchard.

'That's when I fell in love with construction'

When his father was hired by an aluminum factory in The Dalles, the family moved into an old schoolhouse.  Matthews, then 12, met an elderly German man who mentored him in carpentry, and the two renovated the building into a house with 17 bedrooms and eight bathrooms.

“That’s when I fell in love with construction and decided to start my own company,” Matthews said. 

That obviously took some years to come to fruition. But by early 2000, Pacificmark Construction was born. By May of 2008, he had bootstrapped his tiny start-up to 12 employees with an annual revenue of nearly $2 million.

Specializing in apartment building renovations, door and hardware installation, smaller Oregon Department of Transportation road repair and city/county improvements, the Milwaukie-based firm stood on the verge of a major breakthrough.

Work dwindles away to nothing

But in late autumn of 2008, just at the time the company’s light rail job ended, the other projects Matthews had lined up went on hold.

“It wasn’t just one thing, it was like a perfect storm,” he said. “Finally the work dwindled away to nothing.”

Lean to begin with, Pacificmark Construction had no fat to cut, and the hardest part, Matthews said, was laying-off employees.

“I wasn’t worried for myself, but the people I had to lay off built PMC and some of them have young children,” he said. “It was agonizing.”

It was also heartbreaking for Matthews, and his wife, Deborah, to see their company wither away to almost nothing. After they had cut all possible expenses and laid off all their employees, they began wondering if they could survive.

The money stopped coming in but the bills didn’t. The couple sweated through the mortgage payments, property taxes, payroll taxes, workers compensation payments and even the utilities.

The financial crisis was a blow to his pride as well as his bank account. In December of last year, Matthews, who hadn’t worn a tool belt in eight years, once again began swinging a hammer on smaller “keep busy” projects, mostly small tenant improvements such as fixing or installing doors and windows or remodeling office spaces.

“For 10 years we poured our heart and soul into Pacificmark Construction and, finally, we were almost at the top of the mountain,” he said. “Then, in just a few months, we were back where we started.”

Struggling but not panicked

But the company has recently seen a glimmer of hope. In late March it landed two small ODOT contracts, a part of the $175 million “Go Oregon” stimulus package. And this month Matthews placed bids on six projects in the $40,000 to $100,000 range.

For the past three or four months, Matthews was bidding for jobs against 60 to 70 much bigger firms. But now there are hundreds of tiny projects on the “Go Oregon” list targeted specifically for small building firms, so he is currently bidding against only eight or nine competitors.

He has also hired back two employees part-time with hopes of adding another soon.

“We’re struggling, but not panicking,” he said. “Pacificmark Construction won’t go down without a fight. ‘Hang in there’ is becoming our mantra.”

Freelance writer John Rumler lives near Mt. Tabor in Southeast Portland. Besides a long career in journalism, he is a serving as Area 62 Governor for Toastmasters International and is active in four clubs in the metro area. Contact him at www.johnrumler.com