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Baker Concrete Construction is celebrating 40 years of building commercial, highway, industrial and residential projects in the United States.

The concrete specialty contracting company has corporate offices on Garver Road and northern operations on Main Street in Monroe. It employs 200 full-time employees at both locations, having moved into the Garver Road office location in 1989 and the Main Street office and warehouse space in 2000, company officials said.

Dan Baker started the company with his two brothers while attending Miami University in Oxford in 1968 doing residential concrete patio and driveway work, said Michael Schneider, vice president of operations for Baker Concrete Construction.

Baker and his brothers expanded the residential business into Hamilton and then moved away from it and got into commercial and industrial work pouring floors and doing prep work in Cincinnati,

Dayton and Northern Kentucky, Schneider said.

In 1979, Baker went to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., with Dugan and Meyers Construction, and in 1982, he went to Texas with Turner

Construction.

The company produced 1 million square feet for the former Montgomery Ward Distribution Center on Kemper Road in Sharonville, now known as Gateway 75. The first job at more than

$1 million was the Ford Motor Company Plant in Batavia, he said.

"The company started doing what we call 'total package' or 'turn key' work, where working for a construction manager, who has a concrete package, we would bid that whole concrete package, and that's where the growth has come in the company," Schneider said.

The company has tripled in size over the last three years in terms of overall sales, he said, and the company had total sales of

$750 million from the fiscal year of April 1, 2007, to March 31, 2008.

Downtown Cincinnati landmarks the company has worked on include the former Central Trust Building (now known as PNC Bank Tower), Paul Brown Stadium, the Theodore M. Berry International Friendship Park and the Contemporary Arts Center.

Besides Monroe, Baker Concrete Construction has regional offices in Houston, Texas; Denver, Colo.; Phoenix, Ariz.; Miami, Fla., and Orlando, Fla. The company employs a total of 5,000 workers nationwide, he said.

The company also has an international group that has done work in Mexico and the Caribbean.

"Today, we're pretty diversified. We do commercial work, industrial, and we're getting involved in energy where we're doing a couple of L and G (liquid and natural gas) projects. Along with stadiums and sports arenas," Schneider said.

Local projects include the Kohls Distribution Center on Ohio 63 in Monroe, the Atrium Medical Center in Middletown, IKEA West Chester, Edwin C. Moses Boulevard in Dayton and the soon-to-come Cincinnati Premium Outlets that will be located off Ohio 63, east of Interstate 75 in Warren County.

"The neatest part about our business is we get to build the schools, the churches, the stadiums; we build the infrastructure that society needs, and the things that we just take for granted," he said.

"Because of type of job we get to do, I tell people we get to play in the Super Bowl of construction everyday with what we do. We don't necessarily do the easy jobs. People call us for the hard jobs because we're pretty good at it."

For more information about the company visit www.bakerconcrete.com.

Contact this reporter at (513) 483-5219 or dewilson@coxohio.com.

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