Wyoming company acquiring assets of Martin-Harris Construction

Martin-Harris Construction announced Thursday it’s selling the assets of the Las Vegas commercial and residential construction company with revenue of more than $200 million a year.

The company name will remain and founder and President Frank Martin, 67, will remain in his role through 2016 before serving as a consultant for five years after that. His son Frank “Guy” Martin was promoted to senior vice president and will become president and assume day-to-day management.

The sale is to be completed next week to Wyoming-based Big-D Corp., which also owns Big-D Construction.

Terms weren’t disclosed.

Founded in 1967, Big-D is one of the top builders in the nation and operates through eight locally managed offices in Nevada. Arizona, California, Minnesota, Utah and Wyoming.

The sale isn’t expected to affect the jobs of the company’s 200 employees in Las Vegas, and construction contracts remain in place. The transition allows Martin-Harris to significantly increase its bonding and financial capabilities, Frank Martin said.

“For me, the major motivator was making sure our employees, my sons and family are taken care of over the long term,” Martin said. “I’m trying to make sure the legacy of Martin-Harris Construction continued beyond me to a second generation. Some of the people have been around me for 35 to 36 years out of the 38 years I have been in business, and this secures the financial future for the employees here and now.”

Martin-Harris started as a two-man operation and has built such projects as O’Sheas on the Strip, Tahiti Village and condominium projects Streamline Towers, Manhattan East and Boca Raton.

Its current projects include Ainsworth Game Technology’s new headquarters, Catamaran prescription fulfillment center at the UNLV Harry Reid Technology Park, the Gramercy mixed-used project formerly known as ManhattanWest, the Konami Gaming headquarters and the festival site for Rock in Rio.

Martin-Harris was acquired because we’re not a fixer-upper,” Guy Martin, 45, said. “It’s because of our reputation and 38 years in Las Vegas and how well-respected we are in this market.”

Frank Harris, the son of a former sharecropper turned oil field driller who started the company when he was 29, said this is the best-year profitwise in the company’s history.

The Konami project is worth $36 million, the Ainsworth project is more than $30 million, and Catamaran is a $12 million project. The Rock in Rio project at Sahara Avenue and Las Vegas Boulevard South for MGM Resorts International is valued at $20 million.

He said the company benefited from doing federal projects when the recession hit and then focusing on commercial and residential projects in the Southwest in the past three years.

“We are still here and we are having the best year we have ever had in the history of this company in terms of the only thing that really matters — profit,” Martin said. “So many construction companies live in a la-la land when they base how successful their company is based on revenue. Our company is going to do probably $225 million. That number is not important to me. What is important is that bottom-line number. That’s what measures the success of a company.”

The Las Vegas construction industry has been one of the hardest hit during the Great Recession and has undergone major transition, said Brian Gordon, a principal of consulting and analytical firm Applied Analysis. Construction employment once accounted for 12 percent overall employment at its height but it’s now less than 5 percent, which is more reflective of the national economy.

“The industry has been experiencing a significant amount of transition, and transactions of this nature are one more signal that construction and development industries are continuing to evolve. At the same time from an acquirer’s standpoint, this would suggest they see opportunity in the Las Vegas market,” Gordon said.

The company also announced Paul Toplak has been promoted to vice president of operations.