Synergy Construction

Specialty: Building contractor, 70 percent for nonprofits
Principals: Pamela and Larry Stewart
Year founded: 1990
Headquarters: Woodinville
Largest project in 2002: Views at Madison — 96 apartments and 30,000 square feet of offices over underground parking

Photo courtesy of Synergy Construction Views at Madison was Synergy Construction’s largest project last year.

Pamela Stewart’s Synergy Construction broke into the building business working for nonprofit groups, and sticking with that has given the Woodinville general contractor some insulation against the recession.

During the boom, chasing more private jobs could have been more lucrative, but as the bust dried up a lot of private work, Synergy’s flow of nonprofit work held up.

Also, “the reward” from working with nonprofits has been “much greater than monetary” gains, Stewart said.

The 88-employee firm recorded $22 million in revenues last year, up about 30 percent from 2001’s total, according to Stewart.

The firm’s largest job throughout last year, a $14 million contract to build the Views at Madison apartments-and-office complex, is at the end of construction, though. That leaves Stewart expecting revenues to drop slightly for this year.

“We’ll finish that big one and our backlog isn’t as large because of the economy,” Stewart said. The firm’s third principal, William McKimmie, died last year after a battle with leukemia. Synergy stands out for being led by a woman in a male-dominated field.

Stewart said that programs set up to help women- and minority-owned businesses aided in the start-up and early survival of her company. But now that the firm is established, she said, “it really doesn’t have any bearing. We have survived because of the quality of our construction and the very talented people in our organization,” she said.

The firm’s work on Views at Madison received a 2003 Excellence Award for specialty construction of multi-family from Associated Builders & Contractors of Western Washington. The nonprofit Washington Community Reinvestment Association displayed the project on the cover of its annual report.

The project consists of 96 moderate-income apartments and 30,000 square feet of offices above underground parking on the grounds of the nonprofit Hearing Speech and Deafness Center. The site is on a slope along Madison Street at 19th Avenue in Seattle’s Central District.

“There was very little staging area,” Stewart said. “Sunshine Grocery (which the construction site abuts) had to stay open all the time.” The site slopes, fronts a busy stretch of Madison and required extensive shoring. Also, three massive TV transmission towers occupy part of the site, which limited use of construction cranes.

Synergy finished construction last year of Mitchell Place, a 51-unit senior affordable housing project for the Multiservice Center of King County, a $3.1 million job.

This year it’s building a new jaguar exhibit at Woodland Park Zoo, for which the firm has worked before. Synergy won an Associated General Contractors of Washington award for its 1995 construction of the zoo’s food pavilion, and last year it fabricated and installed elephant control gates. The jaguar exhibit requires hiring specialized subcontractors, Stewart said.

Synergy also nears a finish of constructing 51 senior apartments in Woodinville for the Eastside’s nonprofit Downtown Activists to Save Housing. The project is called Greenbrier Family Housing and will also provide 50 more apartments in about six buildings, which Synergy will start constructing after finishing the senior units on a total contract of $7 million.

Work is also starting on constructing Lynnwood’s $1.2 million Heritage Park, which will memorialize a trolley system built in the 1920s to link Lynnwood to downtown Seattle. In 1996, Synergy did the work of renovating a trolley car from that system that will be featured in the park.