Turner Construction

Specialty: General building contractor
Local principal: Larry Gerlach
Year founded: 1902; Northwest office opened in 1976
Local offices: Seattle, Bellevue and Portland
Largest project in 2002: Seahawks Stadium

Photo by Benjamin Minnick Turner Construction’s largest project last year was the $430 million Seahawks Stadium.

Turner Construction lands its share of the Northwest’s marquee private construction jobs.

It finished building the $430 million Seahawks Stadium and adjoining exhibition hall last year. Turner’s contract paid $285 million on the stadium work and $60 million on the exhibition hall.

Turner has the $95 million job of building the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center’s public health sciences building in South Lake Union, which the firm expects to finish in November.

The company anticipates finishing its $50 million construction of the new Marriott Hotel on the downtown Seattle waterfront in the coming weeks. It finished a seismic upgrade and renovation of the University of Washington’s Suzallo Library and a $13 million remodel of the Starbucks Center in Seattle’s Sodo industrial area.

Next up: a $100 million contract to construct Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s and developer Don Milliken’s 2200 Westlake, a massive mixed project for the Quinton Instruments site on Denny Way and Westlake Avenue north of downtown Seattle.

Art Langlie, manager of business development in Turner’s Seattle office, said plans shoot for starting construction before the summer ends. The project consists of office and condo towers over a QFC grocery, other retail and underground parking where the Quinton Instruments building is now.

Also, Turner won a $160 million job to conduct seismic upgrades and build two new structures at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle.

“Clearly things have slowed down considerably from the big years of two and three years ago,” Langlie said. “2002 was the beginning of that slowdown, and we expect 2003 to be similar.”

Northwest revenues reached $329 million in 2001 before they plunged to $208 million for 2002. Langlie said the firm projects $225 million in revenues for this year, although that presumes 2200 Westlake will go into construction as planned.

Boeing and Siemens recently selected Turner to work on upgrading security in airports around the country for the Transportation Security Administration. Turner’s 220-employee Northwest office will do that work in Northwest states.