Marpac Construction

Specialty: General contracting, construction management
Management: Founding members Don Mar and Doug Mar; managing member Herman Setijono; members Jon Okada and Sai Chaleunphonh
Year founded: 1995
Headquarters: Seattle
2006 revenues: $30 million
Projected 2007 revenues: $40 million
Current projects: Renovation of the historic Kong Yick building into the new Wing Luke Asian Museum, Seattle; West Seattle Community Resource Center; 196-stall parking garage, Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, Bremerton

Photo courtesy of Marpac Construction [enlarge]

Marpac Construction is building the West Seattle Community Resource Center, which includes 34 low-income apartments and a social service center.

Don Mar, a member of Marpac Construction, sees building prices still rising this year because of an abundance of work and limited labor.

“Prices are going to continue to increase and schedules are going to be difficult to meet,” he said, noting he expects all construction trades to be shorthanded.

Nonprofit portfolio

About 60 percent of Marpac’s business is building multifamily developments, and most of that work is for nonprofit affordable housing developers.

Mar said he believes the nonprofits are relying more on private donations to build affordable housing given huge demand and what he sees as less public sector financing.

“They’re going out to Joe Blow public on an individual basis saying ‘help us to fund these projects,’” he said.

No finger pointing

Marpac does a lot of design-build for the federal government, Mar said. He said the feds appear to be using design-build to avoid the “finger pointing” that sometimes happens when both an architect and builder are involved in the process.

Marpac does industrial work for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and fuel facilities for the military, Mar said. It’s also doing seismic upgrades to military hospitals.

Historic renovations

The company specializes in restoring old buildings. It started out doing historic restorations of six Seattle public libraries and that led to private sector work, including the St. Charles Hotel restoration and conversion in Seattle to residential and some commercial projects for Plymouth Housing Group.

Being a minority construction business “probably hurts” Marpac in some cases, but it helps the company in the nonprofit arena, Mar said. That’s “because those organizations are generally run by people more liberal in thinking and more willing to give opportunities to women and minorities,” he said.