A lot can happen in 10 years. In 1998, Providence Business News profiled the fastest-growing companies and the Top 100 privately held businesses. Bill Clinton was president, gas cost $1.03 a gallon and the stock markets were riding the dot-com bubble into the stratosphere.
A decade later, many of the Ocean State’s fast-growing businesses are still expanding, and some of the top companies are still at the top of Rhode Island’s economy. Here we catch up with the No. 1 and No. 100 companies, based on revenue, and see how quickly the first and last companies on the decade-old fastest-growing list are growing today.
Gilbane Inc.
In the 10 years since it was rated the top privately held company in Rhode Island, Providence-based Gilbane more than doubled its annual revenue, earning about $4.1 billion in fiscal 2007.
The company’s construction arm, Gilbane Building Co., is one of the few U.S. builders qualified for complex projects such as the Fort Belvoir Hospital near Washington, D.C., said company communications director Wes Cotter.
“Challenging ourselves to build those types of facilities has differentiated the company within the marketplace,” Cotter said.
After a brief foray into buying and managing existing buildings in downtown Providence, Gilbane Development Co. returned to its core strength – buying promising properties and developing them. The company’s current Rhode Island projects include Narragansett Pier, a mixed-use development in the town of Narragansett, and Kettle Point, a 280-unit, mixed-use development in East Providence.
With 2,200 employees nationwide, Gilbane remains privately owned, and has “long-term plans to stay that way,” Cotter said.
John Andrade Insurance Agency
Not much has changed at Bristol-based John Andrade Insurance Agency since 1998, except the tools of the trade.
In the 10 years since it ranked No. 100 on the list of Rhode Island’s Top 100 privately held companies, the third-generation family business has hired only one additional staff member, bringing its total employee count to 21.
Nonetheless, Andrade Insurance has expanded into new territories in Massachusetts, and grown its business from $9 million in 1998 to just under $15 million in fiscal 2007, said President Mark Matrone.
“We believe in efficient technology which allows us to spend more time with our clients on the phone or in person,” Matrone said. Software solutions for the insurance industry have freed agents from back-office drudgery.
Matrone runs the company with his father-in-law, John Andrade, the company’s second-generation of Andrade-family owners. Andrade’s father, also named John, started the company in 1935.
Dimeo Construction
When it made the tail end of 1998’s list of fastest-growing companies, Dimeo Construction had not yet discovered the market niche that by 2008 would become its hallmark. Now, 10 years later, it has more than tripled its annual revenue – from $149 million in 1998 to near $500 million in fiscal 2007.
“Today almost every building that we’re building is a sustainable building in one form or another,” Vice President Tony Dematteo said. “A lot of it is focused on the energy efficiency – geothermal wells, photovoltaic panel systems for electricity.”
In 2003, Dimeo Construction undertook its first “green” building project, the Mark Twain House visitor and education center in Hartford, Conn. Dimeo soon will begin construction on Brown University’s new Mind Brain Behavior Building, which will aim to achieve the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) gold standard, the system’s second-highest rating.
Among 275 employees at offices in Providence, Boston and New Haven, Dimeo now has about 25 project managers who are certified by the U.S. Green Building Council to work under the LEED rating system, which scores buildings for green attributes like energy efficiency and use of renewable materials.
NECSAS Corp.
It topped the list of Rhode Island’s fastest-growing companies in 1998. Then, high-tech success story NECSAS Corp. fell off the map.
Ten years ago, the company headed by CEO David Comeau was raking in $10.2 million annually by landing contracts with Lockheed, ABC Television and the U.S. Navy to provide high-bandwidth computer networks. Now, the company is shuttered and Comeau has disappeared, evading a $66,000 civil judgment against him for misappropriating pension fund contributions between August 1999 and March 2003.
U.S. Labor Department spokesman John M. Chavez said efforts have been unsuccessful to serve Comeau with a 2004 contempt judgment in the case. “This guy is evading our court case so far,” he said.
Attempts by Providence Business News to reach Comeau were unsuccessful. Former NECSAS officers identified on an archived version of the company’s former Web site also could not be located.
The office of Fall River lawyer John Patrick Long, who represented Comeau in the case, has documents that were served to Comeau but returned, according to an employee there who did not want to be identified. Long was not available for comment.
Reached at his home in Fall River, Comeau’s father, Bernard Comeau, said his son may have moved to Wisconsin, but the two have not communicated for several years. NECSAS itself simply “went underground,” Bernard Comeau said. “It was going so good, then just boom – plummeted. I was as surprised as everyone else.” •
