Q&A: Spates Construction builds up the North Country

Vermont Business Magazine, Sep 01, 2002

VBM: Do you work in Canada at all?

Spates: No. If anyone wants to know about the free trade agreement, they should just come up here and talk with me. We bid a few years ago on an opera house project right here on the border, and it became apparent from day one that it would be easier for us to bid to a general contractor out of Canada than it would be for them to bid with us. They're all unionized on that side. It's very easy, or easier, for someone from Canada to get a green card to work down here than it would be for any of us to go to work up there. Their unions are very protective.

It started right after the 1976 Olympics in Montreal that the unions became big. I don't know how the other provinces are, but to go into Quebec is pretty tough. If you look at the border, on Sunday nights you see tons of trucks headed south, but I see logs heading north and that's about it.

We're 90 miles from Montreal. I have millions of people who live north of me, and we're on a lake that's 26 miles long, six miles of it is in Vermont, and there's a lot of money being spent on the Canadian end of the lake. You go fishing and see some of the houses being built up there, and you feel like you can't even get a shot at it even though it's right here in my own backyard. The next population base that would be that big to us would be the Boston area and that's too far away. But what's north of us, well, you can't get there from here.

They have tradespeople that come down for sheet-rocking and taping, painting, cabinets, installing granite counter tops. But for us to try and send a crew up there, the red tape and the hassle trying to get your guys in, and in a union in Canada, is just too much. There's a lot of potential up there, but it doesn't do us any good. So we travel south.

It's tough, because normally you plot a spot on the map as the center of where you work, and draw a radius. We've got a semi-circle.

VBM: What are some of the big projects you've done?

Spates: Well, we've talked about the Springfield State Office Building. We did the Franklin County Courthouse in St Albans. We've done schools in Jericho, Underhill, Albany, Sheldon, Belvidere, Isle La Motte. We did the North Country Junior High School, an. addition on the high school at North Country High School. Work at the Newport Prison and a Work Camp in St Johnsbury. We've done salt sheds for the state and other state buildings.

Commercial buildings include some up here in Newport like the Gateway Center right on the lake in Newport. A lot of metal buildings like Newport Furniture, Lyndon Furniture in Lyndon. We're doing a project right now for Butternut Mountain Farms in Morrisville. I've sold my maple syrup to him for years. Sugarman in Hardwick, I've done renovations for him.

VBM: You've got a big sugarbush, right?

Spates: Yeah. It worked out nicely years ago when I might get laid off in the winters, but the last 15 years or so we haven't had any layoffs. Last year was the first year that we did lay a few people off in about eight years.