Stein Construction closing after 105 years
Longtime Chattanooga building contractor Doug Stein said he’s shifting his focus to developing homes at the Black Creek community as he ends the 105-year run of Stein Construction Co.
Stein said Monday he actually made the decision about a year and a half ago to shut down the general contracting company in which he was the fourth generation owner and turn his attention to the Lookout Valley development.
“We’re building a community here and not a subdivision,” said Stein,
60, who is a partner in Black Creek with Chattanoogans Gary and Bobby Chazen and is managing the development.
On Wednesday, an equipment auction will take place at the longtime 3611 Amnicola Highway home of Stein Construction.
The company had built a variety of commercial projects over the years ranging from the former U.S. Pipe and Wheland Foundry to The Honors Course and Renaissance Park.
Mark Hite, president of the Greater Chattanooga Association of Realtors, said new home building is coming back from the Great Recession, but it’s still half of what it was in the peak years of 2005-06.
“One of the key components is land. It all starts with land,” he said. Hite said plans by Black Creek’s partners to take up home building is “very positive.”
“They’re bringing more dirt to the market,” he said.
The developer recently won Chattanooga-Hamilton County Regional Planning Commission approval for 34 lots for The Ridges at Black Creek. Stein said the group also is prepping
about 60 more lots on which to put single-family homes.
“We’ve had more demand than product,” he said, with new
units in The Ridges to sell in the low $400,000 range.
In 2006, Stein and his partners in Black Creek acquired the Cummings Cove development as well as a large tract of land on the part of nearby Raccoon Mountain known as Aetna Mountain. Later, he and his partners bought out a New York hedge fund that had been involved in Black Creek.
Currently, the developers are building the next section of road up the mountain, with the artery to the top almost designed, Stein said.
“We’re aggressively pursuing putting lots on the market and getting homes built,” he said.
The project previously won $9 million in tax increment financing (TIF). Under such a plan, developers spend the money for a project up front, then are paid back with interest over a 20-year period out of additional tax revenues generated by the development.
A lawsuit was filed by Helen Burns Sharp, a retired city planner, against Chattanooga’s Industrial Development Board over the TIF financing. She claimed the IDB met secretly in 2012 and again in 2014 — after Sharp won her first suit — before the panel approved and then reapproved the Black Creek TIF.
The city agreed to pay Sharp $22,500 to settle the lawsuits.
Property owners have said the Black Creek project could be a $500 million development.
Stein joined Stein Construction Co. in 1980, and the company came under his direction in 1988.
When the last downturn began in 2007 and escalated in 2008, Stein began to turn the then-125 employee company toward government and large institutional projects at TVA and in Oak Ridge, Tenn.
Stein said the company won the “Y-12 Small Business of the Year” award in 2010 for building the Bear Creek Road Bypass, the first part of the highly anticipated Uranium Processing Facility project in Oak Ridge.
Stein said the company had an average hourly payroll of more than $4.5 million annually during most of the years between 2000 and 2014.
Contact Mike Pare at mpare@timesfreepress. com or 423-757-6318.