Hoar Construction

Hoar Construction LLC is a privately-held heavy construction company specializing in commercial and industrial buildings, health care facilities, and retail construction. The president of the company is Turner Burton, who succeeded Rob Burton in 2018.

It was founded in 1940 by Friend Reed Hoar and originally specialized in church projects. Bob Burton and Virgil Handy joined the firm and 1955 and helped its reputation grow with the construction of Office Park in 1955 and Eastwood Mall in 1959. From churches and retail centers, the company diversified with health care and institutional divisions. It has now grown into one of the largest construction management and retail contracting firms in the United States. In addition to its Birmingham offices at 2 Metroplex Drive behind Colonial Brookwood Village, the firm maintains offices in Huntsville; Mobile; Orlando, Florida; Nashville, Tennessee; and Austin and Houston, Texas.

Richard Nichols Hoar joined his father's company in 1948, establishing F. R. Hoar and Son. Rob Burton was made president in the 1950s. By the end of the 1960s the company was doing business as R. N. Hoar and Son.

The firm filed papers as a Delaware corporation and adopted its present name in 1978. In 1988 Hoar partnered with Burton Investments. It reorganized in 1997 as a limited liability company, while Mike Lanier and Rob Burton Jr also established a separate construction management company, Hoar Program Management. The founder's grandson, Wayne Hoar, retired from the company in 2001.

The company achieved $537 million in revenue in 2007 and ranked 12th among Birmingham's largest companies that year. In 2008 it was named the 5th best place to work in the U.S. by the "Great Place to Work Institute".

Major projects

According to the Birmingham Business Journal, Hoar construction "has built more than 100 enclosed malls, 250 theater screens, more than 90,000,000 square feet of retail space, and more than 5,000,000 square feet of commercial space since its founding in 1940.