Construction Firms Rely on Grocery Chains

FORT LAUDERDALE, FL-As commercial real estate contruction jobs have dwindled over the last couple of years, firms like Deerfield Beach-based SIKON Construction Co. are doing more grocery store construction, as a proportion of their work than in the past, says Dale E. Scott, senior executive vice president at the company. At the same time, SIKON is trying to diversify, seeking out work related to senior housing, student housing and medical office buildings.

Scott says that as his customers try to diversify, SIKON is also trying to broaden its horizons. “If you were a real estate developer doing mostly retail, you are doing other types of product today,” he says. Still, Scott acknowledges, it is hard to get around the fact that construction opportunites have dramatically diminished.

“What we’ve seen in the last year or 18 months,” says Karen M. Scott, a Stuart-based retail consultant, no relation to Dale Scott, is lots of renovation of existing grocery properties. “It is a prime time to renovate stores because labor costs are down and grocery stores, who usually depend on landlords to develop new shopping centers, put their own money into renovations,” she says. If they are going to do that, it is less costly to do that now than in the past, says Scott.