Nailing It
Anna Cook (left) and Heidi Flanders
Both Heidi Flanders and Anna Cook described it as the best alternative to having to look for work.
That was their somewhat tongue-in-cheek way of explaining how and why they became co-owners of Integrity Development & Construction, a design-build firm based in North Amherst. Only they weren’t kidding.
It was 2012, and then-owner Peter Jessop was looking to retire, and was either going to find a buyer — preferably from among his staff — or close the doors, recalled Flanders, adding that she and Cook decided to step in and take that giant step from being employee to employer.
Beyond fear and loathing of the job market, there were other reasons for wanting to take that entrepreneurial leap of faith, primarily a comfort level with the business, the staff, the course the venture was on, and, especially, each other.
“We worked really well together as colleagues,” said Cook, co-owner and project manager, who started at Integrity as an unpaid intern from UMass Amherst in 2002. “By 2012, she was the only designer, I was the only project manager; we felt like the two of us were working hand-in-hand on every project.”
Flanders, co-owner and designer, agreed. She came to Integrity as a designer in 2008 and worked closely with Cook as the company weathered the Great Recession — becoming smaller and leaner in the process — and rebuilt from there. “We partnered up because we felt we were burning the midnight oil together anyway; we decided we’d rather do that than try to find jobs.”
“We partnered up because we felt we were burning the midnight oil together anyway; we decided we’d rather do that than try to find jobs.”
Over the past 13 years, they have kept Integrity on a course of steady growth, building a deep portfolio of residential, commercial, and institutional work that effectively conveys the diversity that has enabled it to withstand several downturns in the economy and other recent challenges ranging from workforce shortages to price and supply chain issues.
“We do a little bit of everything,” Flanders said. “That really helped us survive when commercial work was drying up; we could shift to other things.”
On the residential side, the company handles everything from new home design and construction to kitchen remodels; from porch, deck, and garage additions to aging-in-place design. On the commercial side, it specializes in office renovations, commercial storefront improvements, new office building design and construction, and more.
This Colonial home in Conway is one of many recent additions to the Integrity portfolio.
The kitchen in that new home in Conway.
There is still demand for work in pretty much all those categories, said the partners, adding quickly that the unsettled nature of the economy and widespread uncertainty about what comes next has some clients, on both the residential and commercial sides, pumping the brakes.
“We’ll have a preliminary conversation with someone, and then they’ll come back to us and say, ‘we just want to let the dust settle for a few months — we’re not sure about the state of the economy,’” said Cook, adding that some who once thought their jobs were stable are now not quite so sure, especially in the higher education sector, which dominates the firm’s primary coverage area.
But, overall, the company has a considerable amount of work on the books, said Flanders, adding that 2024 was a very solid year, 2025 has been strong to date, and the simple plan moving forward is to continue building on solid word-of-mouth referrals and a pattern of smart growth.
“Our goal over the past 13 years has been to grow steadily — we don’t want to see large peaks and valleys in that growth,” she went on. “And we want to continue on that path moving forward.”
For this issue and its focus on home improvement, we talked at length with Flanders and Cook about what they’re building — both in the field and with their company — and where they want to take this venture.
Solid Foundation
Flanders told BusinessWest that her mother has run a mom-and-pop store for decades, and she learned a lot from her about all that’s involved with owning a business.
“I’ve watched her work every day, 12 hours a day, 364 days a year, so I know what it takes to go into something like that,” she told BusinessWest. “That piece of this — knowing that I would be working long hours and knowing that I would be doing just about anything on any given day — didn’t scare me.”
It didn’t scare Cook, either, which explains their willingness to take a risk in 2012 to acquire Integrity from Jessop, who would stay with the company in a type of advisor and mentor role for several years.
But they didn’t consider it a huge risk because of the solid foundation they, Jessop, and the rest of the team had built, and confidence in themselves.
There were some learning curves along the way, especially on the accounting and HR sides of the ledger, as there are with almost all small business owners, and COVID proved to be an anxiety-filled time. But the two knew the business and what it took to continue that pattern of steady growth, and they’ve been hitting their targets since taking ownership.
As for the current and recent portfolio, it includes, as noted earlier, projects across a wide spectrum, with most work undertaken in Amherst and surrounding communities, including Belchertown, Northampton, Conway, and others.
On the commercial side, the project list includes a law office renovation, a dental office, the Trolley Barn in North Amherst, some historic preservation work at Amherst College, as well as an intriguing project to convert a two-family home into a veterinary hospital in Turners Falls.
On the residential side, the company handles new home construction, both custom and modular homes, and has tackled many of both across the region. The bulk of its residential work, though, is renovations and additions, from one or two rooms to an entire house, as well as energy retrofits, which are in demand as area residents look to pare their energy costs by becoming more efficient and ‘green.’
“We’ll do as little as replacing a few windows and as much as the whole house, top to bottom,” said Cook, adding that the commercial side is dominated by small to mid-size projects, many of them renovations and fit-outs.
“There’s a lot of fear and uncertainty about pricing — questions about what’s happening with tariffs and how that will affect a project. The future is unknown.”
The residential side of the ledger is generally a mixed bag, with some new construction, but a great deal of work involving improvements to existing homes, noted Flanders, adding that many recent projects involve helping people stay in their homes as they age.
“We do get a good number of calls from Baby Boomers who are trying to stay in their homes,” she told BusinessWest. “They don’t want to wind up in a nursing home, so they’re proactive now to improve the home to ensure that they can stay in it long-term.”
Conversely, the firm is getting more calls from younger people who want to renovate or build an addition to a home to accommodate an aging parent.
Indeed, as more communities pass measures permitting in-law apartments, there has been a big uptick in interest in such accommodations, said the partners, adding that there is a learning curve for clients, especially with all that’s involved — and the price tag — with such facilities.
“There’s a big disconnect concerning this,” Cook said. “If we’re building a two-bedroom, one- or two-bath, small, detached space … for us, that’s a whole house; it needs all the things a house needs. But mentally, people think of this as an accessory to their house, so there’s a learning curve on the cost of things.”
Building Momentum
While work is steady and the pipeline is full of projects, there are challenges, said the partners, starting with some anxiety concerning the economy in general and prices for materials in particular.
“There’s a lot of fear and uncertainty about pricing — questions about what’s happening with tariffs and how that will affect a project,” Cook said. “The future is unknown.”
Flanders agreed, noting that there have been recent issues with price and availability of fixtures and other items due to tariffs on specific metals.
Meanwhile, there’s the economy and uncertainty about the future, especially in sectors like higher education, they noted, adding that, while it’s generally good to be based in a college town — or the Five College area, as the case may be — current conditions are not the norm.
“People are worried that jobs that were once considered stable may not be so stable anymore,” she noted. “If you’re on soft money and your grant got clawed back and your position is now in question, you may not want to go ahead with a project.”
Then are lingering workforce issues affecting the entire construction sector, said the partners, adding that, as long-time staff members retire — and several of them have in recent years — replacing them is becoming increasingly challenging.
And workforce is an issue at a company that self-performs much of its work as opposed to construction managing and subbing the work out to others, as Cook explained.
“We self-perform everything from demo to framing to painting, and we do that for quality control,” she noted. “We could sub things out more, and we could then do more projects and increase our capacity, but we feel like we would lose a handle on the quality. So the side effect of that is that we have to schedule things out a little farther.
“We want to staff the project with capable, skilled carpenters and the right helpers with them,” she went on, adding that staffers often get to work on a project from start to finish, rather than just take a small segment of the work.
Flanders noted the firm works with two schools — Smith Vocational and Agricultural High School and South Hadley High School — that have co-op programs, and they have introduced dozens of students to the field through those initiatives and gained several employees in the process.
“It’s proven to be a good pipeline … we currently have four current carpenters on our staff that have come through those programs over the years,” she noted, adding that, overall, finding skilled labor has been a stern challenge in recent years.
“We often joke here … where did the 30- to 50-year-olds go? We don’t know — they’re disappearing,” she said. “Getting people who actually have experience is pretty challenging. We’ve found a few over the past few years, which is great, but it’s few and far between.”
And workforce plays a huge role in both long-term plans for continued growth and shorter-term efforts to slot in a broad mix of projects large, small, and in between.
“We have a full pipeline of projects,” said Flanders, noting that some of these initiatives have been in the discussion stage for months or even years, and others just a few days or weeks, and they’re handled as quickly as workforce, materials, and other factors will allow. “Some people take their time and don’t move as fast; other people move fast, and then we have a backlog.”
Cook concurred. “Because we’re in a college town, we call it our ‘rolling admissions policy,’” she said. “When you’re ready to send the contract, you get the next spot on the schedule.”
To continue this use of higher-ed terminology, it’s fair to say Cook and Flanders have more than made the grade as business owners and key players in this challenging industry.
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