Page 20 - BusinessWest December 8, 2021

Steady On
Collins-Crochiere Construction Builds on a Record of Consistency
By Joseph Bednar
Thomas Crochiere had a mod- est vision for his construction company a quarter-century
ago — and, as it turned out, a suc- cessful one.
“Having worked for a company with up to 100 employees in the past, I knew I didn’t want to have a large company,”
he told BusinessWest. “I was happy with a small company where I could know my employees very well and work with them and manage one or two projects at a time. I didn’t want to have a large plate of projects. So we’ve just contin- ued in that direction for 26 years.”
Crochiere entered the construc-
tion world out of college and, as he said, worked for a large company that performed a lot of state and municipal work.
“I was working as a project man- ager for that company for about 10 years. But I got a little itchy; I wanted to become an owner. So my wife and I
started this business back in 1995, and since I’d been doing mostly municipal and state work, and had pretty decent familiarity with that process, we stayed with commercial construction as our primary focus, and we have just picked away at jobs over the years.”
Tom Crochiere and Ann Collins- Crochiere launched Collins-Crochiere Construction Services Inc. in Palmer and rented shop space in Ludlow for
a few years. Then, 18 years ago, they came across an eight-acre parcel on McKinstry Avenue in Chicopee, on which sat a large, long building in need of rehabilitation. They saw potential, not only as the company’s headquar- ters, but as a rental property for service businesses, under the name of Main Street Property Management.
“When we bought this, it was bank- rupt, abandoned, contaminated, and pretty much in nasty shape,” he said
“I was happy with a small company where I could know my employees very well and work with them and manage one or two projects at a time.”
of the property, which used to be the home of Jahn Foundry in Chicopee, the sister foundry to the Springfield site that suffered a fateful explosion
in 1999. “When we bought this, we cleaned it environmentally and then started building it out for modern busi- ness space. It’s been hunky dory. But early on, it was a little sketchy.”
It has also helped him keep his employees busy during slow weeks. “We can always find something to improve here, whether it’s painting a hallway or doing some other repair that makes life better for the tenants. That’s been our filler.”
But the day-to-day business has been consistent over the past 26 years. “We have some busy years, some not- so-busy years, and our staffing ranges from around five to 10 employees. The high point was 10, but that was short- lived. It wasn’t as productive or effec- tive as having four, five, or six.
“So we’ve stayed with that, and all of our work generally has been word of mouth,” Crochiere continued. “We
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