At once old school and cutting edge, Andy Bannister, president of Earthtone Construction, builds some of the most beautiful Northern California wine country houses and estates. His 50-person, $22 million company also constructs, renovates, and maintains multifamily housing in the more urbanized parts of Marin and Solano counties. The mix enables his company to embrace new ways of building in the high-end work, while still keeping a foot in the real world of market-rate housing for the other 99 percent. It’s a wise business plan, because multifamily work tends to remain strong even when single-family construction slows.
Andy knows you can’t put all your eggs in one basket; he’s learned that firsthand through his nearly 40 years in construction. Lest you think he’s older than he is, keep in mind he started as a teenage apprentice for a 200-year-old construction company in England. Now he’s leading his own company with two partners in Sebastopol, Calif. They’ll be celebrating 20 years in business at the end of the year.
Twenty years in Northern California means at least two recessions weathered. Even though the area is now experiencing boom times, Andy keeps those hard-won lessons at the top of his mind. The last recession was, of course, the toughest.
“A lot of folks in the construction industry make the mistake of not preparing for downturns. We saw a lot of colleagues fall by the wayside while seeking the feast,” he says. “We’ve grown to 50 people and $22 million a year, but we’re not out buying lots of toys and getting in too deep. In the last recession, we had managed to save enough cash to get through. We even took advantage of the downturn to expand.”
Constraint in a boom and expansion in a bust sounds counterintuitive, but it’s paid off for Earthtone. During the lengthy recession of the last decade, Andy took the opportunity to lower his rent and renovate. The confidence he showed in the company’s future impressed the few clients who were left and inspired them to move forward as well. “It was leap of faith,” he admits. “But we thought, ‘this isn’t going to last, it’ll come back.’ It was sort of funny, because right when we were remodeling the office space, that was when we got a new home to build and a remodel.And then things started picking up again. It’s just about having the confidence. Stay lean, calm down, and carry on.”
Confidence is great, and it will get you far in almost any line of work, but we must not elide over the importance that having cash on hand played in the company’s survival. That’s where “constraint in a boom” becomes the resonant lesson.
Calm Down and Carry On
Constraint in a good economy doesn’t just mean not overspending, it also means not overextending to grab every job. Andy is aware his company has gotten a little too busy of late, and he plans to pull the reins in a bit. “We’re in a growth year this year,” he says. “We’ll try to taper that down to about 12 percent a year. We have four decent-sized residential projects going now—either new construction or major renovation. One is a large estate that will keep us busy for a few years. And we have five multifamily complexes we’re working on. The multifamily projects are especially gratifying because they’re for regular folks like us.”
Andy doesn’t want to overwhelm himself, his partners, or his staff with too much work just to chase the dollars, because maintaining a good quality of life and great quality of work are key factors in the company’s longevity and excellent employee retention. “We have value invested in our people. Anybody that knows us, knows that it’s not just lip service,” he says. “We’re not demanding that they work 60 to 80 hours a week like some other companies are.
“I built this company not just to make buck. It’s great to make money, but I’ve also not made money.” he laughs. “I’ve built this company to be sustainable and last beyond me. I want it to be a vehicle for people to grow and explore, to find a path. That’s what gets me up in the morning. I love being an employer and being a part of our employees’ lives. I love sharing that passion for what we do.”
So, striving for stability and what he calls “mindfulness” are paramount in his approach to business. The mindful mantra extends from internal employee relations to how the company manages a job site or interacts with neighbors. Many of the sites the company works on are difficult or dense, requiring extra care and consideration. One such site was a long, narrow infill project for architect Amy Alper, AIA, in the town of Sonoma, Calif. “It took a lot of thought to figure out how to get material in there and not upset the neighbors,” Andy recalls. “So, we built it from the back to the front. But even when we’re working on a job out in the country, we want our people mindful of how they’re driving—and when they’re on site that they’re not playing loud music.”
Andy applies mindfulness to building science and construction as well. He’s worked with straw bale, structural insulated panels (SIPs), and concrete SIPs, and anything else a cutting-edge California architectural firm can throw at him. He’s a member of the U.S. Green Building Council and is LEED AP. The tenets of green building are baked into the business, but they’re tempered by his strong practical streak. His definition of sustainable construction is more expansive than some, perhaps. “To be sustainable, a project must also be affordable. It’s got to be practical, and make sense from a socio-economic standpoint,” he explains. “We’re not about pushing a sustainable project that’s 20 times more expensive than a conventional project.”
The best results, he insists, come from the simplest move—applying insulation and vapor barriers properly. “In the past installation of the insulation was never really that great. Builders would frame the house, put in the electrical and HVAC, and then just shove batts in. That caused more problems than it solved because it created these weird convection currents,” he explains. “Over the last 10 years or so, with improvements in building science, we can measure how insulation really performs. We’ve learned that good installation of the material is critical to the performance.”
Sustainability can also mean not expending time, money, and effort on renovating a building that will never function efficiently or satisfy its intended use. Andy is often called upon to evaluate existing buildings and determine their feasibility for new uses. One example is the Vineyard Farmhouse project designed by Amy Alper. The original house, although sited well, was poorly built and did not take advantage of its scenic surroundings; its floor plan was dark and closed off. The owner was cost conscious and wanted to save as much of the existing building as possible.
“Sometimes it can be so much work to keep something that’s subpar anyway. You often don’t save as much money as you think,” says Andy. Ultimately, he and Amy saved some walls and the foundation, and managed to give the client what he really wanted at a price he could afford—a house that functioned well for his vineyard business and his life. You could call it the success of mindfulness over matter.