Raise the Floor

After several years of stingy survival, Ampersand Construction, a niche home remodeling and construction business, is finally past the recession.

The Sarasota-based company will likely surpass $2 million in revenues in 2012 — more than double three or four years ago. Clients, albeit ones who still take six months to decide, if not longer, are actually closing deals, not just window-shopping.

But just when life returns to the business, the partners behind it, John Hermansen and Allan Livesey, are shifting gears. Or more specifically, they added a gear. In fact, Hermansen and Livesey will apply a key lesson of the recession to their next business venture. That lesson is to have a diversified business strategy, so when the economy tanks, the company doesn't go down with it.

For Hermansen and Livesey, former roommates and fraternity brothers at Rollins College, that diversification is a new business called Sarasota Superfloors. The company, like Ampersand, will also be niche driven: It will focus on polishing concrete, both in commercial and residential buildings.

Hermansen believes concrete floors, not the most common material, are a budding trend in the building industry. He also believes there are few companies in the area that specialize in high-end polished flooring, which can extend the life of the floor. “In a few years,” says Hermansen, “this floor business can easily be as big as our construction business.”

Hermansen and Livesey discovered the lack of polished flooring experts in the area earlier this year, when they sought some contractors to polish the floors of the Ampersand Construction building. They bought the 2,900-square-foot building, in the Rosemary District, just north of downtown Sarasota, in December 2011 for $340,000.

The building, a shuttered auto body shop, needed some work. But Livesey says no company was able to do the floors in polished concrete. So the partners researched the market and decided to open their own polished concrete flooring business.

They have since spent $50,000 on high-powered floor polishing equipment. Hermansen says they are ready to double that, if and when business picks up. They plan to begin marketing the services to local businesses early next year. “We are building our market slowly,” says Hermansen. “Before we do that we have to build up a name and a brand.”

While the business partners hold high hopes for Sarasota Superfloors, they also remain focused on Ampersand Construction. They founded the firm in San Francisco in 1999, mostly to buy, renovate and flip homes. But entry into that market proved cost prohibitive, so they moved to Sarasota in 2003. The firm has shifted over the years, from one that buys and flips, to one that does custom homebuilding and renovations.

“We are trying to break out to bigger things,” says Hermansen. “We want to do more commercially.”

Up and Coming
The revitalization of the Rosemary District, a small corner of restaurants, photography studios and furniture shops north of downtown Sarasota, has a dejà vu feel to it.

Business leaders, economic development officials and Sarasota city commissioners have talked about the area's untapped potential for at least a decade. The recession certainly scuttled many ideas and projects.

But the area once again looks ripe for redevelopment. A new cafe is expected to open early next year and city officials have talked about two new proposals for the district. One would add on-street parking, while a second involves development of a key parcel of city-owned land, Sarasota City Manager Tom Barwin told the Sarasota Observer, sister paper of the Business Review.

“As we begin to come out of the recession,” says Barwin, “there might be some serious interest in redeveloping our city parcel.”

John Hermansen and Allan Livesey, business partners behind Ampersand Construction, believe in the Rosemary District's rebirth possibilities. They bought a building on Lemon Avenue, in the heart of the district, to house their construction firm and other related entities, including a new flooring business.

“We are a viable business district,” Hermansen says. “This is one of the cool fringe areas of downtown.”