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Thursday, Mar 28, 2024

Old World Craftsman

John Parker Title: Co-founder Company: Parker Brown Inc. Born: 1956, Dublin Education: High school Personal: Married with three children and three grandchildren. Most Influential People: Dick Tomacheski, Rickey Gelb Career Turning Point: Five years spent working for other business owners after coming to the U.S. Hobbies: Refereeing youth soccer, sailing and gardening. Five years ago, John Parker and his business partner Scott Brown set an ambitious goal to reach $50 million in revenue for their general contracting business Parker Brown Inc. This year, the fifth year, the Canoga Park company will hit that goal. It is a milestone for Parker, who emigrated to the United States in 1989 from Ireland and started the business with Brown in 1994. They had four employees then and have grown to 52 employees, said the 62-year-old Northridge resident. Parker’s Irish accent gives away his origins, as do the photos on the walls of his office, including one of the house where his father was born in 1910. It is in “a tiny little place” named Lackan in County Wicklow, Parker said. “As kids we used to joke that it was lacking in a lot of things because it literally had a church, a bar and a shop,” he added. “It no longer has the store but still has the church and the bar, but the bar only opens on weekends.” Parker met with the Business Journal to tell of emigrating from Ireland, his career in construction and why he likes having a friend with a boat. Question: What do you like about the construction business in the Valley? Answer: Construction is all I’ve done since I was a young apprentice carpenter. The Valley has gone through the greatest renaissance or reinventing itself at the moment, so business is terrific. There are a lot of good people, so we can pick and choose clients. It is easy to do that because we put prices on jobs and if you really want a job then you can tighten up the price, and if you don’t want that job then you can go a little higher. At the moment this is probably the best time we’ve ever had in the economy. What are some recent projects your company has worked on? We took down some buildings over at Northrop Grumman (Navigation Systems, in Woodland Hills). We are doing three different projects inside for Northrop on tenant improvements. We’re doing two new building up on DeSoto. We did a huge job for a company called AmeriHome (Mortgage Co.) in Thousand Oaks, which was $5.5 million and 70,000 square feet. That was quite an endeavor at the time. What are tenants looking for in improvements? Sometimes it’s the speed but a lot of times they need to have an office so that they be successful, so their staff can do good work to be productive. So, it is how it’s laid out and how it’s finished that is important. How will Canoga Park benefit from the Warner Center development? Unfortunately, Canoga Park isn’t benefitting from it, which we would like to see a little more. There is a difference of opinion to a lot of people who would like to see the old town of Canoga Park maintained. For a lot of us, we would like to see some newer buildings, perhaps some high rises that would bring in some jobs and create more places for the children of the people in Canoga Park to live. We are going through a second phase where the kids may have gone off to college but now want to be near mom and dad but there is not any new housing going in in Canoga Park. Where is old town Canoga Park? Along Sherman Way between Owensmouth and DeSoto, that general area. What would you like to see there? I think we need to raise the density. Allow some higher rise building and multi-use, where there would be businesses on the ground floor and accommodations above. Similar to what you see in Pasadena. I think we’re a little like Old Town Pasadena. How did you get into the construction business? I wanted to get out of school, really, and construction was something you get into. I was an apprentice carpenter. I went through that. And I always worked as a supervisor at home when I had my own construction business. Then when I came here the best thing to do was to go back as a carpenter and start construction again. So after being here for about five years, I started my own construction company along with my partner. How did you end up in the Valley? In 1989, we emigrated from Ireland. Not through necessity on our part but we had two children at the time and Ireland had been in a recession for about nine years and if we did not emigrate perhaps the kids would end up emigrating at some time in the future. So, we decided to come as a family as we had some friends here in the San Fernando Valley and that is who we came out to. After the kids got into school, we were going to move out to Thousand Oaks or down to Orange County, but we felt we already disrupted them from their friends and family and we couldn’t do that again, so we decided to call the Valley home. How did you start your business? I worked for other companies for about five years. I met Scott (Brown) and felt that the two of us had a similar style of integrity. Our partnership has been on now since 1994, so we are nearly 25 years in business. We have an excellent relationship. We have similar qualities. The two of us started out with a focus initially on making enough money to pay our respective mortgages and keep our families here. Our goal at the start was to make $1,000 a week. We started with four employees. We have been profitable practically every year. We achieve 15 percent growth on average each year. How do you and Scott divide the duties of running the company? Scott lives in Thousand Oaks and I live in the Valley, so we do it geographically. Everything south of here I look after and everything north he looks after. The Valley is an area that I spend a lot of time in. Thousand Oaks and up to Camarillo is what he looks after. Any favorite stories about Ireland? How we came here, because at the time I didn’t really want to because we lived in a modest house that was about 900 square feet, but it backed up onto a golf course and we were involved with football clubs and politics and a few other things. There was a lottery for visas at the time, so I decided why not apply for the lottery, thinking that I would never win the lottery to get a visa. As it happened, they gave out 3,000 visas to Irish people and only 50 percent of them took them up. We were put on a waiting list, but my number was 1,556. I thought “I’m not going to make it,” which was OK with me. But then they decided to give it to everybody that was on the waiting list. I decided to go in and have a chat with somebody at the embassy and this person showed me how I could delay it but six months later I decided that we would come. It’s been very good for us. Do you get back to Ireland often? I go back a few times a year. My mother was there up until two years ago, she passed away since then. She was three months off of 100 years of age. So, I still go back quite often. You’ve referred to Ireland as “home” several times now. When I’m in Ireland, I keep talking about here as being home. It is hard to take the Irishness out of somebody and most Irish people have one leg back there. All of my family is there, all of my brothers and sisters. That’s why I go back so often. What motivates you? The family and the people we have employed here. There is a responsibility to people, to my own family and our own workers, too. Just to do a little good for the community here that we live in. How do you go about doing that? We need to grow the business all the time for it to be secure, so we have a future. Making sure we are profitable, and that people work hard and produce a good quality so that we continue to get work from those same sources. I am involved with a lot of community organizations. The reason is I think you’ve got to give back. I have always been involved. Back home in Ireland, I was involved with a lot of youth work and community work. Anything in your career that you would have done different? When I came here, I thought I would do anything but construction for a while. I was very involved in community work at home and I used to get the summers off to do these programs in recreation for kids. I think I might have been a community worker. But I don’t have regrets. This has been very productive, very profitable and very rewarding for me and my family. What was your career turning point? Well, I guess coming here, in that business is much better here than back home. It’s a lot easier to do business here than back in Ireland, from collecting money and just generally. It was good to take some time out because I had a small company at home and I worked massive hours. We were able to sit back for the five years that we were working for other people and see how people did things. That was probably the turning point. Who are the influential people in your life? There was a gentleman called Dick Tomacheski who was from Woodland Hills. We were chatting one time and he said there’s got to be room for a construction company that makes a profit and has integrity. While we don’t want to paint ourselves as holier-than-thou, we do treat people with respect and integrity. We are not looking to make a fortune out of one job but looking at the long term. Rickey Gelb has been an influence, too. I joke around with him saying that when I grow up I want to be Rickey Gelb. The way he runs his businesses and his attitude to business is commendable. What are your hobbies and interests? I still referee soccer on Saturdays. AYSO has a super program. I sail. Up in Oxnard, a friend of mine has a boat. And I like working in the backyard doing some gardening. Any interest in getting a boat? It’s much better off having a friend that has a boat. He has a boat that is shared with a doctor and the doctor hasn’t come out in the last three years, so he takes it out whenever I want to take it out. I would say once every two weeks. What is the last book you read? I read thrillers and stuff sometimes by Tom Clancy. “Trinity” I re-read last year, which I last read 30 years ago. “Trinity” is by Leon Uris. He lived in Ireland for a year and came to understand what it was all about. If somebody wanted to understand about the Irish issue, that is the one book that anyone should read. Why are you involved in chambers and other business groups? For the longest time, I used to think it was my hobby because I did feel – and I am still involved in Canoga Park on the neighborhood council land use (committee) – that we have to bring some balance to the discussion on what should be in Canoga Park and what should be in the area. The same thing – it’s my hobby also to be involved with the United Chambers of Commerce and I’ve stepped into leadership roles. I am president of the United Chambers and involved with the management of the Valley Economic Alliance. I think we do little steps in making things better and those organizations play a part in helping people start new jobs and new companies. What do you see for the future of the San Fernando Valley? It is going to continue to stay as a good place to live and work. I think we are losing a lot of jobs and losing our manufacturing and industrial base to other areas. Too often I think that people want to down those to make way for housing. That would be a mistake. There is a vibrant community in the Valley – there is a good future for the Valley.

Mark Madler
Mark Madler
Mark R. Madler covers aviation & aerospace, manufacturing, technology, automotive & transportation, media & entertainment and the Antelope Valley. He joined the company in February 2006. Madler previously worked as a reporter for the Burbank Leader. Before that, he was a reporter for the City News Bureau of Chicago and several daily newspapers in the suburban Chicago area. He has a bachelor’s of science degree in journalism from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

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