Building family
Text: R.J. Weick“Allof the top, high-end custom home builders in this market will tell you they have the best product, they have the best trades working for them, and the best subcontractors—all of the things that we would say, which in our minds wasn’t really a differen tiator, because it was subjective and everybody would say it,” said Tom Adams, chief business officer and partner at Birchwood Construction Company in Harbor Springs, Michigan.
“We realized that what truly differentiates us are the relationships we build. We build homes for families. If we truly operate our business as a family our success lies in the relationship, and it is that which we truly believe separates us from our competitors,” Adams added.
For 50 years, Birchwood Construction Company has served the northern Michigan region, building on a history and legacy of de livering distinctive custom homes and beautiful spaces for its clients. With a mission of building lasting relationships and crafting high-quality homes that exceed the expectations of those they serve, Birchwood Construction has devel oped throughout the years to become a tightknit and collaborative team of craftspeople and individuals dedicated to bringing their clients’ visions to life and committed to placing family at the center of every build process.
The vision of Birchwood Construction be gan in 1972 by Bill Cottrill, the developer of Birchwood Farms. Shortly after the first home
was built, Birchwood Construction began to grow, and additional homes followed. In 1989, Gary Morton, a well-respected builder in the area, would join the company and assume own ership, with Larry Beck coming on board a year later in 1990. By 1994, Birchwood Construction would become involved in a comprehensive land reclamation project with the build of one of the very first homes in Bay Harbor. The com munity, which has become known as an idyllic destination with world-class recreational and retail amenities and high-end lakefront homes, is set on nearly five miles of transformed Lake Michigan shoreline that once housed an old ce ment plant.
Throughout the next two decades, Birch
wood Construction would continue to grow with the addition of McCaffrey Painting & Dec orating, a leading painting contractor in 1997; its commitment to the community by bringing Perry Farm Village, a senior living community to the area in 2002; and culminating in a new location on Moeller Drive in 2004 and new leadership in 2008 with Adams joining the Birchwood Construction family as president. Adams, who had been serving as chief execu tive officer of a Detroit-based, family-owned business in the early 2000s, said as the next gen eration grew in the company, it was time to look for a new opportunity and chose to move to the northern Michigan area.
“My wife and her family had roots in the Petoskey area and we had been coming up here for years during summers and Christmases. We decided it would be an opportune time with a four- and seven-year-old to move north. Long story short, I was very close to putting togeth er the acquisition of two small companies and met with a local banker who said, ‘if your deal doesn’t come together, I have somebody that you should meet.’ And that person was the pre vious owner of Birchwood Construction, Larry Beck, who was an extremely successful busi nessman in his own right. He needed somebody to run his construction company,” Adams said.
“Ironically, my background has nothing to do with building and design, which is why I’m so fortunate to have a partner in Ken Provost,” Adams added.
With a background in finance and econom ics, Adams soon looked to bring an experienced
builder on board to oversee the design and build side of the company when Beck eventually re tired. In 2012, through a serendipitous connec tion through Bill Norcross of Preston Feather, Ken Provost, owner of Structures Building Co., joined as chief building officer. Provost, who
initially found himself cleaning up construction sites while in high school, quickly fostered an interest in the field, but first opted to join the United States Marine Corps. before making his way back to the industry.
“There was this carpenter who worked ahead of me. He was a foreman on one of the jobsites I was on and had this old fishing hat and had the perfect leather nail bags and I just thought he was the coolest guy on earth, like he could do anything, he could build anything, everybody answered to him, and he knew everything. He was a great carpenter and I just always thought, ‘man, I want to be that guy,’” Provost said.
“Then, I left for the Marine Corps. for four years, came back, and literally went right back to the trades, which is not what I thought would happen. I had an EMT license, I had my Fire fighter 1 and 2 from the services and thought that was what I was going to do. Somehow, I ended up back in the trades and never really looked back,” Provost added.
Led by Provost and Adams, Birchwood Construction underwent a rebranding in 2018 with a distillation of its guiding principles and core values. Relationship-driven, the company re-established Birchwood Construction around its belief in family, communication, quality craftsmanship, leading with compassion and accountability, and giving back to the com
munity. Adams said when he first joined the company, Birchwood Construction served as everything and anything to everybody, from providing plumbing and heating, and electri cal and masonry, to landscaping and painting, and construction and development services. To differentiate the company in the market, Adams noted they immersed themselves in investing in operating the company as a family and building homes for families, from top to bottom.
“We truly believe that has a lot to do with our success and I feel it every day. We had an employee meeting the other day and we talked about one of our core values, which is compassion, and it was inspiring to hear the feedback that came from our 60 employees as we had that discussion. Last month, the topic was dedication, and it was the same thing,” Adams said.
As Birchwood Construction celebrates its 50th year in business in 2022, for Adams, a suc cessful project and client relationship is one that places communication and a focus on quality as central; and to Provost, it is also about 100 percent client satisfaction.
“Are they happy with what we gave them? Most of our clients are not local folks, so I still get a kick out of them coming up and seeing what was accomplished. They come up, say once a month or every other weekend, and see
ing the joy on their face and seeing the excite ment and watching them imagine being in the house when it is finished, I still get a kick out of it,” Provost said.
“It becomes extremely personal to me. If I tell someone I can do this for you and this is who we are and what we are about, I take it ex tremely personal. If I have given you my word that I can pull this off, it is important to me that I pull it off. We try to do design together, we try to build a team around the homeowner based on their personality, I try to pick the architect who fits and the interior designer and the kitch en designer who fits that client. I think we take a lot of pride in our work,” Provost added.
Birchwood Construction’s portfolio reflects a breadth of scope, style, and location, such as a two-story, beach-inspired remodel in Traverse City; a custom, Bay Harbor vacation home with a commanding presence; a multi-generational waterfront retreat on Round Lake in Charlev oix; a rustic-inspired home featuring detailed craftsmanship in Boyne City; a complete wa terfront remodel featuring a nine-foot fireplace and custom tongue and groove siding on the walls; and a golf course retreat at Crooked Tree Golf Club in Petoskey.
“The excitement is the challenge. Like, we are doing a house on Lake Charlevoix right now that is 10,000 square-feet. It was an exist
ing house and the new design for this remodel project required us to build a skeleton of steel in a house that was already standing. So, it was a huge undertaking and I think the challenge is the excitement, of doing something you have never done before, of doing something that frankly you know not every company in northern Michigan can pull off,” Provost said. “We have a huge support staff. We have some project managers who are way smarter than me and we try to combine that talent together to figure out how to do something and it is a pretty neat process.”
Provost also noted it is about thinking out side the box and for that particular project, the team ended up partnering with a company out of Columbus with an expertise in delivering solutions for complicated tasks such as building a skeleton in an existing structure. For him, it is the team who inspires him to walk through the door each and every day, and it is his hope that Birchwood Construction’s legacy and history speaks to a reputation of building excellence and lasting relationships.
“I hope we have done the founders proud, because they had such an amazing reputation for the quality of homes that they put out. I hope we have made the people before us proud, not necessarily just the founders, but the peo ple who have worked here prior to me,” Provost said. “I just hope we have made all those folks proud ahead of us and I truly feel like there is enough young talent that it could be still here doing great things after I’m out.”
To Adams, who finds inspiration in a com mitment to culture and family—especially when it comes to supporting their team mem bers, their clients, and their community—at the end of the day his hope for the company is that Birchwood Construction is known in simple terms, as a company that cares.
“We have a new focus that is literally just getting kicked off this year and it is about mak ing dreams come true. When you deal with people within our organization, about making a dream come true, that brings you so close and it transcends the company. As tough as the la bor market has been, we have doubled our size as far as people just in the last couple of years. I have learned since 2018 that taking care of our people, taking care of our subcontractors, tak ing care of our customers as if they were truly family, is a huge differentiator,” Adams said.
“To me, that can live through any economic decline. If you care enough, you can get through the bad times just as well as you can the good times,” Adams added.
