(This article was published in LA Business Journal) Gordon Gibson is on top of the hill. Standing amid the bustle surrounding the construction of a multi-million dollar spec home atop Coldwater Canyon for football star Keyshawn Johnson, Gibson takes in views stretching from the ocean to across the San Fernando Valley. The view affords Gibson, the 59-year-old owner of Santa Monica-based Gordon Gibson Construction, a look both forward and back. A North Hollywood native who now makes his home in Pacific Palisades, Gibson has moved from a laborer working on freeway construction to a builder working the high-end market. “There’s a handful of great builders in L.A. that specialize in these types of homes, and Gordon’s one of them,” said Richard Landry, principal at Los Angeles-based architectural firm Landry design Group, which designed the house and has worked with Gibson on about a dozen homes over the past 15 years. “He knows construction inside and out.” Having developed a clientele by building dozens of luxury properties in new developments along Mulholland Drive in the 1980s, Gibson Construction counts actors from Kelsey Grammer and William H. Macy to Paul Schaeffer, co-founder of Mandalay Entertainment, among its clients. The Johnson project, a 12,000-square-foot, seven-bedroom house complete with a six-car garage, is a case in point. Johnson, who has been investing in a residential and commercial real estate, plans to offer the property for $9.5 million. While most of Gibson’s houses are Mediterranean, certain items like fireplaces made of antique French limestone and marble surfaces that are “honed” (for a flat finish) rather than polished (shiny) have become more popular. With the larger scale of the house comes a greater sense of coordination, as items like imported marble and granite can take up to six months to deliver. Additionally, because of large budgets that allow for a wider range of materials, many clients won’t pick finishes and fixtures until the house is framed, said Gibson. On a more moderate home, Gibson said, “the client can go into a Home Expo and pick things out, so it’s an easier decision. For a 15,000-square-foor house, (clients) can’t picture the materials until they go out and see the house. It’s a dream home so it’s more difficult.” Gibson’s parents were divorced when he was four, and he and his brother ended up in the foster system. He lived in a half-dozen foster homes, and was kicked out of Grant High in the 11th grade. Spending nearly a year in the Custody of the California Department of the Youth Authority for stealing cars, he worked at a forestry camp in Malibu. “When there were no fires, we cut fire roads. When there were fires, we fought them,” said Gibson. “When I got out, I didn’t know what I wanted to do, but I knew I didn’t want to be a criminal.” Upon his release, Gibson moved in with a great uncle, a carpenter, and the uncle’s contacts got him some work on projects like the Antelope Valley (14) Freeway in the mid-‘60s. After getting his contractor’s license, he set out on his own, forming a business scrapping houses and doing framing jobs. He was building houses in the West San Fernando Valley in the early 1970s when he was asked by one of the contractors to work on a number of large houses on Moraga Drive in Bel-Air. It became his entrée to the world of high-end housing. “That was back when (financial institutions) were giving money away,” said Gibson of the building boom that peaked in the 1980s. “They were loaning money to all these developers, who were building on every street.” But the construction business is cyclical – and the margins for high-end homes lower. Those heady days ended, the availability of developable land declined, and the proliferation of historic districts and campaigns against teardowns all cut into opportunities. “There’s more money in building tracts than custom homes,” Gibson said. “The uniqueness (of custom homes) does not translate over to mass builders like KB Home and Lennar – those guys are way too smart for that.” Gibson has responded by increasing his reliance on renovation work, which now contributes 40 percent of the firm’s revenues. While general contracting remains the main focus, Gibson also plays developer. Roughly one of the 10 homes the firm builds each year is a spec project that Gibson takes from his own account. Gibson, who visits each of his construction sites daily, operated without a partner until 1993 when he made Bruce Paez, a four-year employee, a minority partner. “It’s a situation where you run the risk of losing a great employee if you don’t make him a partner,” he said. But not every employee can become a partner, and staffing remains a challenge for Gibson and others in the building trades. He has also allowed his experience in the criminal justice system to guide him as an employer. “I’ve tried to be much more conscious of hiring minorities,” said Gibson, whose 20 employees handle the 10 or so jobs the company works on at a time. “You see a lot of young guys who are lost and have no direction, and you try to give them a goal to look forward to.” Publications : 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8