The next projects were in Olean and Cuba simultaneously. Olean was about a mile of new alignment of concrete pavement as well as the North Union Street bridge over Ishua Creek. Shortly after successfully bidding that, we also got a new alignment of Route 305 in Cuba over railroad tracks, with half a mile of embankments. These jobs worked together using concrete out of our portable plant. Paul Miles was the dirt sub on the job, and Union Concrete performed everything else. It was at this time that they graduated to two batch pavers for the concrete pavement.
Another interesting project of this time was Cornell Aeronautical Laboratories. Across the street from the Buffalo Niagara International Airport, we built an automotive crash testing facility for them. The company built the test tracks, guardrail deflection systems, and a crash wall designed for government testing.
At this time our presence in residential work diminished, but we still had a stronghold in the commercial sector, alongside of public works.
Some of our long-time employees who started with us in this period were Bob Naplesden, Dave Hoffman, Chuck Rumfola, and Johnny Pennell. Bart Leone joined the company at this time too, and he went on to become our most valued project estimator.
We were doing a lot of flat concrete placement at the time, Bart was good at that, but he quickly noticed that Union Concrete was playing it safe with the jobs they chose to bid. With Bart’s unique talents, and the things he learned at night school, he made it possible to bid more complex jobs without feeling as though they were taking on as much risk, enabling the company to self-perform more tasks on each job.
Miles went out of business not too long after these projects, and while we found a replacement for the next few jobs, we had to step up into moving our own dirt.
Forced to take on more, Union Concrete grew once again.
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