VCC Ranks as Largest Contractor in U.S.

Vratsinas Construction Co. of Little Rock was the largest retail contractor in the United States last year with 10,824,000 SF of shell space under contract, according to Retail Traffic magazine. Shell space is retail space constructed for tenants to finish out.

“That’s not part of our business plan, being ranked in any form or fashion,” said Chairman Gus Vratsinas, who noted that VCC had been in the top five in shell space for several years. “Our business plan is to do a good job for our clients and to keep doing a good job for our clients.”

Apparently, VCC has been doing a good job.

General Growth Partners of Chicago, one of the largest mall developers in the country, hires VCC for three to five projects per year. Forest City Enterprises, a real estate developer based in Cleveland, hires VCC for about two jobs per year.

Vratsinas said he usually has 50 projects under way at any given time. Eighty percent of that work involves retail and entertainment (primarily movie theaters), but the company also constructs hotels and office buildings.

VCC is currently working on the 980,000-SF Pinnacle Promenade shopping center in Rogers, a GGP project that is slated to be finished next year.

VCC’s revenue was $425 million last year, and Vratsinas expects it to hit $475 million this year. It has doubled in the past five years. The company’s projects range in size from $3 million to $100 million. VCC has about 300 salaried employees.

Vratsinas grew up in Little Rock. He earned two civil engineering degrees from the University of Arkansas: a bachelor’s in 1967 and a master’s in 1968.

“I’ve always wanted to be in construction,” Vratsinas said. “That’s all I wanted to be when I was a boy.”

After a stint in the Army, Vratsinas worked for Pickens-Bond Co. in Little Rock until 1987, when he, Ed DeMoss and Sam Alley founded VCC. DeMoss has since retired. Alley is CEO.

The corporate office is in Little Rock, but VCC also has offices in Atlanta, Dallas and Newport Beach, Calif.

VCC was the general contractor for several upscale malls, including Stonebriar Mall in Frisco, Texas; Stonecrest Mall in Lithonia, Ga.; Park Place Mall in Tucson, Ariz.; Roseville Galleria in Roseville, Calif.; and Wolfchase Mall in Memphis.

The company’s shopping center portfolio includes such “lifestyle centers” as the 1.7 million-SF Victoria Gardens in Rancho Cucamonga, Calif.; Amerige Heights Town Center in Fullerton, Calif.; Glendale Fashion Center in Glendale, Calif.; Plaza at Cedar Hill in Cedar Hill, Texas; The Crossings in N. Richland Hills, Texas and Las Colinas in Irving, Texas.

VCC has built movie theaters nationwide for AMC Theaters, Megastar Cinemas, Century Theaters and United Artists Theaters. The company builds hotels nationwide for Extended Stay of America.

VCC was the general contractor for the Alltel Arena in Little Rock and two office buildings in that city, Pavillion Center and Autumn Road.

“There’s a lot of stuff going on around the United States,” Vratsinas said.

VCC runs lean with a technological foundation, Vratsinas said.

“Good companies don’t need to build up layers of fat,” he said, “and we don’t have layers of fat. Some people say we’re short-handed.

“We’re very technologically advanced. We developed our own software [to run operations] and copyrighted it. We learned a long time ago that you need to use technology to its fullest.”

According to the company’s Web site, “Since we developed it, VCC’s Construction Management System has become the industry’s standard project management tool. It permits total project data integration, eliminates delays and poor communication and makes all project data … available to clients wherever they may be, round-the-clock, through our secure Web site.”