Rachelle Damico and Sonya Hill | Crain’s Detroit Business
A commercial construction boom — especially that driven by the rapid rise of plant construction for the electric-vehicle industry — is driving some of Southeast Michigan’s fastest-growing companies.
Two of the biggest players in that business appear in the top five in Crain’s Fast 50 ranking for 2022, with Southfield-based Barton Malow Inc. topping the list. The construction company, already one of the giants in its field, has seen its revenue more than double since 2019.
EV plant construction for batteries and assembly, driven in part by massive government incentives to keep the industry in the U.S. (and in Michigan) have sparked a once-in-a-generation boom in factory construction. Barton Malow and Detroit-based Walbridge, ranked fourth on this year’s list, have won significant business as that rampup has proceeded.
A word on how we calculate this list, which in some ways differs from similar lists that look purely at a percentage revenue increase:
Our list takes that into account, but we also rank the companies for which we have data by the dollar amount of their revenue increase. This is because in our estimation, scale matters, and driving big sales increases at a large, established company is no easy feat.
So we rank each of the companies in our database from 2019 to 2022 on their percentage revenue increase, as well as ranking them on the dollar increase. We add up those rankings to produce the final list. Companies that do well on both scales do best.
Profitability matters, too. We ask each company to attest that it has been profitable, because driving up revenue is easy if you’re selling at a loss.
17. Feldman Automotive Inc.
New Hudson
Jay Feldman, chairman and CEO; Dave Katarski, COO and executive VP
2022 revenue: $1.669 billion
2019 revenue: $1.043 billion
The Feldman Automotive Group has grown through same store sales and acquisitions. The group opened nine locations during the time period, including dealerships in Woodhaven, Detroit and Clarkston. Last year, the automotive group opened Michigan’s first free-standing Jeep dealership in Clarkston. In Ohio, it also opened Mark Wahlberg Automotive Group dealerships in Columbus, Worthington and Avon, along with two Airstream and RV dealerships in Cleveland and Columbus.