Miami-area contractor looks to expand northward

When ANF Team started in 1981 as a developer in South Florida, curiosity premiums ended up at 20% and Miami was however witnessed as a little city, not the world leader in finance, commerce and lifestyle that it is these days. 

About 10 many years later on, ANF turned a basic contractor with a target on healthcare design. Considering the fact that that time, Florida’s population has grown exponentially, giving ANF with the impetus to develop into multifamily development.  

Nowadays, as the household-owned enterprise celebrates its 40th yr of perform in South Florida, the company has a healthy pipeline of tasks that include workplaces, apartments and hospitals. Construction Dive spoke with ANF President Al Fernandez to find out more about the company’s heritage, its current and its upcoming. 

Building DIVE: What is one of a kind about the construction sector in Florida and the encompassing area?

AL FERNANDEZ: Populace expansion is the largest driver of Florida’s building sector. The condition included about 2 million people in the very last 10 years. About 1,000 persons go here each individual working day mainly because of our very good weather, small business-friendly environment and in some spots, lower price tag of living relative to other significant metros. This is driving a large amount of setting up in just about just about every sector – housing, healthcare, industrial place of work and infrastructure. 

What is exclusive to Florida is our access to the immigrant labor force due to the fact of our proximity to South America and this population feels at home in South Florida’s Latin tradition atmosphere.

How has that market place altered above the yrs that you have been in company?

Around the past decade, Florida’s population has exploded, and new residences are going up in all places. At the exact same time, Miami has emerged as a actually world-class, international city, with impressive, “starchitect”-created structures – condos, resorts, museums – and that is in a natural way elevated anticipations. 

The design surroundings is really competitive in South Florida – but there is lots of do the job to go all-around, and we have built tremendous interactions and reliability as a result of our award-successful get the job done.

A further way matters have changed is the importance of technological know-how. In the aged times if you supplied equivalent wages the workforce would arrive, but as our young, much more proficient workforce evaluates not only wages but the opportunity to demonstrate their talent at the highest amount. 

What had been the challenges of expanding outside of healthcare design?

When ANF first broke into the multifamily sector, we realized that we needed to deliver proficient and skilled persons on board who would support us mature into this spot of company and boost our supplying. We hired two top rated challenge administrators, Tony Fernández and Ernesto Rodriguez, who have developed 1000’s of multifamily units in the South Florida location during their professions. Not only did they help us acquire the right infrastructure needed to be successful, they also brought worthwhile relationships with trade associates. It truly is essential in our business to have companions who are aggressive, but additional importantly, capable. 

We also produced it a issue to diversify our attempts inside the multifamily sector. For illustration, we fashioned partnerships with developers that focus in HUD and tax credit rating promotions.

ANF has a diverse portfolio. How do you keep harmony with several sorts of development projects?

Certainly, that’s proper – we’re far more diversified today than ten yrs ago, with extra perform in the multifamily house than at any time in advance of. We are at this time performing on health care jobs with very long-time clientele like Memorial Healthcare Technique authorities/municipal assignments, like the Broward Sheriff’s Office environment Education Facility and we are doing work with some of South Florida’s most distinguished condominium builders.  

Progress is just one way we are obtaining balance – we have had to retain the services of numerous new men and women in excess of the past two decades – but we are also staying legitimate to our family-owned ethos and making certain that at minimum a single of the three top executives has fingers-on involvement in each and every project. This is a little something we have perfected and built interactions all over, and it has been critical to our 40 many years of achievements.

What is upcoming for ANF?

Our enlargement into multifamily will continue on as we will comply with our shoppers and growth partners into other areas in Florida. We at this time have our eyes established on jobs in Melbourne, Leesburg and Fort Myers in which we imagine we can utilize the exact same structure as we did in South Florida by identifying key trade companions in these regions and establishing relationships with them to create value efficiently in all those markets.