Remodeling has been a way of life for Duke York nearly all his life. As a child, he watched his father redo just about every piece of their home in Tacoma’s North End. Today, he owns and operates H. York Enterprises, which usually has about 30 remodeling projects going at any given time.

But even the 29-year-old company is feeling a small pinch from the sluggish economy.

York Enterprises typically adds to its work force every summer. This year, however, York anticipates the Tacoma company will grow to only about 22 workers – four fewer than the number employed during last year’s busy season.

York, president of the Master Builders Association of Pierce County, recently sat down with The News Tribune to talk construction, issues facing builders today and what today’s homeowners want in their remodels.

How did you get started in construction?

Different than most. I was a probation officer for the Superior Court and did that until I had 30 years. In the process of doing that my degree in sociology faded a little on me, so I started an avocation of buying older homes and fixing them up 10 to 15 years into my career as a probation officer. Then I went into doing odd jobs for seniors and did that the last years of my career with the court. When I retired, I had kids heading toward college and my wife didn’t agree that I could just go play golf. So I started doing this full time in 1997. And it was me and a van.

What kind of work does your company do?

Residential remodeling is 95 to 98 percent of what we do. We do a couple custom homes a year. Recently we’ve begun doing service and maintenance work for homeowners along the lines of preventative maintenance work.

Why did you move into that area?

You’ve got 400 baby boomers retiring every day. Things are different today; as they retire they don’t want to clean gutters and crawl through crawl spaces. So we’re kind of in the slow process of launching York at Your Service. The goal is to have a couple guys in vans full of chewing gum and bailing wire who go out and hang screen doors and be far more responsive than we can be now.

On the remodeling side, do you specialize in any certain kind of remodel?

We prefer whole house remodels, but we do absolutely everything from small to big jobs. With the number of employees we have and the equipment we have, we’re geared toward whole house remodels. I really enjoy working in the North End, the larger homes, the unusual architecture. My ultimate goal on every project is to go in and remodel and make it look like we’ve never been there.

Are there kinds of materials you’re being asked for more now than you have in the past?

Green. Green is the buzzword. People hear and see a lot of information in the media about being environmentally focused and it equates to being green. There’s a lot of curiosity and a lot of questions asked. There are certain areas that we’re getting asked for. For example, going from tanked hot water systems to tankless hot water systems.

How is the cost of building materials affecting construction today?

New homes aren’t selling at the rate they were a year ago, for sure. Builders have a pretty big inventory of homes; there are about 1,200 (new) homes ready to sell. So if a builder has a lot of homes in inventory, they’re going to stop building or slow down … and then move it back to the manufacturer and they feel the impact and they lower the price. Prices are not going up, we’ve seen a flattening of prices.

What about steel and cement?

We just got a notification that cement is going up 9 percent as of May 1. In residential remodeling, we don’t use a great deal of steel.

Are gas prices having an impact?

Oh, yeah. We haven’t started doing a surcharge on our jobs yet. One percent of our gross sales was the cost of fuel last year. It’s going up significantly this year.

What sort of issues are you working on as president of the MBA?

Because it’s an election year, it’s important to filter out the people friendly to our issues and one of those issues is impact fees. There are so many things that filter into building. Building accounts for about 20 percent of the economy in our area. And over 200,000 people are affected by the building industry.

How are they affected?

They work for builders or suppliers, or they work for the company that provides the insurance and so if the building industry were to go away they’d be severely impacted. We start from big to small (on issues). The economy is the big one, which we’re most concerned about right now. To the small, such as the county sign issue. Builders attribute 60 percent of sales to good signage. When the county decided they’re going to strip out all the signs without giving us an avenue or some coordinates on how to do a clean sign, it has a real big impact on sales.

You mentioned impact fees. What’s the association’s concern with those?

Questions come up on two sides. On one side, impact fees are added and the builders pass them on, making it less and less possible to build an affordable home. On the other side, what happens to the money paid on impact fees? Does it go to the schools and if it does, does it make an impact?

Do you think the fees are having the impact intended?

That’s a big question and no one’s done a study. Nobody’s fees are the same. Nobody has done a study to show if it’s an effective use of money and an effective charging of money.

What do you see as the big issues going forward in construction?

My list of what’s important in the future and for those who build new homes is probably really different. Right now for the builder, it’s the economy. They desperately want homes to start selling. They want to see banks ease up on lending so people feel comfortable about buying. There’s been a slowdown in residential remodeling, but it’s nothing like what the builders are dealing with. Fortunately for us, it’s OK. The remodelers who are pragmatic and who’ve planned … we’re surviving pretty well.

Devona Wells: 253-597-8652

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