Four years ago, John Wood and Ken Sorenson were ecstatic that their Minnesota construction company was selected to build a $420 million ballpark in Miami for the Florida Marlins Major League Baseball team. Their excitement rapidly turned to disappointment when issues with public financing delayed the project. Early last year, however, when the Marlins called to tell them that the project was back on track, it was the Marlins’ turn to be disappointed.
“We had already committed to the Twins and Gophers,” says Wood, senior vice president for M. A. Mortenson Company and the head of the construction firm’s sports group. “We had already started both projects and we didn’t want to stretch ourselves too thin.”
Besides the Twins’ Target Field and the University of Minnesota’s TCF Bank Stadium, Golden Valley–based Mortenson was also working on a new basketball arena in Louisville (the University of Louisville will be its primary user). “We’re not out chasing every sports project,” says Sorenson, vice president with Mortenson and its manager of all commercial projects in Minnesota and surrounding states. (Mortenson also built the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul, home of the Minnesota Wild National Hockey League team.)
Mort Mortenson, Sr., the son and grandson of construction workers, founded the company in 1954. Still owned by the Mortenson family, it’s now the 27th-largest construction firm in the country. It specializes in power generation, health care, educational, commercial, sports, hotel, convention center, telecommunications, and correctional facilities. Mortenson also has constructed 74 wind farms nationwide (with five more currently under way), as well as the $25 million Russia’s Grizzly Coast exhibit completed last year for the Minnesota Zoo. That said, the firm’s bread and butter is still the $8 million to $25 million job.
But the sports projects are perhaps Mortenson’s most prestigious undertakings. What’s more, the company is batting 1.000 for finishing major-league sports projects on time and under budget. Sorenson and Wood attribute the group’s reputation to remaining within its capacity—as well as special building technology and a team dedicated to growing the division. The sports group grew to account for 11 percent of Mortenson’s total revenue of $2.1 billion in 2007. Mortenson has built 26 major-league ballparks, stadiums, and arenas, as well as nine such facilities for universities. In fact, it has quietly become one of the top builders of sports venues in the United States.
