KCB Celebrates 25 Years
We’ve hit a milestone at Kevin Cradock Builders this year—our 25th anniversary. With our loyal, long-term staff, award-winning projects and professional partners, we have so much to be thankful for and to celebrate.
For our headquarters in Hyde Park, we transformed a former manufacturing space into a mill shop, and its boiler room into a polished media theater from which we host educational events and panel discussions. The courtyard is dressed up with string lights, tables and grills where we host company-wide events. The poetry of this is not lost on us, as we employ this same care every day with the beloved homes we’re hired to resurrect and make anew, make better.
The company has evolved from creating millwork for other builders, and crafting furniture, to small renovations in Jamaica Plain before expanding to our current team of project managers, project coordinators, on-site carpenters, and the hard-working mill shop, managed by Eric Swanson and Owen Wilson.
Nathan McBride, Operations Manager, has been with KCB on and off from the beginning. He recalls, “We went through a few permutations in those early days, with the company morphing down to a two-man furniture shop for a long, edifying stretch, located in one of the under-developed mansions at Pond Street and the Jamaicaway.”
Tom Sowles and Zach Southwick; #oldschoolcoolkcb
By the time project manager Zachary Southwick was on board, “the projects grew from kitchen and bath renovations to whole-house, multi-million dollar projects,” he explains. “From 3 to 45 total employees. These projects are complicated and difficult to execute, and the relationships formed through these challenges are real and strong.”
Along with growth within the company, Kevin fostered a devotion to community, to giving back, to teaching. “Kevin had already had a relationship with Madison Park,” recalls our shop foreman Owen Russell. “We had a couple apprentices that had started at Madison at the same time as me, around 2005.” Those roots have blossomed into the Apprentice Program.
My favorite part of the job,” concludes Nate, “has always been the pleasant, continuous sense of surprise at how far KC is willing to take things to get our work to be even better, or more interesting, or both. Awesome new tools? Sure, we will get them and also inspire you to get your own. Harder challenges? Yes. Better coffee? Check. Changing, deepening thoughts about how to build and maintain a team? Of course. When we do it right, a fascination with those things is infectious across the whole group.”
A deep sense of camaraderie and dedication to craft are shared throughout the company in every department, every role. Led by business manager, Nancy Pinchera, the office team keeps everything moving smoothly.
Last month we held a BBQ to celebrate, in the way a BBQ can bring folks together. Clients, design professionals, vendors, trade partners, and our entire team—we were lucky so many could turn out on a Thursday night during peak vacation season. Cheers to another 25!
