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3. Celebrating our 48th Anniversary!

Celebrating our 48th Anniversary!

Things look a bit different this year due to Covid

We celebrate "Founders' Day" on March 1 every year, to celebrate the beginning of Dale and Donna Koontz's building company.  As we celebrate our 48th anniversary on March 1, 2021, we want to look back at the year behind us.  

We held last year’s Founders’ Day event on Friday, February 28, 2020.  No one realized then that less than 2 weeks later our world would go on shut down.  By March 12, they were shutting down schools and sports and the Governor was holding a press conference to talk about what the State of Illinois would be doing.   “2 weeks to flatten the curve” turned into months of restrictions, a discussion about “essential industries” and heated discussions about the competing goals of public health vs economic survival.  By the 3^rd week of March, we really had no idea what the weeks ahead could bring.  It seemed 2020 would be a year to survive, but maybe not to thrive.

Pleasantly surprised to be told that we were included in the list of “essential” industries, we shopped for sanitizer and hand wipes and put together a list of safe work practices.  Thankfully we were working on some homes that had financing already in place, and those jobs did not stop.  A couple jobs did press pause, and we were nervous.  But a funny thing happened on the way to surviving what many folks would call The Worst Year of Our Lives:  Home came to mean Sanctuary.  And the construction industry turned 2020 into one of the Best Years Ever for homebuilding and remodeling.

Folks wanted space.  Clean, new spaces to work from home, or to be safe at home, but with room to spread out from one another.  Interest rates stayed low and that meant people could afford to build or remodel.  All the money that had been saved to take a family vacation was now spent on remodeling a kitchen or bathroom.  By summer, as it became clear that some businesses were doing just fine in spite of the pandemic, contractors around the country reported sales really taking off.  We saw it in our business, as the only limit to the amount of work we could sell was the amount of work we could actually produce.

Unbelievably, by the time 2020 was finished Dale Koontz – Builder would record its best sales year ever. 

We would like to extend our sincere thanks to everyone that partnered with us during this record year.  We all dealt with uncertainty and new constraints – but everyone did whatever they could in order to keep projects moving forward.  Obviously, the pandemic is not fully behind us and there continue to be challenges in this business, but thanks to our team and our partners, 2020 was truly a year to celebrate!