SAN DIEGO – McCarthy Building Companies, which recently moved its San Diego headquarters to One Paseo, has reorganized, putting renewed emphasis on San Diego and Southern California with several major local projects under construction.
“We’ve been pretty fortunate, San Diego, from McCarthy nationwide, is our largest and highest producing office for the last couple of years and it probably will be for the next couple of years,” said Mike Myers, who was promoted to CEO Southern Pacific as part of the reorganization.
CEO Southern Pacific
McCarthy Building Companies
“We continue to see a lot of growth,” said Myers, who is based in Newport Beach and had been the Southern Pacific Regional president of McCarthy Building Companies.
No significant changes have been made to McCarthy’s San Diego operations, which will continue to be led by Bob Betz, executive vice president of McCarthy Building Companies, Myers said.
“We want to keep some stability in San Diego because it’s such an important market,” Myers said. “Bob Betz is the best business leader we have in the country.”
With a slowdown in the construction of new office buildings and apartment towers, Myers said that McCarthy has pivoted to focus on higher education and health care projects in San Diego County and elsewhere.
“Between higher education and health care, there’s a lot of activity in San Diego for us,” Myers said. “We’ve always been a big health care builder.”
The company also had been working on several life science projects that are wrapping up, but the life science market has cooled considerably since its post-pandemic peak.
“That’s been a really big program for developers for the last four years. In late 2023, it really slowed down” Myers said. “We think that market is going to be a little bit suppressed.
It will rebound, but it’s hard to tell exactly when that’s going to recover, maybe in two or three years.”
Strategic Reorganization
To broaden its reach, Myers said that McCarthy is also working on renewable energy and battery storage projects throughout Southern California.
“We’re chasing water reclamation projects, water purification projects and wastewater treatment projects,” Myers said. “We have significant projects in Los Angeles County and Orange County. We’re trying to grow that market in San Diego.”
McCarthy’s San Diego projects include the $452 million Scripps Memorial Hospital La Jolla Tower II, a $600 million modernization of the Sharp Metropolitan Medical Campus, the $1 billion Gaylord Pacifica Hotel and Convention Center in Chula Vista, and the $428 million Triton Center at the University of California San Diego.
“In the last five years, our business in Southern California, including San Diego, has almost doubled. We grew by 90%,” Myers said.
The reorganization of the company will “allow us to be a little more strategic,” Myers said.
A graduate of Purdue University, with a degree in civil engineering, Myers was CEO of Castle Contracting before joining McCarthy Building Companies as executive vice president in 2014.n
McCarthy Building Companies
FOUNDED: 1864
CORPORATE HEADQUARTERS: St Louis, Missouri
CEO: Ray Sedey
BUSINESS: construction
EMPLOYEES: 7,971 across five regions
WEBSITE: www.mccarthy.com
CONTACT: 858-784-0347
NOTABLE: 100% Employee Owned since 2002
