One of South Florida’s fastest growing businesses, and its fastest growing general contractor (and one of its largest), is located on the outskirts of Doral.

Tower Group President Anthony Burke

That company, The Tower Group, Inc., has seen its billings rise from just $9.5 million in 1995 to what company President Anthony Burke estimates will be almost $80 million this year.

Tower only does commercial construction—no development or residential single-family home building. In part by doing so, they’ve managed to build a tremendous reputation between Miami and West Palm Beach, Burke said.

Burke and his two partners, Gil Nehamkin and Marty Salamida, left the Adler Group five years ago to form Tower and soon afterwards landed the contract to build the Easton Group’s International Corporate Park.

Since then, they’ve landed a national U-Haul account, are under contract with Prologis to do all their work in the state of Florida, built the Seneca Industrial Park in Hallandale, built the Brandsmart Corporate Headquarters in Ft.

Lauderdale, and built the Car Max in Doral, just to name a few.

“We work from here to Jacksonville, where we actually opened an office on January 1st, and thankfully we’ve been very successful so far… Miami will continue to be our bread-and-butter, but we’re making a concerted effort in other places as well, particularly Jacksonville. We have projects in Orlando also, including a mini-storage facility, and the Orlando Corporate Center, amongst others,” Burke said.

Tower currently has about forty-seven full time employees and another twenty-five or so that come in depending on the workload. That’s a far cry from the one employee Tower began with five years ago.

And the future looks even brighter than the present at Tower.

“We are backlogged for next year; we should do over $100 million in billings,” Burke estimated.

Tower is also one of the most community-conscious businesses you’ll find. They are involved with a variety of projects, including the Carrfour Corporation, the Doral Halloween Carnival, Habitat for Humanity, and a number of youth league sports teams, to name a few.

Participation in the Carrfour Corporation is perhaps one of Tower’s most ambitious undertaking. Carrfour, a non-profit organization, was set up as a vehicle to raise money to develop permanent supportive housing and maximize the self-sufficiency of formerly homeless adults and families in Miami-Dade County.

“Carrfour is a tremendous project and its great to be a part of it. On November 10th we’ll be having the First Annual Tower Invitational Golf Tournament at Shula’s with all proceeds going to Carrfour,” Burke said.

Tower also started the Doral Halloween Carnival with Pastor Alessi of the Metro Life Worship Center. “It’s been a great partnership. We’re able to do all the labor for the carnival, put everything together and get it set up,” Burke said.

And Tower actively participates in Habitat for Humanity. “It’s the only residential construction we do,” joked Burke. “Last year, we contributed the labor and materials for three homes to be built,” he said.

Burke was also selected by Jeb Bush to be a member of the Construction Industrial Licensing Board in September, a voluntary position. That group oversees all the certified general contractors in the state of Florida, and actually has a budget of about $1.8 million to award to those individuals that might have been wronged by a contractor.

“It’s nice to see that homeowners can get restitution for wrongs that have been committed, like the failure to complete a job and things like that. It’s hard work, but you feel good about helping people.”