CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Gene Harris remembers sitting in a Ballantyne-area Panera Bread with Tino McFarland a decade ago. There, McFarland shared a detailed vision of a commercial construction company he wanted to build.
It was a business plan McFarland had written while working in Indianapolis, where he started his career in construction. He revisited those original plans amid the global financial crisis after a job took him to Charlotte in the late 2000s.
McFarland refined some of the details, tailoring it to Charlotte. But the original vision he pitched to Harris — who was then working in Wachovia’s corporate real estate department — stayed the same.
“The way we’ve grown is not an accident,” said Harris, now vice president of client services at McFarland Construction. “Tino McFarland laid out this plan back then.”
In the nearly 11 years since McFarland Construction became a business on April 2, 2010, the company has become one of the largest Black-owned businesses in Charlotte, with $23.8 million in revenue in 2019. Company headquarters have relocated out of a spare bedroom in McFarland’s former townhouse into multiple offices, in Charlotte and elsewhere. The company employs nearly 50 today.
Read the full story here to learn how it played out.
Cox Media Group
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