It was nine minutes to deadline at Superior Construction’s headquarters in South Jacksonville.
The national infrastructure builder was submitting a $200 million bid May 6 to replce a bridge on U.S. 98 in the Florida Panhandle.
For every job, Superior’s 36-year-old CEO and fourth-generation owner Nick Largura says he looks toward the portraits on his office wall of his great-grandfather, grandfather and father.
“They give me the look to keep me in line,” Largura said.
Founded as J Largura Company in 1923 by Nick’s great-grandfather, Italian immigrant Giovani Largura, Superior Construction was based in Gary, Indiana.
The company adapted to fit market needs, changing from a masonry company building U.S. post offices to an infrastructure builder for Midwestern steel mills to primarily a road and bridge contractor.
Superior, with offices in five states, moved its headquarters to Jacksonville in 1992 and reported nearly $500 million in revenue in 2021.
Nick Largura said the company’s primary client is the Florida Department of Transportation.
The company is building large segments of the First Coast Expressway, the $180 million Interstate 10 widening project and built may of Duval County’s Intracoastal Waterway bridges.
Since he was old enough to “sneak out on the job sites” at age 12, pressure-washing and painting construction equipment, it was Nick Largura’s goal to run Superior Construction by the day he turned 30.
He was 24 when he took over the company after his father, Thomas Largura, unexpectedly died in 2010.
“Life throws twists and turns, and it’s our job to adapt to them,” Nick Largura said.
“After a day of mourning, I went into his office, I cleared off his desk and I said ‘If there are any questions feel free to come to me,’” he said.
“I was very naive at the time. I thought, if I work hard enough at this and put in enough hours, I can do it.”
A family of masons
Giovani Largura brought his skills as a mason when he came to the U.S. through Ellis Island in the early 1900s.
He would bring other members of the family over from Italy as J Largura Company won contracts to build post offices and government buildings in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Illinois.
“We were a band of guys that would go wherever the work was,” Nick Largura said.
Largura said Giovani “Americanized” his name to John, trying to avoid the stigma attached to Italians in that era.
“They (the American public) wanted them to get back on the boat and go back over to Italy. (The name) had its impediments. He struggled a lot with having a name that didn’t roll off your tongue. The Italians were not a favorite group,” Nick Largura said.
During the Great Depression, the company rebranded as Superior Construction. Its home base in Indiana, near Chicago, became a hub for companies like U.S. Steel, which were buying up the lakefront to build mills.
Superior gained contracts to build the infrastructure needed to support the industry including roads, schools, hospitals and housing.
The company’s newfound revenue source was intensified by the need for raw materials to support the World War II effort, Largura said.
The company, led by Nick’s grandfather, Elio Largura, began securing government contracts to build roads and bridges in the 1950s to support construction of the interstate highway system.
When globalization pushed U.S. companies to start outsourcing steel production in the 1970s and ’80s, infrastructure contracts to support the mills dried up, Nick Largura said.
“It was a big decision point for the family,” he said.
Nick’s father, Thomas Largura, “needed to look for greener pastures.”
“We looked at a lot of the booming markets — Texas, California and Florida. And we started pursuing work,” Nick Largura said.
In 1987, Superior Construction secured its first job in Jacksonville making improvements to Interstate 95.
The company began to focus on Florida and the Southeast.
Buyouts
By 2010, the company’s reputation and portfolio had grown. Largura said his father’s death sparked buyout offers from several European-based competitors.
At 24, Largura took the meetings but decided to convince his brothers, Tony and Joe, and his uncle, John, to keep the company family-owned.
When Nick’s uncle was diagnosed with brain cancer and started his recovery, Nick convinced him to sell him his shares.
“I started the process of getting heavily in debt in order to buy him out,” Largura said.
“And the plan was, as long as the company is making money, then I can utilize those earnings to get him out of the company.”
Largura said it was youthful arrogance that allowed him to commit to keeping Superior Construction a family business.
“If I would have truly known what I didn’t know at the time … I think I would have run for the hills,” he said.
‘I feel a big debt’
Largura said he’s “on the back end” of his 10-year debt payoff from buying out his uncle, and, meanwhile, Superior is growing.
Under Largura, the company has increased its office footprint to seven locations in the Southeast and Midwest and expanded to Nashville and South Carolina.
In addition to FDOT, Superior does work for JaxPort and Jacksonville International Airport.
It has landed jobs at the Nashville International Airport; a $234 million bridge project over an environmentally sensitive area of Florida’s Wekiva River; and is pursuing a $450 million replacement of the Shands Bridge south of Jacksonville.
Superior also did work at Flagler Beach to help repair beach erosion caused by hurricane and storm damage.
Largura said he hopes to continue to bid on similar projects as climate change and sea-level rise impact Florida.
Largura has three children: daughters Greylin, 6, and Elle, 4, and a 2-year-old son, Theo.
Largura said Superior has started a program encouraging women to join the construction industry, traditionally a male-dominated industry.
The chief executive says he owes Superior Construction a debt.
“I know a lot of that was based off of the family company and the people that had built it,” he said.
“Every day I wake up, I feel I’ll never truly repay that debt to the family and to everyone who’s built this company. But it’s motivation.”
