Business View Magazine | December 2019

99 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE DECEMBER 2019 in Chicago. In 2008, I moved back to Michigan and took an in-house attorney position for a company called Champion Home Builders, which is a manufactured housing company. Its core business was single-family, residential, manufactured housing. Right after I got there, the company went bankrupt and was acquired by private equity funds in a bankruptcy sale. As part of that process, they redefined some of the strategic direction of Champion; the new investors wanted to focus on using manufactured housing plants that were used for building single family homes and see if they could build more complicated projects using a modular process. The basic concept was to build as much of a building offsite in a factory, then ship it to the end location, stack it up like Legos, and finish it out. “After the bankruptcy, I transitioned from being a lawyer to leading the commercial division of Champion that was focused on doing that type of modular construction work, and the first person I hired was my partner, Billy. At that time, we were the manufacturer; Champion had 30 manufacturing plants throughout the U.S, Canada, and the UK, and we were using those plants to build modular buildings. We grew that division of Champion into a fairly large commercial modular builder, building $50-60 million of product, every year, throughout North America - everything from chain hotels; ‘man camps,’ which are remote worker housing in the middle of nowhere; to apartment buildings and assisted living facilities – just about anything you can imagine that can be built using a modular method.” Hall: “I grew up in the site-built construction world. My grandfather started the business in the ‘50s. In 2011, I saw where things were going in the construction industry and the opportunity to do something more innovative peaked my interest – more to the modular, ‘off-site,’ means and methods versus the traditional site-built techniques. I was looking for an opportunity and Champion was looking to grow that group. I met VESTA MODULAR Oil Nut Bay Resort, British Virgin Islands Relocatable Modular Classroom Complex