Business View Magazine May 2023

55 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE VOLUME 10, ISSUE 5 LOVLEY DEVELOPMENT INC Although these realities do play into Lovley’s overall business model, he remains very optimistic about the market conditions and is fully aware that if there is one thing constant in the construction and housing sector; it is change. With enough projects to keep the company more than busy, navigating these economic realities is never far from Lovley’s mind. He points out, however, that he has enough industry know-how and fortitude to ride out the current ‘new normal’ construction field. “We have been in the building business for 37 years, building single-family detached homes and attached condos and then commercial construction including medical office buildings, shopping plazas and we are working on a Starbucks right now and we finished a Popeye and a Dairy Queen,” Lovley describes. “We are also building two apartment buildings with TOD Development through another company, the sub-company of Lovley Development, Newport Realty Group, which has 70 apartments with about 25,000 square feet of retail, right at the Berlin, Connecticut train station,” he adds. “We are a diverse company that basically has all aspects of construction and we have our own management company that manages our properties. Some of the commercial buildings we sell and rent out,” he further outlines. The breakdown for Lovley Development represents roughly 40% commercial projects and 60% residential. When looking at how to factor in the increasing costs of materials and in particular the unusually long wait for some of these materials, Lovley comments, “I think what happens is that you are looking at the fact that a wait for garage doors was at one point almost 33 weeks.” “We have a Starbucks, for example, that sat for probably about five months, because we could not get the switchgear in for the electrical service even though we ordered it last May- so it took nearly 10 months to finally come in,” he continues.