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© Copyright 2006 Work-4 Projects Ltd.

One house at a time

Morrison Homes has become a leading Alberta builder with a simple formula.

By Frank O'Brien

Al Morrison remembers the year he and his brother Glen bought the home building company their father Frank had founded 22 years earlier.
"We built one house that year and I still wonder how we sold it," Morrison says today. "That was a tough time in Calgary in the early 80s."
This year Morrison, now the president of Morrison Homes, has little time to reminisce or worry about the market. Recognized two years running as the best home builder in one of the strongest housing markets in the country, the 50-old-year former framer oversees more than 50 staff, an army of subcontractors and seven building sites spread from Calgary to Canmore. In the first six months of this year Morrison started 212 homes and expects to have 390 permits in place by the end of the year.
Morrison Homes celebrated its 40th anniversary in 2001 by being named Home Builder of the Year by the Calgary and Region Home Builders Association. Last year it did it again, capturing the prestigious award for a second time.
And this September Morrison was going head-to-head with Edmonton Builder of the Year Jayman Homes as the top finalist in the Alberta Home Builders' Association's Excellence in Housing awards. Morrison Homes is a finalist for six different AHBA awards, most of them for outstanding design.
The winners won't be named until after our press time, but it would be little surprise to many if Morrison dominates the competition.
"Al Morrison and his team are among the best home builders in the country. There is no doubt about that," said Joy Van Marke, awards committee chair for the AHBA. "It's going to be quite a battle in Jasper."
Jim Sirup, chief operating officer for Jayman Homes, says the competition will be tough but friendly. "We hold Morrison Homes in the highest regard," Sirup said. "They deliver real value to the customer and have given a lot back to the industry."
For the quiet-spoken, hard-driven Morrison, however, the rewards have already come. "Even when things were hard, my gut instinct was that it would get better," he said from his Calgary office. "It just got a bit better than I expected."

Hard times
Morrison has seen hard. Fresh out of high school, he went to work as a plumbing apprentice and then a house framer and helped out his carpenter father who had built Morrison Homes into a successful home building company during the 1970s.
In 1983, as the National Energy Program and a Canada-wide recession hammered Alberta's economy and drove the housing market to its knees, Al and Glen took over Morrison Homes. "Calgary was on the ropes," Morrison recalls, "with mortgage rates hitting 17 to 20 per cent. The housing market just fell apart in the early 80s."
With the two brothers doing much of the construction work themselves, Morrison built just one house that first year, a split-level custom on Calgary's northeast. "We did it all: the framing, the plumbing, the sales, anything to save money on the construction costs."
Word soon spread about the hands-on quality of work and innovative design that have become trademarks of Morrison Homes. A decade later, with 65 to 70 houses underway each year, Al bought out Glen's share. "He moved to Hawaii," Al says with a laugh.
When Frank Morrison started building houses, he built both custom homes and smaller, affordable homes. Today, even as Morrison Homes reaps awards for some of the most luxurious custom homes in the province, the company continues to build entire communities of affordable housing.
The Discovery Homes division, started by Morrison in 1996, builds primarily smaller single-detached and duplex houses built on 28- to 30-foot lots and starting in the $160,000 range. The starter homes continue to constitute an important segment of Morrison Homes' success. "We have always believed in diversification," Morrison said.
This year, Morrison Homes is building in seven new home communities across Calgary and has moved into the Rocky Mountain resort town of Canmore, where the typical Morrison Home sells for $900,000. Morrison Homes are known for creative design, both in interiors and elevations, and Morrison said he has a primary source for inspiration: his customers.
"The feedback from people touring our homes and buying our homes has always been the best and most credible advice, " he said. Each Morrison and Discovery home, he explained, is a custom home, with the Morrison team working closely with the buyer through the entire process. A Certified Master Home Builder, a designation earned through the Professional Home Builders Institute of Alberta, Morrison Home's award winning warranty program includes on-site inspection with construction and service personnel. The 12-month program is structured in three phases to ensure that all warranty issues are addressed as the home is built and after the customer has moved in.

Design savvy
Morrison is quick to credit his in-house design staff, which includes Jason Ager, vice president of business development, and designer Allan Nixon, for translating customer ideas into some of the best selling homes in the province.
Morrison Homes' headquarters in Calgary has 50 full-time staff, including an extensive CAD-equipped design department, and the company uses on-site show homes as sales offices. At any time, the firm has two dozen field staff working on various new home projects, plus a variety of subtrades, most of whom have worked with Morrison for years.
Active in the Calgary Region Home Builders Association for three decades, Morrison now chairs its Technical Committee. He is also fully supportive of the Association's BuildGreen program, now being developed. This initiative combines energy saving with environmental awareness and indoor air quality. "It is a realistic, affordable program that is meant to deliver higher quality new homes," Morrison said
With Morrison Homes now notched among the top home builders in his native city, Morrison is attempting to slow down the hectic work pace he has kept up for 20 years. A pilot with his own plane, a six-passenger Piper Twin, he recently flew out to Vancouver for the Molson Indy and had plans this summer to take sailing lessons off the B.C. coast.
He also hopes to support the Home Builders' Association as it addresses the challenges in the hot Calgary market. "Housing affordability is becoming a real problem here with land prices getting so high," he said. "We have a lot to do as an Association." HB

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