HILLCREST — Longstanding Rochelle and Ogle County-area business O’Rorke Construction will cease operations around the end of June as its owners and brothers John, Dominic and PJ O’Rorke will be retiring. The family business, incorporated in 1996, has been in operation for the past 29 years.
Raised on a farm, the O’Rorke brothers learned how to use carpentry tools and how to repair buildings and work on machinery. After high school, all three of them worked for construction companies and made the decision to go into business as partners. O’Rorke Construction grew and hires were made and later on they built their Hillcrest location.
“We're all getting older,” Dominic O’Rorke said. “You're more limited on things you can do as you get older. I want to spend more time with my family and enjoy the rest of my life and not be under a lot of stress all the time. We have a couple projects that are started that we're wrapping up and then we’ll be done. Working with family has been great. It's been great to have family to rely on and back you up on everything. It's been great to have the support of family here and everybody at home.”
PJ O’Rorke said the business worked on jobs scaling from bathroom remodels in homes to construction work on large hotels. One of the most complicated jobs it ever did was building a large log home for Ron and Marianne Tilton when working with logs was a new experience for them.
The O’Rorkes thanked their customers for their business over the years.
“We had a lot of great customers over the years,” Dominic O’Rorke said. “We're proud of all the projects that we worked on and all the customers that we got to work for. We thought we had a really good customer base and we're really happy that we got to work with so many great people. The community support we had in the area was awesome. Rochelle and the surrounding area really supported us. It meant a lot to us. It meant our livelihood to us.”
John O’Rorke said the most notable changes in the construction industry over the past 29 years are stricter safety requirements and more difficulty to hire a workforce. Back around when the business started, there was a “very large” workforce of young people that wanted to do construction work.
“Now we don't see even near the amount of young people that want to do it,” Dominic O’Rorke said. “That's been a big change. There have been other changes with automation. We used to hand drive all the nails. Now we use automatic nail and screw guns. I think it's tougher to run a business like this today. Finding a workforce is your first challenge. And the government regulations put on everything are another challenge with safety and building codes. There's just a ton more restrictions than there used to be that make it difficult.”
The O’Rorkes said there aren’t many family construction businesses left in the area, after they used to be common. The decision to take another family business away from the community wasn’t easy for O’Rorke Construction, the brothers said.
“Now all you see are big companies that are doing construction work,” John O’Rorke said. “And a lot of them don't have to follow the same rules we have to follow.”
John O’Rorke said his fondest memories from the 29 years are working with employees, who he thanked for coming to work for O’Rorke Construction.
“As we look back at all of our time doing this, we had a lot of great employees,” Dominic O’Rorke said. “We had a really great workforce here and a lot of them went on to start their own businesses. We had a really great group of guys and we really enjoyed it.”
PJ O’Rorke said he and his brothers are proud of their 29 years of work and the fact that they got to retire together.
“I won't say it's always been easy, but we always stuck together and stuck it out for each other,” PJ O’Rorke said.
