Camosy keeps it among friends for Prairie Ridge

Prairie Ridge Commons features a Starbucks Coffee shop. It's the third time Starbucks teamed up with the construction team to open a shop in one of its retail outlets.

In a way, John Camosy, Gene Ventura and Mark Molinaro started working on the Prairie Ridge Commons project about 25 years ago.

No one knew about the project at the time. In all likelihood, the idea of developing, designing and building a multitenant retail outlet never even crossed their minds.

But all three were going to high school in the Kenosha area, and they were friends. They graduated in 1983 and went their separate ways. Ventura went on to develop projects in Chicago, Molinaro ended up as a partner with Partners in Design Architects Inc., and Camosy just recently moved up to the president's seat at Camosy Inc.

In 1999, Ventura started developing projects in the Kenosha area, and he teamed up with his old friends for the retail strip center Greenwich Place. Then the three worked together on a similar project, Williams Corner, about a mile away from the first job.

The Camosy construction team is on target to reach completion of Prairie Ridge Commons by the scheduled July deadline. Photos courtesy of Camosy Inc.

From there, they moved on to the same kind of jobs at Windsor Pointe, Sunshine Properties and now Prairie Ridge, which is two, 9,000-square-foot, multitenant retail buildings and a restaurant pad.

"We have a lot of fun," Camosy said. "We all do stuff socially together too. We have a good relationship, and we know what everybody needs."

Friends or not, there's always the chance that problems could pop up, but Camosy said he doesn't see that happening.

"None of us worry about that," he said. "Everybody does the right thing. We have three really good people, and these are all different projects, but we're getting really good at multitenant retail outlets."

It's that kind of relationship that makes a job like Prairie Ridge, with four retail tenants on board and room for four or five more, an easy proposition.

"Retail is not the most difficult construction in the world to do," Camosy said.

"What made this tough was starting on Dec. 15. We were digging at the wrong time of year, and we had to push to meet the schedule."

But it was a successful push, and as the project heads into May, Camosy said, the job is on target to reach completion a little ahead of schedule. And that can only mean it's time for three friends to start talking about the next job.

"It's really part of a much bigger retail development with Gene," Camosy said.

"This is getting easy."

- Chris Thompson