06-11-2023 HOF - Flipbook - Page 49
Baltimore Sun Media | Sunday, June 11, 2023
T
he first time that Timothy J. “Tim” Regan
applied for a job at Whiting-Turner
Contracting Company, he was rejected.
Regan, who had recently graduated
from the University of Maryland, College
Park with a degree in civil engineering,
took a job with the State Highway Administration instead. The more he worked
on construction projects for the SHA,
the more he realized he wanted to be a
contractor.
Fortunately, another opportunity at Whiting-Turner came around, and
in 1980 he got the job. Forty-three years later, Regan is the company’s CEO,
and has been for nearly a decade.
Landing the top role came as something of a surprise to a “Baltimore City
kid” who grew up in the neighborhood of Gardenville, in the city’s northeast. Regan’s father was a truck driver with an alcohol addiction, and his
family went through rough patches when he was a child, at times relying
on food stamps. The image of his mother laying down food stamps on a
grocery belt is one, he said, “that you don’t forget.”
A junior high school counselor who saw Regan’s potential recommended
he attend the Baltimore Polytechnic Institute, and it was there that he
developed “a kind of a toughness and a discipline that was life-changing.”
That discipline was put to good use as Regan, now 68, worked his way
up at Whiting-Turner. He started as a project engineer, and quickly found
that he enjoyed taking on small solo jobs, where he could work with clients
and solve problems.
In the early 1990s, he began to specialize in projects for the life sciences
industry, which was rapidly growing in Maryland along the Interstate 270
corridor in particular.
During the next two decades, Regan was instrumental in helping to
expand Whiting-Turner’s presence in the field. “It exploded, it became a
big thing for us, and still is today,” he says.
Age: 68
Hometown: Baltimore
Current residence: Cockeysville
Education: Baltimore Polytechnic Institute (Class of‘73);
B.S. in civil engineering from the University of Maryland,
College Park
Career highlights: Maryland State Highway
Administration; Whiting-Turner
Civic and charitable activities: Co-founder
(with Calvin Butler) of TouchPoint Baltimore; developer of
The Village at Mondawmin; various local board affiliations
Family: Married to Joanne; three children and three
grandchildren
In 2021, Whiting-Turner topped
the list of the nation’s largest
science and technology facility
contractors, bringing in $933.5
million in revenue from projects
in the sector, according to a ranking released last year by Building
Design + Construction, a trade
publication.
By 2006, Regan had been
promoted to a vice president
role at the contracting company.
Then, sometime later, former CEO
Willard Hackerman invited Regan
to come to his office for a talk.
“He sat me down, he closed
the door, and he pulled his chair
very close to mine,” Regan says.
“And with no preamble whatsoever, he said to me: ‘I want you
to be the next president of Whiting-Turner.’ ”
Regan was floored. “The whole
world went fuzzy and gray. I
thought I was going to pass out,”
he recalls. “The concept had never
crossed my mind.”
He had to keep the good news
a secret for two years, and didn’t
assume the CEO role until 2014,
shortly before Hackerman died at
95 years old, after having been at
the helm of Whiting-Turner since
1955.
“There was no being prepared to
take over for Willard Hackerman,”
says Regan, who is only the third
CEO in the company’s history.
“Those are shoes that are so big
you can take a nap in them.”
Regan is holding his own: In
the nine years since his tenure
began, Whiting-Turner has nearly
doubled its staff, to 4,400 full-time
employees from 2,300 in 2014. The
company has more than 60 offices
around the country, and is trending to hit $10 billion in revenue
in 2023. Notable Baltimore projects include the Sagamore Pendry
hotel, Whitehall Mill and renovations to the Baltimore Museum of
Art and The Lyric Opera House.
The CEO hasn’t forgotten his
Baltimore roots. After the uprising
sparked by Freddie Gray’s death in
police custody in 2015, he teamed
up with Exelon CEO Calvin
Butler and other local leaders to
launch TouchPoint Baltimore, a
community resource center near
Mondawmin Mall.
“Tim is the real deal — a genuine and thoughtful leader, a tire-
“I was inspired by
Tim’s incredible
devotion to the city of
Baltimore and creating
a space that would lift
up our community.”
— Exelon CEO Calvin Butler
less advocate and a dear friend,”
Butler says. “During our work to
found the TouchPoint Baltimore
Community Center, I was inspired
by Tim’s incredible devotion to
the city of Baltimore and creating a space that would lift up our
community. Tim understood the
importance of supporting our
neighborhood organizations,
who are often operating with very
limited resources, at a time when
there was a need for hope and
investment in the city. His contributions have changed countless
lives for the better.”
There’s more to come for the
West Baltimore neighborhood
surrounding the mall. After the
Mondawmin Target closed in
2018, Regan used his connections
to persuade the retail giant to sell
him the building to transform it
into another community hub.
He and his wife, Joanne, are
personally developing the former
big-box property into “The Village
at Mondawmin,” an 8-acre project
that will offer health care services,
workforce development programs,
child care and retail options,
among other tenants. The development will also include a TouchPoint Empowerment Center and
a small office for Whiting-Turner.
Regan hopes the Village will
become a catalyst for even more
development in West Baltimore.
“I very much wanted to try to
make an impact on Baltimore, the
city that built me,” he says. “Everything about me is from this town.
I feel like I’ve been given a unique
opportunity to make a difference.”
— Amanda Yeager
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