Asphalt Companies Combine

The owners of Champaign Asphalt and MACC of Illinois are forming a new company, Open Road Paving Co., that will manufacture and place bituminous hot-mix asphalt.

The new venture will take in all the asphalt plants owned by Champaign Asphalt and MACC of Illinois, said Joe Lamb, president of both Champaign Asphalt and Open Road Paving.

Those include plants in Champaign, Tilton, Fairmount and Paxton, as well as a site in Marshall where plants can be set up as needed, he said.

Open Road Paving is jointly owned by Champaign Asphalt and MACC of Illinois, and Hugh Gallivan is chairman of the board for the new venture, Lamb said.

"Open Road Paving will allow us to reduce our fixed costs," said Gallivan, the president of MACC of Illinois. "We will go from five asphalt plants to three asphalt plants to take care of the volume."

The three plants will be those in Paxton, Urbana and Fairmount, and the plants in Tilton and Champaign will no longer be used, Gallivan said. The Marshall plant site will be available if need be, he said.

The consolidation of bituminous resources through Open Road Paving allows for a "locally owned, full-service paving company," a statement from the owners said.

Drastic reductions in the amount of paving work authorized by the Illinois Department of Transportation prompted the formation of Open Road Paving, he said.

"We don't do the volume of work we once did," Lamb said. "With the number of asphalt plants sitting idle, it made sense to consolidate."

Putting the asphalt plants under one company "gives us less overlap," he said.

The cutback in public-sector paving "has just been devastating," he added.

With the change, Champaign Asphalt will focus more on signal and lighting work done by its Champaign Signal & Lighting division and oil-and-chip work done by its Illiana Construction division. Cecil McCormick oversees Champaign Asphalt, while Kyle Behnke and Eric Mast run the respective divisions, Lamb said.

MACC of Illinois will concentrate on operating O'Neil Bros. Construction, which does bridge work, earth work, pipe work and other types of heavy highway construction, Gallivan said.

MACC Capital Holdings, the parent company of MACC of Illinois, has other subsidiaries including Mid-America Sand & Gravel, Mid-America Concrete Recycling and Down River Trucking, he added.

Open Road Paving will employ "probably in the neighborhood of 25 employees," not counting seasonal union employees, Lamb said. Some will be new employees, and others will have worked for either Champaign Asphalt or MACC of Illinois, he said.

The new venture will be based at 1414 W. Anthony Drive, U, where Champaign Asphalt is also based. Its officers include Ted Combes, Rick Davis and Ron Hoyne.

Champaign Asphalt is owned largely by the Indianapolis-based Heritage Group and also by Lamb, while MACC of Illinois is owned by the James H. Gallivan family. Urbana/Champaign (Illinois) News-Gazette