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Thursday, Mar 28, 2024

The Next Generation of Business at ValleyCrest

What do Vegas high rollers, shoppers at The Grove and major league baseball players all have in common? They walk, stroll, run and play through landscape schemes installed and maintained by ValleyCrest Companies, the nation’s largest privately-held landscape company based in Calabasas. Founded in 1949 by Burton S. Sperber, ValleyCrest now operates its development and maintenance divisions through more than 100 offices in 21 states and has 8,500 employees on the payroll. “He started in the San Fernando Valley 67 years ago with what I’d like to say was a pick-up truck and a shovel but he didn’t actually have a pick-up truck,” said Richard Sperber, Burton’s son, and president of ValleyCrest Companies. The younger Sperber is now overseeing the company’s branching out into landscape design following its acquisition in March of two landscape architecture firms HRP LanDesign out of Orange County; and Site Works, based in Alabama. Question: Explain the new direction ValleyCrest is going in as it gets involved in designing landscape layouts as well as installing and maintaining them. Answer: When my father started the company he did a lot of design build. As we got bigger and bigger we ended up doing just the installation side and concentrating on that. Over the next 50 years the company became the largest landscape installation company in the country. We see our customers spending more money and landscaping is becoming more important. With that brings larger budgets and the timeframes are becoming faster. More and more customers are saying we trust your company, we trust what you stand for it would be cool if you could take care of the entire scope, which is design, build and maintain our projects. Our customers have been screaming for it for years. We wanted to take our time to find a group of people to work with so we can do it the right way. We’ll be offering our customers the complete full package. We’ve been working with HRP for 25 to 30 years. They have great disciplines in landscape architecture and do a lot of master planned communities. Over the years they’ve worked on a lot of great projects with us so we found that as a great natural first step. Our goal is to hook up with the top people in our field who are doing the cutting edge projects today. We’re bringing on one or two other top-notch special landscape architects. Q: What’s your role in all that? A: The design business is going to be part of our landscape installation business. I’m working with the people there to spearhead this. It’s something that I’ve wanted to do for the past four or five years. I’ve taken the lead in bringing on some people. Q: Are you taking the lead because you’ve made all the contacts over the years? A: I want it to be done right. I wanted to get people who I’ve been working with over the years that I thought would be a great fit for our organization. I’ve been taking the lead in getting some of these people to come along with us. Q: The company was started by your father and originally located in North Hollywood. It gradually moved west over the years. Were you always interested in wanting to work for the family company? A: Since I was 6 years old I’ve been doing something sweeping the yard or working in the field. I’ve worked here my whole life pretty much. Q: What are some of the projects the company has done recently? A: One of the larger jobs we just completed was the Wynn Resort in Las Vegas. We did the Getty Center and just completed the Getty Villa in Malibu. With (developer) Rick Caruso we did The Grove and The Lakes at Thousand Oaks that’s the one with the ice skating rink. We’re also doing a lot of work at the Huntington Gardens. We’re doing the Chinese garden and just finished up with the children’s garden there. We’re currently working on the LACMA design build. Q: You’ve done work at Dodger Stadium as well? A: Dodger Stadium is going to spend a lot of money outside the stadium making some cool environments for the fans. It’s going to be phased in over a couple of years. We finished the first piece of it for opening day just a couple weeks ago. We also put the new field in for them. Q: After you finish doing a project do you like going to see how it is received? A: Absolutely. You go to The Lakes out here in Thousand Oaks and see the hundreds and hundreds of people during the weekends having picnics out there, the restaurants are all packed and everyone is just enjoying the place. Q: Obviously you’ve seen a lot of growth. A: We’re very busy to say the least. There is a lot of opportunity out there. The projects get more interesting and bigger and nicer. Q: What are some of the big changes you’ve seen in the industry in general? A: The single biggest one is that more and more developers and owners are seeing the value that landscaping brings to their projects. The percent of the money being spent has probably doubled over the last 10 years over what most people spend on their landscaping. Developers like Rick Caruso and Steve Wynn have just made a lot of other developers see what landscaping can bring. A lot more people are spending more money on landscaping. Q: And they do it for the aesthetic reasons? A: Look at The Lakes. It’s really a park with a retail center in the middle of it. It gives people an environment to go there and not only spend money and have a great retail experience but spend more time there because there is a great food experience and outdoor setting. Q: The landscape industry as a whole seems touched by the issue of immigration. Do you hire people with H-2B seasonal visas? A: We currently probably have about 1 percent of the H-2B (seasonal worker) visas. Saying that, the state of California does not honor those visas so all those people are working outside the state. The farther east you go and you get more seasonality the more H-2B workers we have. H-2B is a program where we get our workers from Mexico and they’re allowed to stay for 11 months. They are on a visa and can work for us and only work for us during that 11 month period and then go back to Mexico. It’s a program we’ve been using for four, five years now that allows us to use seasonal workers. We use the same group of people. We’ve had H-2B workers who have been here for five years. We’re strong advocates of H-2B. Q: What’s it like working for the family company. A: It’s been great. I’ve been working with my father my whole life and we haven’t had our first fight yet. You hear a lot about family businesses and how you don’t want to go into them and how they never work. That’s definitely not the case here. Q: Why do you think that is? A: Me and my dad make a great team. Also, I think this is truly run like a family business. There certainly other members of the Sperber family who work here but we have hundreds of other families who work here. We have one gentleman who has 75 family members working here today. This is truly a family business. Q: What do you think about how the business is run that inspires that? A: I think it’s because it is a family business. Most companies wouldn’t let your brother work here or your wife. Here we encourage it. Q: How would you describe your management style and working with those above you and below you? A: Well, above me it’s my dad and I get along great with him. I like to have fun but I also hold our people accountable that the customer is completely satisfied. It’s important that all our people treat not only the customers great but all the employees great. I give people a lot of room to do what they want to do. Q: How do you get new clients? Is it through word of mouth, other people seeing what projects you’ve done elsewhere? A: We get a lot of repeat customers. But a lot of it is through word of mouth, people going to one of our projects and finding out we did it. We have a group of sales people, too, who go out and try and drum up new business. We are really strong in the communities we do business in so we know a lot of the people doing the projects that we want to do. Q: You recently did a novel recruitment program for college students. Describe that. A: As the company grows, we need to bring in new people. We did this event in February where we brought in 25 college students from 12 different universities around the country. We had a three-day landscape challenge where they spent time with the management team doing management challenges. We gave out cash awards plus the opportunity to come work for us. It was a mixture of hard work and fun. Q: Where do you see the company 10 to 15 years down the road? A: I’m super excited about the design build and the group of designers we are bringing on board. I see the next three to four years launching that into something special that can’t be duplicated anywhere in the United States where we have a group of great designers working with our customers delivering a design and service they won’t be able to get anywhere else. Snapshot Richard Sperber Title: President Born: 1962 Education: Granada Hills High School; attended California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. Personal: Married with three children Most Admired Person: His father Burton Sperber, who founded the family business in 1949. “He built an amazing company out of nothing.”

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