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{{Short description|Heavy construction company headquartered in North Carolina}}

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J.A. Jones Construction was a heavy construction company headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina. Operating internationally since the 1950s, it merged with Germany's Philipp Holzmann AG in 1979. In 2003, the company ceased operations due to the failure of its parent company.

History

The company was founded by James Addison Jones in the 1890s.Company history One of Jones' early landmark projects was the twelve-story Independence Building, Charlotte's first "skyscraper" and the soon to be first office of J.A. Jones Construction.Charlotte-Mecklenburg Historic Landmarks Commission: "The Independence Building"In 1930, the company won a major contract to build a new military airbase in the Canal Zone in Panama.Comptroller General of the United StatesDuring World War II, the company built 212 cargo ships and tankersLiberty Ships and was a substantial builder of Liberty ships in support of the war effort.Digital Library of Georgia, "Ships for Victory: J.A. Jones Construction Company and Liberty Ships in Brunswick, Georgia", 2005 It also built Camp Shelby in Mississippi as well as K-25 and K-27, production plants for manufacturing Uranium-235 at the Clinton Engineer Works at Oak Ridge, Tennessee.shipbuildinghistory.com, Jones Construction, Brunswick GAshipbuildinghistory.com, Jones Construction, Panama City FLIn August 1965, The U.S. Navy Bureau of Yards and Docks selected J.A. Jones Construction to be a part of the construction consortium, RMK-BRJ, formed to perform $2 billion in infrastructure construction in Vietnam in support of the Vietnam War build-up. This contract was closed out in 1972 and the consortium disbanded.BOOK, Tregaskis, Richard, Southeast Asia: Building the Bases; the History of Construction in Southeast Asia, 1975, Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 139–140, 952642951, In 1979, the company was acquired by Philipp Holzmann A.G.Building for tomorrow: global enterprise and the U.S. construction industry, National Research Council (U.S.), 1988 p. 82 and under that company's ownership Jones went on to build the 88-story Petronas Towers, for a while the tallest buildings in the world.WEB,weblink Petronas Towers, 2009-11-30,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20091107213736weblink">weblink 2009-11-07, dead, However Holzman got into financial difficulties in the late 1990s and this led to the bankruptcy of Jones in 2003Gordon Wright, For sale: J.A. Jones Construction Co., Building Design & Construction news, June 01, 2003"VT Griffin Services Acquires Contracts from Bankrupt J.A. Jones", Business Wire, December 23, 2003 and subsequent sale of Jones' subsidiaries as going concerns.BeaQuirk, "Former J.A. Jones units find life after bankruptcy" The Business Journal of the Greater Triad Area, August 20, 2004{| class="wikitable" style="font-size: 95%;"! Subsidiary !! Buyer !! Purchase price

	Turner Construction >| $10 million

	| unknown

	CH2M Hill >| $95.5 million

	Fluor Corp. >| $4 million

	| $34 million

References

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External links

• Jones Alumni Association
• K-25 Gaseous Diffusion Plant at Oak Ridge
• Ships for Victory: J.A. Jones Construction Company and Liberty Ships in Brunswick, Georgia from the Digital Library of Georgia

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