Construction
Rodgers had worked as sales manager for Dixie Concrete Pipe and went out on his own, starting a construction firm in 1966. Having been given a ticket and a house share for the 1968 Masters Tournament at the Augusta National Golf Club, Rodgers ended up sharing a home with Thomas Frist, a doctor from Nashville, Tennessee who had just started a private hospital company called Hospital Corporation of America. The two built a connection while walking the golf course and Frist offered Rodgers a contract to build a hospital in Erin, Tennessee for HCA. By 1970, Rodgers had built 19 hospitals for Hospital Corporation of America and had built 200 for the company by 1979, generating $120 million in revenue that year.
His firm took on a project in April 1972 to complete the building of the National Life and Accident Insurance Company's Opryland USA complex which had been scheduled to open on May 19, but had been delayed due to a strike by workers at another construction firm. Rodgers and his subcontractors crossed the picket lines and were able to earn a bonus for completing the project two days early, which was accomplished by working on shifts around the clock. The $50,000 bonus was turned over to local Boy and Girl Scout groups.
He sold a majority stake in his construction company after a 1977 heart attack and shifted into real estate development. Projects he developed included Vanderbilt Plaza and the Third National Bank building (which has since been renamed the Fifth Third Center), both in downtown Nashville. He started American Constructors in 1979, which built Nashville's Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, the Schermerhorn Symphony Center and the Wildhorse Saloon.
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Famous quotes containing the word construction:
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“There is, I think, no point in the philosophy of progressive education which is sounder than its emphasis upon the importance of the participation of the learner in the formation of the purposes which direct his activities in the learning process, just as there is no defect in traditional education greater than its failure to secure the active cooperation of the pupil in construction of the purposes involved in his studying.”
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“Striving toward a goal puts a more pleasing construction on our advance toward death.”
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