Business View Caribbean | July 2020

42 BUSINESS VIEW CARIBBEAN JULY 2020 important buildings in Puerto Rico, the University of Puerto Rico Comprehensive Cancer Center in Rio Piedras – a $107 million project within Puerto Rico’s Medical Center. Ángel admits that, “We specialized in high-rise residential projects, but there aren’t many being built in Puerto Rico today. We do hospitals, schools, office buildings, but right now the work in Puerto Rico is concentrated on housing repairs and reconstruction, because everything else has stopped since the Hurricanes.” That being said, construction-wise, Ángel believes the future looks very bright “because the federal money is coming through with help for the Hurricanes’ victims and now the earthquakes. The money is starting to flow, and we expect what happened after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans to happen here. That money flowed for 10 years. So, in Puerto Rico, we’re thinking that the money will keep coming for the next five to eight years.” F&R Construction Group is a proud family organization that has stood the test of time with forward-thinking strategies and integrity. Speaking to the best attributes of the firm, Ángel shares, “This is a third generation construction company and my father was in the business, we are in the business in the second part, and our sons are in the business now. Over 48 years, we are very well known in Puerto Rico – everybody knows our name and who we are. We also have a lot of diversity. We are not only contractors, we are developers also. We play many bases; we develop and we do construction.” Vanessa de Mari, F&R Development Manager, relates, “I think one of the reasons we have been so successful right now is that when the economy got tough around 2006, we had a strong foundation – both financially and structurally – within the company. The recession hit us pretty hard in Puerto Rico for a very long time and we were able to manage that rough period. We started to diversify our services through different companies while keeping construction as our main trade, but we diversified into other areas and that gave us the