Ask Tim Eakins whether TK Constructors ever thought about moving its headquarters out of Yorktown, and he says the subject has ever come up.
“Yorktown’s awesome,” he says. “we’ve never had a conversation about being somewhere else. We all live here. This is where we want to be.”
That loyalty is built into the company’s name. The T is Mark Thurston and the K is Bill Keller, two Yorktown natives who grew up here, left after high school to pursue other things, and eventually found their way home. Thurston had worked for a scattered-site home builder and came away convinced he could improve the process. In 1990, he and Keller launched TK Constructors as its sole owners.
Thurston grew up in rural Indiana living by two simple rules: keep your word and outwork everyone around you. He carried them through the lean years of the early-’80s recession and into a business founded on the belief that every family deserves a quality home it can afford. Over the decades, he has also shared what he built, selling some ownership in TK to many longtime employees as a reward for their commitment.
“It’s been a crazy ride,” Eakins says.
A LOT MORE HOME ON YOUR LOT
That ride now includes more than 11,000 homes. At its peak, TK built as many as 700 houses a year, and it weathered the 2008–2009 housing crash that sank many competitors. What carried the company through was a niche few builders occupy: TK builds on land its customers already own. TK is an on-your-lot builder, and today the largest one in Indiana and Ohio. Its territory covers most of Indiana from Fort Wayne south, the greater Dayton and Cincinnati regions, and northern Kentucky.
Customers choose from a library of ranch and two-story floor plans, then personalize them through what TK calls its “Everyday Custom™” approach. Picking from a huge selection of pre-determined finishes, while also adding size to rooms, adding sunrooms or 3-car garages, along with other custom options. But Eakins says the company’s biggest recent innovations haven’t been about siding or subfloors. They’ve been about people.
“The innovations we’ve made are trying to make sure the process is as user-friendly as possible,” he says, from consistent communication throughout the build to frequent surveys, TK’s primary goal is to stay on-time and on-budget and have happy customers.
REBUILDING AFTER THE STORM
TK faced its own test when a tornado destroyed its corporate office. The Delaware county community rallied around us to help. Staff crowded into a much smaller temporary space while Thurston oversaw construction of a new headquarters.
“It made us a much closer group, no pun intended,” Eakins says. “We were all kind of on top of each other for a year.” The company moved into its new building exactly one year after the storm. Meanwhile, TK’s IT department restored the systems supporting job sites across two and a half states in record time. “Our employees were all resilient,” he says. “In general, I think it brought us closer.”
Lumber, rail and a hedge against the next shortage
The pandemic taught us many lessons. When material prices tripled and supplies disappeared, builders everywhere scrambled. TK’s answer was to buy Sulphur Lumber a few years ago, scale it up to meet all of TK’s needs, and move it from Sulphur Springs to Yorktown.
The purchase vertically integrated the business, and a new rail spur now delivers materials directly to the site. Rail saves on freight, but Eakins says the bigger payoff is control.
“If you’ve got 150 houses’ worth of lumber you know what the price is on those,” he says. For customers, that means steadier pricing, a kind of insurance policy against the next disruption.
ROOTS THAT RUN DEEP
The move brought more than lumber to town. TK built a new office and a retail center, adding to Yorktown’s tax base. The company employs just over 120 full-time workers, roughly half of them locally at its truss plant, the Sulphur lumber yard, and the corporate office. Add the framers, roofers, drywallers and other trades who touch every TK home, and the economic ripple is hard to measure.
The houses may rise across three states, but the company’s address on West Sulphur Drive isn’t going anywhere.
“We’re excited about being in Yorktown,” Eakins says. “We’re always going to be excited about being in Yorktown.”
TK Constructors 765-759-7500 TKconstructors.com
