Hook’s Castle adds to storage capacity in a huge way

Craig Bakay | Nov 04, 2020

Cement trucks of all sorts and sizes were in and out of the back lot at Hook’s Castle Building Centre south of Cloyne Saturday as Stacie and Tracy Hook set about adding to their business in a big way. The new addition is a $1.2 million, 15,000 square foot building that will house all sorts of building materials from lumber to drywall, to whatever else they stock.

“We stock a lot of materials already,” Tracie Hook said Saturday. “This will let us bring materials inside so we’ll have dry lumber spring, summer and fall.”

The Saturday operation was impressive to watch, as about 50 cement trucks (five every hour) brought their loads to be spread on the base by a larger overhead boom, with laser-guided precision. From there, a small army of construction workers smoothed it out and applied drying agents (all natural granite and powder), creating a surface the likes of which has never been seen in the area.

Hook started out in the building trades working at plumbing, heating and electrical installation with his dad.

“Then we got into supply when area builders started telling us ‘if you bring it in, we’ll buy from you,’” he said. “Then we started getting a lot of builders in from outside the area as our local builders started doing one or two custom homes per year.”

Hook’s huge addition says as much about the state of the construction business in the area as it does about his own business.

“The area’s booming,” he said. “It’s really been taking off and sales are good.

“All we need now is a little less red tape.”

He tells a couple of anecdotes that illustrate his point.

“One fellow who was building a new place asked me ‘can you see this area taking off?’” Hook said. “I told him it already has. He told me he was moving here from the Muskokas and I told him ‘you’re part of the reason.’”

He tells of another fellow who bought a $675,000 cottage on a local lake only to tear it down and build a new one on the lot.

“Growth is always a good thing,” Hook said.

He said he’s been getting good feedback from his customers, and that’s a big part of why they decided to go ahead with the addition, his biggest expansion to this point.

“This will allow us to do more things with the same amount of people and maybe hire a few more,” he said. “A lot of people are looking forward to buying unfrozen wood in the winter.

“But this will allow us to buy better too — use economics of scale.

“I could buy three truckloads of insulation before but if it got wet, it would be no good to anyone.”

Also part of Saturday’s operation were Linden Sharp’s Concrete Pumps and R & R Custom Concrete out of Newburgh.