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www.MPTownHall.comMOUNT PLEASANT TOWN HALL
McKnight since January 2004, when he graduated from
Georgia Southern University with a degree in Building
Construction and Contracting. The learning process got
underway immediately.
“McKnight starts people in the field, on the front
lines,” he explained. “The real education begins on the job.”
For Blumenthal, that education got underway at Fort
Benning, where his job was to help build the passenger
processing facility and do some work on the chapel.
From there, he returned to Statesboro, home of Georgia
Southern, where McKnight was renovating the library,
adding 104,000 square feet of space and refurbishing
four floors of the building. The project had been bid by
Blumenthal’s brother, Bobby, who worked for McKnight
Construction at the time, and Brooks Blumenthal
eventually served as project superintendent.
The library was originally built by McKnight
Construction in 1972.
Blumenthal, a native of Augusta, where McKnight has
its headquarters, pointed out that as one of three full-time
project managers, he is responsible for bidding all his
jobs. Unlike many construction companies, McKnight, a
family-owned company that operates like a family, doesn’t
have full-time estimators.
“Our Estimating Department is comprised of our
project managers. We all wear many hats, from estimating
to project management, which makes our company
unique,” he stated.
While Mount Pleasant’s Town Hall was under
construction, Blumenthal was managing several projects,
including a middle school and an elementary school in
Atlanta; renovating Coastal Carolina University’s Brooks
Stadium in Conway, South Carolina; and Rollings Middle
School of the Arts in Dorchester County. He had recently
put the finishing touches on three other schools in the
Summerville area: Sand Hill Elementary, Alston-Bailey
Elementary and Alston Middle.
Blumenthal pointed out that many of the
subcontractors who helped build Mount Pleasant’s Town
Hall are local, based either in Mount Pleasant, Charleston
or other nearby locations. He added that being from out
of town can be an advantage for a general contractor. For
The windows at the front of Town Hall open into the main courtroom.
Photo by Brian Sherman.