Bill Maguire is not a New Yorker but he remembers what he was doing the morning of September 11, 2001: Scouting an Orange County site in southern New York for a satellite plant to Concrete Stone & Tile's flagship in Branchville, N.J. That day's events did not change his thinking about expansion; instead, they had the effect of boosting what was already a healthy clip of land development in Orange County.

Almost three years later, Maguire has CST up and running a full-fledged landscape unit operation in Montgomery, N.Y. Residential and commercial development in Montgomery and the surrounding Orange County area are increasing faster than expected, he notes, as a) home buyers from New York City consider relocating outside the greater metro area or building weekend getaways close to the Catskill Mountains; and b) businesses seek to break up operations they feel are too centralized, or exposed, in New York City.

CST occupies what had been a Montgomery Sewer District wastewater treatment site. Soil conditions made the 14-acre property unsuited to the district's settling and aeration processes. During land acquisition and environmental review, Maguire found the plot well suited to a concrete plant's requirements.

A permit to repurpose the site from sewage treatment to paving stone and segmental retaining wall production was secured after Maguire arranged for Orange County Development Board officials to visit CST's headquarters. There, they observed a commitment to plant and environmental detail, from dust collection to a landscaping scheme befitting a 24-acre plot amid northern New Jersey foothills. Maguire additionally showed Orange County officials how the new plant could be designed so that all production elements were under roof, excepting a 125-ton cement silo.

The result is CST's new 34,000-sq.-ft. plant enclosure, surrounded by paved parking and service areas, hardscaping along the most visible elevation, plus a 120,000-sq.-ft. storage pad built with gravel-anchored Turfstone concrete units. The Montgomery plant is equipped with a Hess RH 1500, which, coupled with Branchville machines, supports a product line of Versa-Lok retaining wall units and CST Roman Cobble System pavers. The new plant boosts the company's capacity by 75 percent, shoring up service to a dealer network spanning New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont.

CST is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year. As Concrete Products reported in February 1986, founder Guenther Krueger, plus his sons Ron and Carey, established CST after purchasing a small paver plant in 1984. At the time, the Kruegers and their contemporaries in the U.S. and Canada banked on market development trends that would bring domestic paver consumption (< 1 sq. ft./capita) more in line with Europe (> 14 sq.ft./capita). Rapid acceptance of unit masonry in mid-Atlantic and Northeast landscaping propelled CST to expand the Branchville property from an original 10 acres to its current 24 acres. The Montgomery operation represents the company's next phase and, like the flagship site, can be expanded to meet future demand.

“Our growth is the result of seasoned production and support staff, and a network of independent dealers who have made pavers and segmental retaining wall units the landscaping standard in their markets. When we started, we were the second player in the market with pavers. We remain competitive even though the area now has more than 15 producers moving pavers and SRW,” notes Ron Krueger, who along with his brother runs CST and a sister manufacturing company, Behringer Group.

As the Kruegers mark 20 years in concrete, Bill Maguire is nearing 30. After a tour of duty as an Ontario provincial trooper, he teamed up with North American Paving Stone in Toronto, then crossed the border for stops in Michigan and Long Island, N.Y., prior to CST.