The Ocala Evening Star

CONTRACT FOR
JENKINS & COMPANY

Ocala Firm will Erect a Government Building in Big City of Indiana

Ocala is quite proud of its contracting firm of J. F. Jenkins & Co. and the success they are having in the outside world. This has recently closed a contract for another government building.

The new building is to be located at Lafayette, La., and the company now has well under way another government job (both of them being postoffice buildings) in Douglas, Wyoming, almost across the continent from each other, one a thousand and the other three thousand miles from the office of the firm.

The last contract was awarded to the firm on the 6th of this month. Mr. Jenkins went in person to Washington and signed the contract in the treasury department.

The Lafayette building was taken at $50,000 and the time limit is fifteen months, though it will be completed by Jan. 1st. Mr. Williams and his son, Mr. Ned Williams, are now in Douglass. Mr. Williams will meet Mr. Jenkins in New Orleans in a few days and they will go to Lafayette and start the job off, leave it in charge of a superintendent and go after another one. Mr. Ned Williams will remain in charge of the Douglass job until it is completed, when he will return home.

The Douglass building is the largest of the two and the contract was for $62,000.

The firm wants two others of a like character or larger, as it can carry on four at one time as well as one. It has a contract to build a very large and expensive courthouse in Arkansas, but the county commissioners have not yet succeeded in arranging their finances and the job will not be started until these arrangements are made.

Messrs. J. F. Jenkins & Co. prefer government work to any other kind. It is particular and exacting, but that is the kind they do, and there is no trouble or bother or the thousand and one little worries incident to county or state work. Both of the present jobs will net them a very handsome profit: the bids were few and all fairly high, so the work was taken at a figure where there is liberal profit.

Ocala is proud of a firm whose ability and integrity is such as to get it work all over the country as this one is doing.

Some have asked if they will not be moving away from Ocala with all of these big jobs elsewhere. Where would they go? This is as good as any place and they have heavy investments here.

The jobs are only incidents, completed and closed in a few months, then the next contract may be just as far in another direction. They are always estimating on a number of jobs and are never without two or more on hand at any time.