"
I get up in
the morning,
my two kids
are in the bed
monkeying
around. And
I turn to my
wife and say,
'I'm quitting
in 90 days.'"
THE
NBOX
i
the country. It was there that
the seeds of his lifelong dream
of entrepreneurship sprouted.
Years before, Maierle had
filed a corporation under the
name
ETRO after seeing the
eponymous Italian fashion
store's logo in Milan. But it had
been lying mostly dormant,
save for a job here or there.
When he got back from
the Bahamas, Maierle was
promoted to be the director of
pre-construction operations
at Ledcor. The company was
planning on making him the
president of its construction
group. "I wanted no part of
that," Maierle says, emphasiz-
ing his point by hitting the
table. "I had two young kids, I
knew I'd be on a plane all the
time. I couldn't see it."
Then came that day in July.
Maierle started getting every-
thing ready for him to go out
on his own and, on October 1,
he put in his notice. "My boss
was beside himself," he recalls.
"At the end of the month they
threw me this incredible going
away celebration—60 clients
showed up, a lot of people. I
think they thought I was going
to go renovate houses and do
small stuff. But I had a whole
different plan."
That weekend, Maierle
set up two folding tables, a
chair and a couple of screens
and started
ETRO (which now
stands for Ethics, Teamwork,
Relationships and Optimism)
Construction in his basement
with $100,000 of his own sav-
ings and, as he puts it, "a loan
against my fucking house."
The projects started coming
in slowly as Maierle spent his
Mike Maierle remembers
July 1, 2015, well.
"I get up in the morning,
my two kids are in our bed
monkeying around," Maierle
recalls with a smile. "And I
turn to my wife and say, 'I'm
quitting in 90 days.'"
Maierle grew up in Burnaby
with an entrepreneurial spirit
that led him to find work cut-
ting grass, painting fences and
refinishing decks as a teen-
ager. He worked summers in
construction and entered the
BCIT construction management
program immediately after
high school. "I graduated on a
Friday and the following Mon-
day I started as a 19-year-old
at [global construction giant]
Ledcor as an estimator with
a desk in a fancy downtown
office," he says.
Maierle spent some 13 years
with Ledcor, becoming its go-
to shopping centre/commer-
cial retail project manager in
Metro Vancouver and running
projects like the $70-million
Pacific Centre Holt Renfrew re-
development. Eventually, the
company enlisted him to go to
the Bahamas for four years and
build a $370-million airport in
A SENSE
OF PLACE
ETRO Construction Ltd. hasn't yet reached a
decade in business, but it's making its mark by
winning some of the province's biggest projects—
like BC Place's upcoming renovation
by Nathan Caddell
C O N S T R U C T I O N
GOING UP
ETRO founder Mike Maierle
helped develop Aritzia's
second Vancouver office
11
B C B U S I N E S S . C A
O C T O B E R
2 0 24 Illu s t r a t i o n : J a n ik S ö ll n e r/ N o u n P r oj e c t ; A r i t z i a : E m a P e t e r
