Cherie Morrissey has the accounting background, and her husband, Brenton, has the construction experience. On that solid foundation, the Dracut couple have built a successful business that provides stone, concrete and drainage services.
The Morrisseys started Magnolia Siteworks in 2017, and in 2019, the company was certified by the state Supplier Diversity Office as a Woman Business Enterprise, or WBE. March 5-11 is Women in Construction Week.
Cherie is the owner and president of Magnolia Siteworks. With a degree in Business Administration with a concentration in Accounting, she set out to start her own business, and with Brenton’s background – a degree in Landscape Design, experience in landscape, masonry construction, concrete, excavation and paving – a construction company seemed the way to go.
“I manage the office, and Brent handles the field work,” Cheri says. “It’s a good match.”
Cherie said she wanted the company to be certified as WBE “because a lot of public work initiatives for government funding are geared toward disadvantaged or woman-owned businesses. We’re trying to get into the public sector more.”
Cherie grew up in Dracut, Brent in Methuen. They run Magnolia Siteworks out of their home on Gilbert Street in Dracut, though much of their projects are closer to Boston.
“Most of the work we do is closer to the city,” says Brent, who serves as Director of Field Operations. “It just seemed to work out that way.”
Magnolia recently completed a drainage job at Winding Brook Estates off Tennis Plaza Road in Dracut, and the idea of taking on more projects closer to home is a pleasing one.
“We’ve done a handful of jobs in Dracut, and we’d love to do more jobs closer to this area,” Brent says.
Though the services Magnolia Siteworks provides run the gamut, they’re focusing mostly on stone and concrete work of late.
“Now that we’ve been going almost six years, we’ve kind of landed on concrete work for commercial or private companies -- sidewalk repairs, removal, replacement, wheelchair ramps,” Cherie says.
“I’d say 80 to 90 percent of what we do is concrete sidewalks,” Brent says. “There’s some drainage work, but the contacts we’ve made have led us to doing mostly concrete sidewalks. When people see ‘concrete work,’ they immediate think of foundations and floors. But we don’t do foundations and floors. We don’t really do residential work at all.”
Brent adds that the company has also done work for trucking companies, including FedEx and UPS, repairing the area where trailers park against loading docks, causing wear and tear.
Magnolia Siteworks is a fairly young company, and it appears as though they’ll have at least one worker a few more years down the line. The Morrisseys’ 6-year-old son, Ivan, has already shown a penchant for the construction business, while 8-month-old daughter Sophia has some time to decide her future avocation. (Accounting, perhaps?)
“The crew just call Ivan one of the workers,” Cherie says. “He’s always on the job site, always in an excavator with dad.”
Call Magnolia Siteworks at 978-609-6451 or email either bmorrissey@magnoliasiteworks.com or cmorrissey@magnoliasiteworks.com.