A League of His Own
After a pro hockey career spent in the minors, Derek Prue is shooting out the lights with his development company, SkyRider Holdings. The game-breaker: an innovative approach to First Nations housing
by Mike Sadava
Photography by Colin Way
It’s been a tough hockey season for Derek Prue. After only a few weeks of playing centre for the River Cree Warriors, Prue is nursing a cut over his lip that required six stitches to close, and he has already been in a fight. Not a promising start.
But what a construction season it has been for Prue’s SkyRider Holdings Ltd. (which does business as SkyRider Developments)! A tour of the slightly rolling countryside just west of Edmonton brings an eyeful of SkyRider projects: two major housing projects on the Enoch Reserve, a country lot subdivision at Graminia in Parkland County and the beginnings of what will eventually be a 650-unit housing development in Stony Plain. Prue also has a big commercial/condominium complex on the go in Comox, B.C., and a country lot subdivision on Lake Isle an hour west of Edmonton, and he’s acting as a key consultant for aboriginal groups seeking provincial affordable housing grants. It’s been such a good year that even the weather has co-operated, allowing paving of internal roads in two projects to go on well into November.
Prue, 36, is a former professional minor hockey league player for such teams as the Tucson Gila Monsters and the Odessa (Texas) Jackalopes. He still lives for the sport and wears a mop of hockey hair à la Ryan Smyth. But life after hockey is being good to him. SkyRider, named after his children, Skyler and Ryder, is headed for the major leagues of privately held companies.
A phenomenal rate of growth makes the Stony Plain company the fastest-growing among this year’s Fast Growth 25 under $20 million. Sales have taken off like a Sheldon Souray slapshot, increasing more than tenfold in the 2007-08 fiscal year to nearly $5.2 million from $465,000 in the previous year. Other indicators, such as assets, net earnings and capital investments, have also seen impressive gains.
SkyRider rode the housing boom along with many other developers, but Prue expects that the company’s flexibility, versatility and growing niche in First Nations housing will help growth continue, even with a flattening market. “The key to our growth is our ability to do everything from sales to build-out,” says Prue, who managed to snag a master of business administration degree from Athabasca University in his spare time. “We can operate as owner-developer or project manager. Our ability to adapt to different situations is a definite competitive advantage.”
SkyRider keeps its operation slim, headquartered in a small office in a Stony Plain strip mall with only about 15 employees on the payroll. It outsources most of the work, but Prue keeps going back to the same engineers and contractors to create a loyal working relationship. Occasionally he even goes into partnership with a regular contractor. For the Stony Plain project, for instance, SkyRider is partnered with Brute Force, its regular earthwork/paving contractor.
“They’re not part of our company but in a sense they are,” he says. “We try to keep them busy so they can rely on us for a continuous stream of revenue.” Sometimes SkyRider’s profit margin is lower than it could be on a specific project if it did more of the work, but it pays off in the long run. “If you leave enough on the table for people to make money, you have the ability to do more projects,” Prue says.
Terry Evenson, the owner of Brute Force, says Prue is helping his company expand into development after years of specializing in oilfield contracting and hauling.
“Derek and I hit it off so well because we both have the same thoughts and interests. We complement each other.” Evenson praises Prue for his people skills, his understanding of the development business and his optimism, which keeps everything ticking along.
Although Prue has been involved in small-scale development since leaving professional hockey in the late 1990s, it was hockey that led to his work on the Enoch Reserve and his company’s focus on First Nations.
He got to know some of the Enoch leaders through the small community of Triple A, the highest level of adult amateur hockey. After doing a couple of small projects for the band, including a full-sized outdoor rink, he was talking to Chief Ron Morin about the Millennium Housing Project. Like many Alberta reserves, Enoch has a serious housing shortage, forcing many families to live in overcrowded conditions or off reserve. There is currently a list of 400 families waiting for housing.
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