Out-Of-Town Builders

This is the 10th article in a series examining various aspects of real estate on the South Fork.

Tom Wolkner, a mason who drives from Yaphank to work construction on the South Fork, summed up his daily commute. "It sucks," he said, smiling, a trace of the German he spoke as a child lingering in his accent. "If you're not past the Shinnecock Canal by 7:30, you're really stuck."

But Mr. Wolkner is one of the legions of contractors who put up with the inconvenience of the "trade parade" of pickups and vans that clogs Route 27 each day for the opportunity to take advantage of the lucrative building boom that is in full swing here.

Duane Koncelik, who was raised in Northwest Woods but moved to East Patchogue after he was married, has been working primarily as a framer on the South Fork for 17 years.

Bumper To Bumper

To get to his job site by 6:30 a.m., Mr. Koncelik rolls out of bed by 5 and hits the road by 5:30, stopping to pick up - or as he put it, "wake up" - a crew member who lives nearby in Bellport.

"We try to carpool," he said. "There aren't a lot of guys who do that. Most still take that single ride, but that's what just about everyone on Long Island does."

"Years ago, you'd see one or two cars every couple of miles," said John Petoello, a tile contractor who drives from Patchogue. "Now you get to the merge" at County Road 39 in South ampton "and it's bumper to bumper."

Word Of Mouth

"The traffic doesn't bother me," said Joe LaFace, a finish carpenter from Hampton Bays, taking a decidedly minority view. "I learned to drive in Brooklyn. This is a piece of cake."

Like many other tradesmen who make their way east each morning, Mr. Wolkner, who came from Germany with his family in 1962 and has worked in the area since 1969, relies on word-of-mouth referrals from general contractors to keep busy.

"Fireplaces are my thing, and this kind of stuff," he said, pointing to a stone patio he was working on at a multimillion-dollar job site overlooking Mecox Bay in Bridgehampton. "I've never advertised," he said, "so I must be doing all right."

The same holds true for Mr. LaFace. "I've been on my own for 10 years now," he said. "I'm at the point now where I go home and have a couple jobs waiting for me."

Mr. Koncelik puts up with the commute because "this is where my reputation is." Besides, he added, the area provides contractors the opportunity to build "houses like you don't see anywhere else in the world."

"That's where the pride comes in," said Mr. Wolkner. "Anybody can build a house, but if you can do something like this," he said, pointing to the house behind him, "you know you are a builder."

Plenty Of Work

"You get to work on the nicest part of the island," added Eric Doerwald, who has worked for Mr. Koncelik since graduating from high school nine years ago.

"This is like working in a state park," he said at a job site in Georgica. "And we get to enjoy someone else's property before it makes the transformation from au natural to Villa Central."

Some year-rounders may feel the steady stream of contractors heading east takes jobs away, but most say there is more than enough work to go around.

"I don't favor anybody," said John Hummel, an East Hampton general contractor. "I hire as many as I can from here, but sometimes I have to look elsewhere. I don't care where they're from as long as they're good."

Mr. Koncelik, noting that business was about as strong as it was in the go-go '80s, agreed that good help is hard to find. "If someone isn't working now, he doesn't want to work," he said.

While recessions that have put a periodic halt to building have weeded out some less qualified contractors, Mr. Petoello, who specializes in kitchen and bathroom work, sees a few of them creeping back into the business.

"They'll underbid my work," he said, "but they don't have insurance, and they aren't bothering to get licensed."

But Mr. Petoello, whose father started the family business 40 years ago and who has been working on the East End himself since the mid-'70s, said he can hold his own. "The established contractors know the kind of work I do," he said.

Moving On

When the deep recessions of the mid-'70s decimated the building industry on Long Island, many of those marginal workers moved on to Houston, which was enjoying a boom fueled by high oil prices, he said.

Similarly, he added, contractors moved south to the Carolinas during the last economic downturn.

Mr. LaFace, whose family moved to Hampton Bays from Brooklyn when he was 16 ("and I've been heading east ever since"), said he did not fear bad times.

"When things were slow, I actually did better," he said. "People like myself, we came from the city. We had no money. We put in our eight hard hours every day. There's demand for us."

Closer To Work

Mr. Wolkner considered moving east years ago, but now that his family is settled, he has no plans to leave Yaphank. "I don't want to pay more taxes," he said. "I don't want to build a new home."

Although he was raised here, Mr. Koncelik said he did not miss East Hampton. "It's too crowded," he said. "You go down to the ocean, and it's like a parking lot."

But Mr. Petoello, who said that "95 percent of my business is out here," would like to move his family closer to his work base. He has been browsing at building lots in Wainscott and East Hampton in recent months.

Happy Springs Resident

"We were going home just to sleep," said Terry Reinhardsten, who grew up in the same neighborhood of Norwegian immigrants as the Dalene brothers of Telemark Construction in Bridgehampton. He now works with Stanley Dalene, who split off from Telemark and started his own contracting business about five years ago.

Mr. Reinhardsten, who now lives in Springs, said he had never regretted the move. "We live in an area we really love," he said, adding that the move was made easier because the group helped one another build their houses.

On a recent return visit to St. Jam es, "I didn't recognize a single person," he said. "And the traffic was un believable."