From sheds to luxury homes

Barely more than a decade ago, Bob Bianco worked to find every tiny competitive advantage for his company that sold backyard storage sheds.

Bianco remains in the building business, but these days he's negotiating construction of some of the most exclusive homes in the world homes to be built around a golf course in Hawaii, homes where the cost of the land by itself is well over $1 million per lot.

Bianco, the president of Hilltop Buildings, and Gary Cameron, owner of Bonanza Co.

in Reno, created a new company, Island Home Construction, which has been selected as a preferred builder for the Hokulia Oceanside project on the Big Island of Hawaii.

Whether it's storage barns or highestof- the-high-end homes, rules remain the same for the president of Hilltop Buildings.

"I'm really not in the construction business," he said.

"I'm in business.

I look for any opportunity, and then I go for it.

Most of the time, things come true."

They've come true repeatedly for Bianco since he purchased Hilltop Mini Barns a builder of backyard storage units.

Successful in that venture, the company got a contractor's license and began building garages.

The garage business was a stepping stone into residential remodeling work.

And from residential work, it wasn't a big leap for Hilltop Buildings to get into commercial construction work.

Among other jobs, it's building Kiva Juice stores throughout the Southwest, and Bianco hopes his firm will build 100 of the stores this year.

But it's Island Home that has much of the attention of Bianco as he works in an unpretentious office on Wrondel Way near the Park Lane Mall.

If things work out, he figures the residential work in Hawaii could total $150 million over the next 10 years.

Plus, it might provide a platform to move the company into luxury home construction throughout the world.

Bianco has been working three years to build the relationships he needed to undertake the Hawaiian work, starting with presentations to employees of Lyle Anderson, the developer of the community that will surround a golf course designed by Jack Nicklaus.

At the same time, he recognized that he needed plenty of local expertise and hired a veteran Hawaiian builder as the superintendent of Island Home.

That superintendent brings with him the knowledge of suppliers, subcontractors and local regulations that neither Bianco nor his staff of 30 could provide.

That move to surround himself with the best possible people is a lesson Bianco learned as a teen-ager working in a Reno grocery.

Certain that he someday would launch his own business, the teenaged grocery clerk asked for the philosophy of business from everyone he met.

Equally important, he said, was another lesson he learned as a teen and exercised at every important point in his business career: "Don't be afraid.

Pick up the phone.

Make the call."