Tutor Perini Building Corporation (TPBC) has a legacy of construction in Las Vegas and is responsible for much of the resort landscape you see today on the Strip. The national megaproject contractor plans to rebuild its presence in the Las Vegas marketplace, according to its new Vice President of Business Development, Chris Cosenza, who assumed this role five months ago. TPBC is actively pursuing new construction projects in Las Vegas again.
Q: What events and experiences
shaped your career?
A: I think first and foremost is my educational background. I am a Boston College graduate and Northeastern MBA. Education is all about opening your mind to critical thinking and problem solving, and my education provided a great foundation for my career in construction. Moving to Las Vegas also helped shape my career. I spent about twelve years here working for Ameristar Casinos and worked for the private equity group that acquired the Hard Rock hotel property and converted it to a Virgin Hotel. As a 25-plus-year resident of Las Vegas, I look forward to being part of TPBC’s team that is currently targeting to have an active role in future Las Vegas construction projects.
Q: Tell me about Tutor Perini
Corporation’s divisions and how
TPBC fits into the equation?
A: Tutor Perini Corporation is one of the largest civil, building, and specialty contractors in the United States, with operations throughout much of the country, particularly in California, the Northeast, the Midwest, and several southern states, as well as overseas in Guam and the Indo-Pacific region. The company has various wholly owned subsidiaries nationwide. One of Tutor Perini’s advantages is that we have resources most everywhere on the map. This allows us to open doors more than other contractors who are more locally or regionally focused. Our corporate headquarters in Los Angeles oversees most of the heavy civil work nationwide. TPBC is the company’s building division here in Las Vegas and we have a keen focus on hospitality, integrated resorts and tribal gaming projects. Currently, we have tribal casino projects underway in California and Oklahoma. We have a few small projects here in Las Vegas. Our reach is expansive, and we also have the capacity to self-perform much of the work we do.
Q: As head of Business
Development, what are your
key priorities in expanding TPBC’s
presence both locally and
nationwide?
A: When you have a company with such a long and proud legacy as Tutor Perini, it’s challenging to look at the past to determine how we can shape the future. For me, especially in the short term, it’s been an intensive process at the grass-roots level to reconnect with both former and prospective clients. Our ability to continue to build large, complex projects on time and on budget has never ceased, but the people we deal with may have changed. Part of the initial push in the short term involves reshaping our narrative and reestablishing TPBC’s stability once again.
Q: What is it about TPBC that
sets itself apart?
A: Tutor Perini Corporation is in the best financial shape it has ever been. We’ve had strong financial results this year, highlighted by record backlog and cash flow, and the Company has raised its 2025 EPS guidance for the past three consecutive quarters. We also have a high bonding capacity. To name a few key representative projects, we are doing the $1.18 billion Newark-Liberty International Airport AirTrain Replacement project and nearly $7 billion for two new borough-based jails in New York City (Manhattan and Brooklyn). The TPBC division alone has done $27 billion in construction projects dating back to the late 1990s. We just continue to consistently build large, complex projects on time and on budget. That’s what makes us attractive as a partner.
Q: What’s new in your division?
A: We have some new people in leadership positions at TPBC, including me. Mike Cherwin, who formerly ran the West Coast division for Yates Construction, joined TPBC several months ago as our new president. Mike has spent thirty years in construction, twenty of which have been in Las Vegas, and he is a great leader for what we’re trying to accomplish going forward. We’ve added a significant amount of bench strength to our pre-construction and estimating team — all locally based. I think it’s one of the best teams out there. We have never stopped building large successful projects.
Q: What are your plans for Las
Vegas?
A: In the short term, it’s a narrative shift. We have some of the brightest minds in the construction industry both at the corporate level and here in Las Vegas. There’s no project that is too big or complicated that we won’t look at. When I first started in this role, I told a local friend of mine who is a residential general contractor that I was going to work for Tutor Perini, and he said, “they’re still around?” I thought that was amusing, especially considering we are doing over $5 billion in annual revenue this year. It relates to where we are at with our national footprint right now. The light bulb went on for me. We have such a long legacy of building landmark projects in this town, which simply shifted to other markets.
Q: Where do you see TPBC over
the next five years?
A: Reestablish ourselves in the Las Vegas market as a go-to contractor for hospitality and casinos in addition to expanding our reach in tribal projects nationwide. We’re already one of the biggest builders of casino and tribal projects, and we would like to reinforce our legacy and build upon our reputation over the next five years.
Q: With such an impressive legacy
of building in Las Vegas, how do
you create your own?
A: Tutor Perini’s legacy in Las Vegas is one word — “remarkable.” At one point and for quite a while, we had a near monopoly on building major projects in this town. We built a lot of what you see today with the city’s most prized assets at every turn, including the Green Valley Ranch Resort, Red Rock Casino Resort, CityCenter (which included Aria, Vdara, the Waldorf Astoria, and the Shops at Crystals), The Cosmopolitan, Terminal 3 at Harry Reid International Airport, The Palms, the Wynn Encore, Trump Las Vegas, the Caesars Tower, Paris Las Vegas, Planet Hollywood, and on and on. We packed up from there, went to New York City and built major portions of Hudson Yards. You must always straddle the line between legacy’s past and growth forward. Our history of building here is a blessing, and it’s a reminder that we wouldn’t see the Vegas skyline today if it wasn’t for Tutor Perini. Having been in my new role for just a few months, I am seeing doors opening locally that were recently difficult to open due to our lack of focus on this incredible market. I do think it’s an exciting opportunity to reinforce the values and principles we have as a company and grow with the next generation of builders. We also have new management in place this year at Tutor Perini, with Gary Smalley as our CEO and President, who is very supportive of refocusing new attention to regain a foothold in this attractive market.
Q: What trends do you see
impacting general contractors,
today?
A: Given all the major infrastructure projects going on across various end markets, including other hot markets like data centers and energy, the availability of skilled labor has been a challenge for many of our competitors, but has not been for us. There’s also a lot of noise about tariffs and fluctuating prices. That could create some short-term challenges because the price today may be different from the price tomorrow, but those tend to be more fleeting and are mitigated through various measures that we take on all our large projects. It’s all going to come back to skilled labor; the contractors who can tap into a continuous skilled labor pool will be the ones who will excel. and as a large company with excellent relationships with the various labor unions, we tend to be better able to secure that skilled labor pool because we offer the opportunity to work on larger, longer-term, and higher profile projects.
Q: What do you love about Vegas?
A: This is a nice hub and spoke for travel whether you want to go skiing to Utah or Colorado or run to the beach in San Diego or Orange County. I love the sense of community here in Las Vegas. That’s a weird comment to make about Vegas for sure, but for a town known for its hedonism and transient nature, the sense of community here is pretty exceptional. I have many construction industry friends here and, while we’re all playing in the same sandbox, we still want to see each other succeed for the betterment of the city. This goes back to that comment about “community.” You just seem to be two degrees of separation from everyone here in Las Vegas. You don’t see that in a lot of other major cities.
