Valenti Builders

Valenti is a Chicago construction management and general contracting firm that builds its practice around client advocacy, running projects as the owner’s representative through preconstruction and delivery. The firm works across residential, commercial and institutional work in the Chicago metropolitan area, including North Shore communities where downtown-grade density meets suburban approvals. Valenti is the contractor on The Legacy, the downtown Evanston residential tower developed by Horizon Realty Group that broke ground in April 2026, with Pappageorge Haymes as design architect and Myefski Architects as architect of record. That project sits in a market where contractor competition has improved even as material prices settled at a higher level than developers underwrote several years ago.

In 1938 a 23-year-old named Joseph Valenti built a house on Roscoe Street and sold it for 7,170 dollars. That transaction is where the company dates itself from, and the family has run it ever since. Mark and Dan Valenti are the third generation.

The intervening decades read as a tour of Chicago institutional work. The 1970s brought projects for the Chicago Tribune, Loyola Academy and the Archdiocese of Chicago. The 1980s were an office decade, with more than a million square feet built for clients including Hamilton Partners and Trammell Crow. More recent names include Northern Trust, Wintrust, The Merion and Loyola University Chicago, where the firm worked on the Madonna della Strada Chapel.

The service list spans due diligence, preconstruction, design-build covering mechanical, electrical, plumbing and fire protection, new construction, major renovation, commercial interiors, and construction management under both agency and at-risk arrangements. Sectors run to automotive, education, faith, healthcare, hospitality, industrial, multifamily, office, retail and senior living.

Three figures the firm publishes are worth more than the sector list. Nearly two million square feet has been delivered under LEED rating systems, up to Gold, with LEED Accredited Professionals on staff including the chief executive. The experience modification rating is 0.81, which the company states is the lowest attainable for a contractor of its size, and being derived from claims history rather than self-reported it is a hard number to argue with. And 45 percent of the professional staff are women, a proportion well outside the industry norm.

On the technical side the office runs virtual design and construction, building information modelling and reality capture by laser scanning in-house rather than subcontracting it, which matters most on renovation work where existing conditions rarely match the drawings.

The office is at 609 West Randolph Street, fifth floor.