605.336.1180
Innovative Solutions Since 1915
Gage Brothers Concrete Products traces its roots back to 1915, when William Gage and Harold Gabel began pouring concrete sidewalks in Sioux Falls. SD. The childhood friends and former Washington High School classmates started their business with just a handful of employees.
Operations resided at the former Gage family homestead on what is now 12th Street in Sioux Falls. At one time, the Gage property also had a gravel pit and small stock dam where workers could fish.
Albert and William Gage, Jr. followed in their father’s footsteps after serving with the US Army during World War II. Gage Brothers Concrete was incorporated in 1946 and the siblings purchased the industry standard at the time – the Besser “3-at-a-time” cam-driven block machine—to increase block production at the West 12th Street facility. This purchase, along with the work of a Frenchman across the pond and a piece of post-war legislation, helped to lead Gage Brothers down the path it is best known for today.
Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, French structural and civil engineer Eugène Freyssinet successfully developed and patented pre-stressed concrete—i.e., concrete that is embedded with steel wire under tension, greatly strengthening the concrete member. Then on June 29, 1956, President Dwight Eisenhower signed the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956. The bill created a 41,000-mile “National System of Interstate and Defense Highways” that would, according to Eisenhower, eliminate unsafe roads, inefficient routes, traffic jams and all of the other things that got in the way of “speedy, safe transcontinental travel.”
The company’s product line continued to grow. In the early 60s, Gage Brothers entered the corefloor market after trading their corporate airplane for one of the first corefloor machines available in the United States. The company concurrently began to produce precast double-tees and architectural precast and the business quickly grew beyond the Sioux Falls city limits. The addition of architectural precast allowed Gage Brothers to expand their footprint into the Minneapolis and St. Paul markets. One of the first high profile projects for Gage Brothers came in late 1966 when they were awarded the Met Center in Bloomington, Minn. — best known as the home of the Minnesota North Stars.
Tom, Fred and Al Gage, Jr., were the third generation of the Gage family to run the company. Gage Brothers continued to refine its engineering and enhance equipment throughout the 1970s and 1980s in order to expand capabilities and the markets they served. The company was the first in the region to manufacture both burnished block and polished precast. In 2007, Gage Brothers’ decades of hard work, experience, and enterprise culminated in being awarded one of the most prestigious projects in company history: Target Field, home of the Minnesota Twins. And two and a half years and more than 900 individual pieces of concrete later, ESPN the Magazine named Target Field the “Best Stadium in North America.” Gage Brothers was manufacturing precast products for TCF Bank Stadium around the same time, and these two large stadium builds allowed Gage Brothers to weather the Great Recession much better than others in the construction industry.
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Tom Kelley took the reins of Gage Brothers in 2001 and was the longest serving president in company history. In 2007, Gage Brothers began to transition from a family-owned to an employee-owned business through the implementation of an employee stock ownership plan.
Gage Brothers has worked on countless high-profile projects, including the Sanford Fargo Medical Center, Avera on Louise Health Campus, Jackrabbit Grove, Minnesota Senate Building, Kinnick Stadium and several high-rise buildings that dot the Twin Cities landscape, including 333 Hennepin, Eleven and the Nic on Fifth.
In 2017, Gage Brothers announced the construction of a new 200,000 square-foot, $40 million plant in northeast Sioux Falls, featuring a multi-million-dollar investment in state-of-the-art technology rarely used in the manufacture of precast concrete in the United States. The company relocated all operations to its new home in 2019.
Gage Brothers continues to take pride in their employees and the quality of their products. Evolving from blocks and sidewalks, Gage Brothers now has an innovative product line that includes polished and burnished concrete, CarbonCast Enclosure Systems , thin brick and stone clad systems, E/R Post System, and its latest offering – Ultra High Performance Concrete or UHPC.
