EVANSVILLE BUSINESS JOURNAL

Laurel Jones, project engineer, Skanska

Zach Evans
Courier & Press

Laurel Jones isn't originally from Evansville, but she's hand in improving it in the last decade.

Laurel Jones

For Jones, 34, it's nice to see the city she grew to love grow.

"I love to see Evansville growing. Even just the new restaurants down there and the focus the city is paying to Downtown," she said.

Jones is a project engineer with Skanska, an international company with an office in Evansville.

Jones has been a part of several major industrial developments, including Duke Energy's Coal Classification Plant in Edwardsport, $9 million  worth of updates to the Marathon Petroleum Company in Robinson, Illinois and she was an estimator for the $1 million in renovations to the Innovation Pointe building at 318 Main St.

Her current project is the Multi-Institutional Academic Health Science & Research Center -- otherwise known as the Downtown medical school. The project will house medical education programs for Indiana University, University of Evansville and University of Southern Indiana, and it's one of the main centerpieces to local government's plan for Downtown development. The project is expected to be completed in spring 2018.

She keeps plenty busy away from work, too, with three active children and a side business with her husband.

Her kids, ages 10, 8 and 6, all have extracurricular activities every season of the year, from baseball, football, soccer, dancing and tumbling.

She and her husband also own and operate Bounce to the Top, an inflatable bounce house rental company.

The business launched around the birth of their youngest child six years ago. They started with ten inflatable bounce houses and now have 30, she said.

She's not the only one in the family with a lead role in redeveloping the city.

Her husband, Jeff Jones, works for Ragle Construction, which is the company that completed the Lloyd Expressway and U.S. 41 interchange project. Currently, Jeff is the general foreman for the North Main Street streetscape project. The two have a wealth of experience in construction management, but don't expect the two to split off and form their own company anytime soon.

"It's nice knowing there's a reliable paycheck coming from someone else," she said with a laugh. Plus, she really likes working for Skanska, she said.

She's also involved in helping the community grow outside her day job.

She was the chairperson for Keep Evansville Beautiful for the last two years, and was a part of the fundraising and construction of the welcome wall and sculpture at the Evansville Airport and a mural on U.S. 41 south.

She graduated Leadership Evansville last year and is now a board member of the organization.

Originally from Wisconsin, she received her degree in construction management from the Milwaukee School of Engineering. She moved to Evansville 11 years ago.  She was quickly attracted to the Riverfront, because it reminded her of home on Lake Michigan.

More than a decade later, it's still about Downtown for Jones.

"I'm really enjoying to the attention being given to Downtown," she said.