Custom builder shifts mission to stay ahead of market

Brian Haag once changed his business model from mega-mansions to massive communities. Now Windward Construction builds on years of knowledge — but on a smaller scale.

By Andrew Warfield
| 6:00 a.m. July 19, 2019
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JimJett.com. Brian Haag built Windward Construction on experience of building custom mansions and massive communities. Now the boutique custom builder focuses on core values taught by his father: Do it right, and be imaginative.

Strategies

During the peak of the home construction boom of the early 2000s, Brian Haag and his company, Gulfstream Development Group of Cape Coral, was building as many as 1,000 homes a year in Southwest Florida. A 55-year-old, second-generation homebuilder, he had transitioned the company from one that built some of the first mega-mansions in the Fort Myers area into one that addressed the needs of a rapidly growing market.

One recession, one major hurricane and one flirtation with marina ownership later, the Cape Coral native again reinvented himself in 2012 as Windward Construction, a Cape Coral-based boutique, custom and semi-custom homebuilder.