PAUL JENKINS SR. with his son, Paul Jenkins Jr. The Jenkins run one of the biggest contract companies in Detroit.
Paul Jenkins Jr. didn’t dream he would end up running a construction company with his father. That wasn’t his plan; he wanted a shot at the NBA.

“I went to school on a basketball scholarship,” he said.

Remnants of those days are dispersed throughout his office. There is a jersey encased in glass, some signed memorabilia, and pictures of his daughter, Nadia, beaming happily from a picture frame.

Jenkins pulled both arms and a wrist in a game during his sophomore year, so he earned his degree in marketing at Spring Arbor University.

The perception, he says, is that if your father owns a company, you come out of college and start working the family business. For Jenkins, the opposite happened.

“He said: ‘What I want you to do is go run your own business, and if it works for you, great, if it doesn’t, you’ve got this,’” Jenkins said. “’I don’t want to you to come here with a safety net.’”

For 12 years he built his business, an entertainment, marketing and promotion company. Impressed, his father asked him if he wanted to come back to Detroit to work for MIG Detroit. He joined him in 2005.

“I was real happy to come back,” Jenkins said. “I loved seeing my dad every day. My dad worked hard all my life, but we didn’t see him a lot, so this gave me a great opportunity to make up for that lost time. This job has been a life changing experience.”

MIG is the general contractor for the Motor City Casino development, which is the largest awarded construction contract ever given to a 100 percent minority owned contractor in the entertainment/gaming sector by a private investor in the United States.

“The great part about this job is it seems like everybody’s having fun, everybody’s on the same page,” he said. “It makes the job a lot smoother.”

The project, started in 2005, has seen two Michigan winters. But the biggest challenge was working while casino business continued. Staying hidden was tough when there was little else but a wall separating them from casino-goers.

“They still have $1 million a day that they have to keep making,” Jenkins said. “That was like a big puzzle. We are pretty much the only ones on the job site excluding our sub-contractors.

“We had to deal with over 40 casino directors. Every part of that casino has a different director who needs to be satisfied. That was challenging. It becomes a challenge to get everybody on the same page at the same time. It’s been a great puzzle. Every day we sit down and a devise a game plan as to how we can beat the schedule and keep people happy.”

The four-phase project included expansion of the casino (100,000 square feet of new gaming space), a new hotel, and the addition of 933 parking spaces. The final phase is renovating the convention, theater and restaurant space.

“It’s been fun,” Jenkins said. “We dreamed of a job like this years ago.”

MIG Detroit is 100 percent minority owned, but that’s just one facet of the company.

“We’re just a qualified contractor that happens to be minority,” he said.

“Hopefully in the future, we’d like to prove we’re just a great contractor.

We’re not trying to put any kind of status symbol (on the company). I think we proved ourselves. My dad’s put his heart and soul into this town. He’s one of the few contractors out there who has never been sued by anybody.”

Jenkins recently launched Paul Jenkins Jr. Foundation, a non-profit organization. Its purpose is to support and contribute to other non-profit organizations whose mission it is to “protect and nurture our children and youth by providing shelter, educational and scholarship opportunities and the resources needed to achieve stability and long-term sufficiency.”

“As a father and a successful young business person, I realized that my thirty-something peers and I must dedicate time, love and resources to the children of metro Detroit, just as we do with our own,” he said.

“There are kids in our city without even the basics of clothes, beds or enough to eat. That is just heartbreaking and unacceptable.”

The goal of MIG and Jenkins is to continue giving back to the community.

“I tell my dad it’s great for us to tear the world up and rebuild these buildings, but if we’re not giving, we’re not living,” Jenkins said.

“If we’re not helping the communities that we help to rebuild construction-wise, then we’re not doing anything. All the money in the world doesn’t make a difference if you’re not reaching out to help someone.”

For more information on the Paul Jenkins Jr. Foundation, call 313.964.3155 or visit www.pauljenkinsjrfoundation.com.