Thirty-two years after its founding, Dallas-based Pavestone Co. LLC has quietly been sold by businessman Robert Schlegel to the Quikrete companies, a big, family-owned manufacturer of packaged concrete out of Atlanta. Under the deal, which closed last month for an undisclosed sum, Quikrete gets Pavestone’s 22 U.S. manufacturing plants and about 1,100 employees. The corporate headquarters including finance functions will move from here to Atlanta, though Pavestone’s other local operations will remain. At its height around 2007, Pavestone had revenue topping $360 million.
Pavestone and the Canadian-born Schlegel took a roundabout route to the Quikrete buy. In 2008 the Federal Trade Commission blocked Pavestone’s proposed sale to another Atlanta company called Oldcastle Architectural, on antitrust grounds. Two years later Schlegel sold half of Pavestone to Oklahoma Publishing Co., which in turn was snapped up last year by an outfit controlled by Colorado billionaire Philip Anschutz. When the Anschutz deal happened Schlegel says he exercised his “right of first refusal” and bought back Oklahoma Publishing’s half of Pavestone, giving him 100 percent ownership again. Asked what he’ll do now, Schlegel says he retained one $20 million division of the company — something called Bedrock Logistics — and will concentrate on growing that.
