Workers erecting steel products. Photos provided.
By Elliott Brack
Editor and Publisher, GwinnettForum
DEC. 8, 2023 | A Lilburn firm which began in 1983, now has a second generation guiding its operations. The company is Porter Steel Company, which has expanded greatly and now has 90 employees erecting steel and making steel products for clients across the Southeast.
Lowe Porter began the firm in Atlanta. His son, Coleman (Cole) Porter, 36, is president and CEO of the firm, today. The first person in the family working with steel was Cole’s grandfather on his mother’s side.
Cole’s father got into business by having a truck and welding machine. Cole says: “His first job was a friend needing a driveway pad. Pretty soon he had plenty of work, and incorporated in DeKalb County in 1987. A few years later, my dad hired two employees. The first one was Ferdell James, a Jamaican, who still works with us today as one of the lead men in the field. We now have employees from at least 20 countries.”
Later Porter Steel had a site in Norcross, then moved in the early 90s to Lilburn off Arcado Road. Cole joined the business in 2017, and purchased the business in 2023 from his father, now retired near Tampa.
Cole Porter
The company’s speciality is to fabricate and erect structural steel and miscellaneous metals into construction products. The company often serves as a general contractor for other structural fabricators.
Their largest job ever was working with the film company Assembly Studios in Doraville at the site of the former General Motors assembly plant. “We worked on many, many buildings at that site, in over 20 months, putting in all the stairs and rails on the whole site.”
Nearly all of Porter’s Steel work is won by bids. “While this is important in our work, our real strength is in relationships with other companies. Our history helps us grow.”
The company’s history in Atlanta is extensive. Porter recognizes: “Over the years, our company must have worked on every block in Atlanta, on big projects, and small ones. We’ve done work for military installations, and dozens of headquarters facilities. We’ve got many customers in multiple cities, as we do fabricating work around the Southeast.”
Two major projects are now underway in Nashville, Tenn., at Vanderbilt University. “We’re working on a big project at the Vanderbilt Medical Center, and also are doing work on the football stadium there.”
One of Porter Steel’s many installations
Porter recently learned that one project he worked on, for Atlas Restaurant at the St. Regis Hotel in Atlanta, won recognition recently. “It got a Michelin star as one of the best restaurants in Atlanta. We did the steel glass roof structure over the outdoor area at that restaurant.”
Cole Porter was born in Decatur, and now lives just over the Gwinnett line in Walton County. He and his wife, Kaitlyn, have three children, ages 8, 7 and 4. They attend Calvary Chapel Church in Stone Mountain.
A graduate of the University of Georgia, he majored in liberal arts, with a heavy concentration in Spanish. He also got immersed in Spanish while younger, making 6-7 mission trips to Mexico over several years, and visiting a friend there several times, becoming fluent in Spanish. “This helps me today, as we have lots of our workers speak Spanish.”
Besides his work, Porter is president of the Duluth Rotary Club, and on the board of the Gwinnett Chamber of Commerce.
One of Cole Porter’s goals is to serve firms throughout the Southeast. “While we have served Atlanta historically, now our goal over the next two to five years is to serve the entire Southeast.”
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