For young entrepreneur, things are looking up after Sandy

The Jersey Shore is going to look different to those who have been away all winter, at least in one respect: house elevations. Andrew Baumgardner, 22, was at school in Virginia when Hurricane Sandy hit his hometown of Longport. He was playing football on a scholarship at James Madison University.

The storm changed his life. After coming home for Thanksgiving, the college sophomore began to make plans to start his own company. The child of two entrepreneurs, Baumgardner quit the team, dropped out of college, and started Baumgardner House Lifting.

From one distinctive bright-blue truck and a handful of employees, he now has close to 50 employees, 20 trucks, and houses up in the air from Moonachie to Margate. The business has taken off as New Jersey has been releasing grant money at a faster and faster rate. (Currently, says Lisa Ryan of the state Department of Community Affairs, 468 elevations have been completed, and 3,970 are in progress through the state's Sandy grant program. About $10 million a week is being disbursed.)

Baumgardner's also looking toward New York, whose program has only just begun. And he's 70 pounds lighter than he was as an offensive lineman.

Q: Did you immediately leave school to do this?

Once I made up my mind, I made up my mind. I had a conversation with the coaches, told them I was going to be a house-lifter. The first thing I did was drop 40, 50 pounds. I'm not naturally that big anyway. It was like force-feeding myself. Seriously, they made us eat six peanut butter and jellies a day on top of all your free meals.

Q: Did the coaches understand?

House-lifting - who really understands house-lifting? They understood Hurricane Sandy. I was going to be a starter. I was on full ride. It wasn't easy to walk away from.

Q: What did your parents think?

My father's always been in commercial construction in this area. My mom's been in glazing, glass installation. They're both entrepreneurs. I just decided to go off and start my own venture. They weren't happy at first.

Q: What made you take the plunge?

I saw the program starting to build and all the money that was being allocated toward elevation. It's been a roller-coaster ride, almost getting in business with guys who would have steered me in the wrong direction. But I hooked up with the right guys, who have done it all over the country, Virginia, Louisiana, California.

I put an ad in the Mover, the house-moving magazine, because I didn't really know where to find these guys.

Q: There's a house-moving magazine?

Yeah. I put in an ad: Operators Wanted.

Q: Will people be surprised at how the towns look?

When they come back, they're going to see neighbors and all their friends six feet above them.

Q: Is it mostly year-round residents that you're doing? Because they're the ones getting the funding?

We've been working with secondary-home owners to get their houses above base flood elevation because insurance is increasing at a greater pace than [for] primary residents.

So when they come back, their neighbors are up, and their own insurance bills are higher.

Q: How many houses are you working on right now?

We probably have 50 or 60 houses in the air, all throughout state.

Q: Has it been at that pace for a while?

At least for the past six months. It's ramped up. They're not assigning contractors anymore. They're just distributing funds to homeowners. It's really breaking loose. There's a lot of political pressure on the governor to get the funding out. It was a very structured program, too much bureaucracy, and it took too long. So they just scrapped the whole thing and just sent money out.

This one is actually one of my baseball coaches, his son. Chris Provenzano, he's a state cop. His father was "Coach Pro." This is Coach Pro's son's house.

Q: Was there a moment when this all hit you, this is what needs to be done?

When I came back from Thanksgiving break. They didn't make as big a deal of Hurricane Sandy in Virginia. I knew that everybody was safe. I didn't expect there to be a whole lot. I've lived through hurricanes my whole life. They're always hyped up.

For me to come back almost a month after Hurricane Sandy, and see sand and debris all over the place, I was shocked.

My first trip up north wasn't until months later. By up north, I mean the Seaside Heights area, which got severely damaged by the wave action. You go back there today, and there are still homes off their foundations.

Q: I never even knew what these towns were before Sandy. Ortley, what is that?

Exactly. I just figured it all as North Jersey. Now, we have jobs an hour and a half past that.

Q: Who are you hiring? Are they carpenters, people laid off from casinos?

A lot of local guys just looking for jobs. This area's been hurting in construction for five, six years.

Q: You've got to feel good about that.

It's good to be able to hire local guys. It's state funding, it should stay within the state. It's been lucrative, but I'm still reinvesting. I don't collect any money, just keep putting it back in the business, trying to grow something. Buy more trucks.

Q: How long do you see this lasting?

There's going to be elevations going on forever in New Jersey because of the increase in the flood maps. At this volume, another couple of years.

Q: Wouldn't you rather be spending the summer on the beach?

I don't mind it. I played football, I never had the opportunity to be a lifeguard. [Editor's note: One summer, he worked as a "bouncer" for Margate Beach Tag checkers.]

I told my dad right off the bat: I'm not hiring my friends, they'll just sit around and mooch. But I've hired quite a few, and it's been awesome. They want to see the company do well.

Q: What about college?

I haven't had time to think about it. I remember thinking on the five-hour rides home with my dad, I would learn more during those rides than all semester long in class.

Q: So "Baumgardner blue" - did you pick the color?

I let my family pick it. When I first saw it, I thought, oh my God, I'm really going to drive a truck that color? But it stuck. We painted our beams, our cribbing. Some guys use Christmas-color cribbing. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

(Interview condensed and edited.)