Dom DiMare - BEI Construction

Dom DiMare is the CEO of BEI Construction.

Host Scott Piehler talks with Dom about BEI’s work in solar, wind, and battery storage technology. Additionally, the conversation addresses BEI’s dedication to teaching, through internships, apprenticeships, and hands on instruction for professionals, as well as for high school students looking to explore the building trades.

Show note: This episode originally aired on KCSM-HD2 on Sunday, July 26, 2026

Full show archive for all past episodes: 

https://www.youtube.com/@TheAlamedaConnection

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:05

Good morning, and welcome to the Alameda Connection on KCSM HD2. I'm your host, Scott Peeler. For a comparatively small city, Alameda has some comparatively large, impressive employers. Semi-Freddy's Bakery makes all their bread right here in Alameda. Pete's Coffee is roasted on Bay Farm. Pharmaceutical giant Abbott Labs has a large presence here. Here on the Alameda Connection, we've introduced you to some cutting-edge Blue Tech companies like Deep Ocean Exploration and Research and the folks at Nattel Energy. These days, there's a lot of talk about green tech and renewable energy. You might not know it, but for more than 35 years, first from Clement Avenue and currently from an unassuming office in Marina Village, one Alameda Company is responsible for large projects in the field of solar energy, wind power, battery storage, and more. My guest today is Tom Damari, the CEO of Alameda's BEI construction. Founded in 1988, BEI quickly realized the potential of renewable energy sources and the importance of technology infrastructure. From critical life-saving data networks and hospitals to wind turbines powering an entire vineyard to solar canopies that provide shade for school parking lots and a way for that school to dramatically reduce their energy budget, BEI has been at the forefront for quite some time. Additionally, BEI is addressing the problem of filling positions in the trades, from internships to apprenticeships to working with high schools to give students hands-on experience in projects like building ADUs. Thanks to these programs, BEI is ensuring that the next generation has a clear path to filling the much-needed roles in our trades. That's today's guest, Dom D'Amari, CEO of BEI Construction. This morning, right here on the Alameda Connection on KCSM HD2. Well, good morning, Dom, and welcome to the Alameda Connection. Good morning, Scott. Thanks for having us. Oh, my pleasure. First of all, congratulations on the recent ascension to CEO.

SPEAKER_02 2:16

Thank you very much. It's been uh almost two years of a lot of fun, a lot of innovation, and working with a lot of great people at BEI.

SPEAKER_01 2:23

So let's uh get a little background on you.

SPEAKER_02 2:25

Where were you born? Where'd you grow up? I was born in San Francisco, grew up in Marin County, went to Marin Catholic High School, shortly after that, went to College Marin, realized school wasn't really for me, so ended up going to College of Marin for a little bit longer, decided to go and become an electrician. So were you working as a retail electrician or a commercial electrician? Went to the apprenticeship program, four-year apprenticeship program in local union IBEW551, worked in commercial, industrial, and residential.

SPEAKER_01 2:50

So let's talk a little bit about the company history of BEI. I started in 1988. How did the company get started?

SPEAKER_02 2:56

Dave Rantz and Mike Rantz started a small construction company doing mainly some public works and little offshoot projects that came along. And in 2003, the solar just started taking off. Okay. And that's when I came over to start a pretty robust electrical division. And we got a project down in the desert for an avocado farm to irrigate via solar. At that time, a large project in 2003 was 225 KW. Now, as we get through this today, you'll understand that that wasn't large at the time. Successfully built it and we found a niche in solar at that time. Shortly after that, we started to do more industrial projects because solar was just taking off a little bit. And at the time, BEI was also affiliated with Blindmeyer Engineers, a longtime Alameda-based company as well. These designs are coming up for school canopies and things like that. And 2007, I think we did our first school canopy down at San Jose Unified School District. So, and and from there it just goes on. What were you doing before you came to BEI? I was uh vice president of IDEX Global Services, which is an electrical contractor out of San Francisco. They have offices in Texas and Colorado, and I started up their electrical department there.

SPEAKER_01 4:01

What led you to BEI? Did they reach out to you? Did you look at what they were doing and say, hmm, seems like something to do? BEI had a client called The Gap. And they were The clothing company?

SPEAKER_02 4:10

Yeah, the clothing company. Okay. Banana Republic. Yeah, you know, and so they had a project on two Folsom in San Francisco, and they had to be a union contractor at the time. BEI was not union at the time. Okay. They reached out to us at IDEX, and I went and met Dave Rantz. We performed with the UPS project there and did the permit. And Dave said, Hey, I'm looking for someone to help me run an electrical company. Would you mind coming over and helping out? And that's how I've been there for 20-something years now.

SPEAKER_01 4:33

Are there local projects in the Bay Area that folks would know that they can go look at and say, Oh, that's what you do?

SPEAKER_02 4:40

Locally, we have done quite a few canopy projects, solar canopy projects. Merritt College is a great example. If you go up to Merritt College, Pete's Coffee here in Alameda, we moved Pete's Coffee from Berkeley to Alameda. We were the construction manager, project manager, and electrical contractor on that project. Outside of that, Project Nexus is probably one of our biggest ones. Interesting, exciting, innovative. Solar canopies over the canal to prevent evaporation from the Turlock irrigation district. But it's the entire canal that goes from Northern California to Southern California that brings water to them. And so we we did an RD for the state to see how it would work. So we built two, one large canopy and one small canopy, and it was super successful. Look forward to hundreds of miles of this.

SPEAKER_01 5:19

How much is up now and is more coming?

SPEAKER_02 5:21

There's only there's I think 800 KW, which is fairly small, and a 250 KW, which is fairly small. As an RD, we hope there's more coming, but uh you know, financially it it's pretty expensive to do as well.

SPEAKER_01 5:32

So just to put it in terms for people in the audience, when you talk about kilowatts or how much does it take to run, say, a city block or a city? Just something people can relate to numbers to?

SPEAKER_02 5:42

A city block of homes, I would say a megawatt would would take care of that, one megawatt. With schools, we do 800, 200, depending on if it's grammar school or high school. What it does do is it really supports the operating fund for the school. On the operating fund, meaning PGE bills, which which saves teachers jobs.

SPEAKER_01 5:59

Twenty-three years with one company is the exception these days.

SPEAKER_02 6:03

What keeps you there? The biggest thing is how the company was brought forth to me. It's a family-owned company, even though we've we've gotten larger, we still run it like a family-oriented company. Uh, we have very little attrition from our employees. We take care of employees. What drove me there is the same thing that we keep our employees there now. It's just we care about our folks. Mike and Dave cared about myself. So it just it kept me there. And the long-term goal was to be a lot more innovative in technology for solar, battery energy storage, wind, which has really put a footprint for BEI. Not only a footprint, but a stamp on what we stand for at the company.

SPEAKER_01 6:34

For the lay person, a lot of your website talks about low voltage. Let just explain the difference there.

SPEAKER_02 6:40

So standard electrical, you turn your light switch on and the light comes on. Right. That's electrical work. For the lay person, you go plug your computer in, that's cat five cabling, that's low voltage. So it has to do with fiber, cat five cabling, security, AV. So that's all of our low voltage department. And typically that means under 300 volts. Technology infrastructure, whether you want to do OSP outside plant cable and tie a building together with fiber all the way down to security systems in your building.

SPEAKER_01 7:05

What's a project that you've been involved in that just makes you say, that was cool and that was worth getting out of bed in the morning for?

SPEAKER_02 7:13

We did a wind turbine, our first wind turbine down at Scheide Vineyard, and it was a single 1.8 megawatt turbine. We had never done one before. I was super intrigued with it. I did the estimate, I did everything and ran the project as a project manager. And when they erected that wind turbine and we were able to go inside the turbine and climb up and see what goes, it was absolutely incredible to see that that work. And to know that Scheide took a little bit of their vineyard away, a small footprint to be able to produce 1.8 megawatts that ran their whole facility off one single turbine. Oh wow. Then we continued to do Dole, which we built two three megawatt turbines at Dole for their processing of not pineapple there, but it was uh it was salad, mainly salads out there in Salinas Valley. So on the first turbine project, do you get any wine out of the deal? They offered me wine, but I did not get any. I would have liked to, but that's pretty uh world-renowned wine. I think they're known for their Pinot's there.

SPEAKER_01 8:01

Okay. Very good. The trades. Out here in you know, the tech center of the universe, we get a little blinded. Everybody wants the tech job and whatnot. And I had the president of the College of Alameda on, and she's got people coming out of the automotive and aviation mechanics department, and they're walking into $85,000, $90,000 jobs out of a two-year school. What are entry-level people in trades like construction walking into?

SPEAKER_02 8:25

We're lacking tradespeople because everybody went to high school, wanted to go to a four-year college, regardless if it's tech or wherever else in the industry. For us, we have a downturn in it right now. Okay. It's getting harder and harder to get in the electrical union or into the trades because now the focus has been shifted to that. It's a five-year program for electrical now. Okay. They're getting paid to work for a company like BEI and then go to school. Some locals are two days a week, some are a week straight. To get in the trade now is very sought after, and I think we need more folks, especially with data centers and AI and things of that nature going in. I think it's a it's a very, very good place for people who really aren't sure if school's right for them.

SPEAKER_01 9:01

I was gonna say, what would you say to that parent who's got that kid? And like, I don't know if I'm gonna send this kid to this is what getting your hands dirty can do for your kid.

SPEAKER_02 9:09

You graduate from an accredited apprenticeship program, depending on but local, you you can make anywhere from $150,000 to $200,000 a year. But to tell a parent, I would say, first of all, we offer a CECW program, which is like an kind of like an internship for college school, and they and when they're young, they're not sure what they want to do with their lives. Right. So we give them this program, they get paid you know a little bit of money and they they see if they really like it or not. And it's an entry level, anybody can get into it. You can go sign to your local union 595, which is Alameda's. You can go sign there as a CECW, go to work for somebody, maybe in a prefab shop or maybe out in the field, and see if you really like it before you really commit to a four or five year program.

SPEAKER_01 9:44

Do we still have a severe shortage of tradespeople?

SPEAKER_02 9:46

Yes, yes, we do. And there's more retiring than coming in.

SPEAKER_01 9:49

So we're kind of losing a brain trust?

SPEAKER_02 9:50

Starting to, but we're starting to see a little bit of an uptick. A lot of the local unions are were hesitant. Well, obviously there was no classes during COVID for two years. There was no classes, so there's that. And now they're hesitant to hire too many apprentices because they want to make sure the apprentices are working all the time. So I think the last I heard there was 300 that applied for local 551 and they took took only 60. What makes a good BEI employee? The majority of our employees have been with BEI a long time and they care about BEI. On Wednesdays, I go and and I make phone calls to a lot of the foreman superintendents. It's a direct connection with obviously myself as a CEO. My door's always open. I'm not one of those people that would want to sit outside and wait for them to come talk to me. I always go reach out to them and talk to them quite a bit. So I think in general, they love working at BEI. Why Alameda? Well, we originally started on Clement Street in Alameda. Okay. Blanmeyer Engineers. We started there, and as we grew, we left and went to Marina Village Parkway. But we had opportunities to maybe go to American Canyon or maybe go to um, we talked about Modesta. We talked about moving to office in San Francisco. At the time, Mike Rantz, our CEO, and Dave, his brother, decided Alameda is where most of our folks live, and it's centrally located where we can go anywhere we want. We can get on the five, we can go down to San Jose, we can go up north from here.

SPEAKER_01 11:02

So no reason to leave. No reason to leave. Let's talk a little bit about interns, apprentices, and uh high school students. So starting out with internships. What does BEI offer in terms of internships? Who's eligible? What does the program look like?

SPEAKER_02 11:15

We launched our program in 2024, our intern program in 2024. NECA, National Electrical Contractors Association, offers intern money, almost like a scholarship for us to hire interns. We've brought people in for accounting, project engineering, not really a whole lot of field stuff because they got to be affiliated with the union. So it's mainly the office setting, HR, IT department, marketing. I think this year we have four or five in the interim department right now. It's a lot of fun to have the have those people in there and they're really excited. I go and talk to them in the morning when they're having their coffee and their eyes are wide open. So it's pretty neat to see those folks.

SPEAKER_01 11:47

Apprenticeships, that's more a path of someone who's starting out a career. How does that work?

SPEAKER_02 11:53

So you go and apply, apply to local union, they give one or two classes a year. You take a small test, you have to have a high school diploma or GE, you have to have a minimum of high school algebra. And then once you make the minimum requirements, you take a test. If you pass a test with a 70% or better, you get put on a list. And based on how you scored on the list, they'll call you in for an interview. And there'll be folks like myself there in the interview asking questions. Depending on how you did in the interview, the list now gets shortened. They'll say, Congratulations, you made the program, and then you'll go to work for someone like us and go to school. And what would a a new apprentice expect to be doing? Uh for us, I can speak specifically about BEI depending on what crews they're working for. They could be digging ditches, they can be cleaning conduit, they could be prefabbing a project, learning all the parts and pieces, and then getting lift certified and going on lifts and working under canopies and things like that.

SPEAKER_01 12:40

You've got a program going on with one of the area high schools where you've got students hands-on building ADUs.

SPEAKER_02 12:47

We donated the material for a program at Center Phil High School. Gave them all the material, the instructor. The school couldn't afford the material to build the ADU. So we went in there and support them with material. I've also done some instruction at East Side Elementary School or high school district in San Jose, talking to kids about getting in the union. Did some hands-on solar modeling with them and things like that. So we've done quite a few trying to get people back in the trade is what our biggest effort is because as I said earlier, there's a decline there. We'd like to support the local community and the schools. As much as we can give back is good for everybody. What kind of reaction are you seeing from the kids? Some are it's an easy way out, don't have to go to school anymore. Okay. I mean, in full honesty. Others are really excited about it, and some are I want to go to college and live the college life. Right. A lot of them will go to a four-year college and then come back and want to get in the trade, which is fine. And then a lot of them will be end up in as a project manager, as a senior project manager, as a superintendent, as a general foreman. There's a lot of room for growth in this industry if people would embrace it.

SPEAKER_01 13:42

One of my personal soapboxes is what to me academia did to the trades and kind of looking down their nose at it, my my running joke is no one has ever woken up at two o'clock in the morning and say, My goodness, I need an English literature major now.

unknown 13:57

That's right.

SPEAKER_01 13:58

No, no. Ceramics degree. Yeah, I mean, I'm I'm happy to discuss comparative French literature with you, but yeah at two in the morning I need somebody that can spin a wrench. What do you say to people, and I've bumped into them in various areas of the country, who will look at things like solar, various renewables, and say the only reason these are profitable is because of subsidies. How do you respond to that?

SPEAKER_02 14:20

I've had that discussion so many times. Scott, it'll blow your mind. Yeah. You know, outside of the subsidy, which does make it pencil out the ROI and makes it more affordable for sure. It's what you're doing to the carbon footprint in the end, right? People don't see that. They don't they don't see that we're producing less gases. A lot of the discussion I have is, hey, look, there's still state subsidies, there's subsidies to make this work, but in the end, it's about what we're doing to the environment. I think the best line is you tell me why NV Energy scuttled their coal plant and we built battery energy storage on top of it. There's quite a few engineers there at NV Energy that realize that's the way to go. And they'll look at me like they scuttled a coal plant for what? They said we put in, you know, Tesla megapacks there when we scuttled the plant. And they'll look at you and just say, should have stuck with coal. So there's a lot of people out there that still are driven that way. But I think for the most part, for me, it's pretty simplistic of how we build these things and how solar and battery energy storage and when the technology has just taken off so far beyond. I don't think people are even aware of how much the technology has gone. And people say, Well, how about panel degradation or or battery energy storage degradation, battery degradation? And I said, Well, so far we guarantee these units for 15 to 25 years, and we've seen very little module degradation, solar panel degregation. Battery energy storage still in its infancy a little bit. I think our first one we built at Santa Rita Jail was an RD project for the federal government. We did that in 2013. It's non-operable at this point because of the technology. And we actually just gave a proposal to rebuild that plant we built in 2013. So I think in general, more and more people are believing in solar and in green energy.

SPEAKER_01 15:50

It's going to take time. A wonderful example that's going on right now in the island, sort of semi-related, is the gang over at Almanac expects by the end of the year to be completely generating all their own carbon dioxide for carbonation. In fact, right now you can go buy a can of flow. They will tell you this was bottled with stuff we captured. And again, you go to carbon footprint, it takes out a truck. Having a canister of CO2 weighs a lot. That takes up a lot of fuel to put it on a truck and get it somewhere from a halfway across the state. It takes time. It's an iterative process. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. We're not engineering from Hogwarts here. It's going to take a minute. Yep. Solar panels over parking lots. Great idea. Why aren't they everywhere?

SPEAKER_02 16:27

Well, there's a couple reasons. First of all, location of where the parking lot is, right? You want a south-southeast facing parking lot to get the majority of the production from solar. We've built the majority of the schools in the South Bay, San Jose Middle School, Eastside Middle School. We're doing Elm Rock right now. There were some investments that were made by Baker of America on some loans early on for this. Chevron Energy Solutions did a lot of it too. Give it time. There'll be more and more solar canopies going up in every parking lot you see. Provides shade, shelter from the weather, and produces energy.

SPEAKER_01 16:57

What else could you want? I learned a word as I was doing my show prep, and you talked a little bit about it at the top of the show, which is agrovoltaics, solar over farms. Yep. Over crops. You said you did early on one of those. And are you still involved in agrovoltaics?

SPEAKER_02 17:10

When the opportunity presents itself, I really, really liked a lot of the technology that's coming. Floating modules and lakes and reservoirs and settling ponds and sewer treatment ponds. Right. I think that all that is coming. I mean, obviously electricity and water. You gotta be careful a little bit.

SPEAKER_01 17:26

That is where I stop doing home improvements. I'll tell I'll tell my wife, if it's water, I'll work with it. If it's electrical, I'll work with it. When they combine, call somebody. Right.

SPEAKER_02 17:34

In general, getting involved in some of these technologies that are happening, which we've always been on the on the forefront, on the cutting edge at BEI. Anything new that comes out, whether it be tidal turbines and the Golden Gate Bridge or any of those, we want to be in the forefront of that. While farmers, their land's worth a lot to grow their crops, to cover their crops that need the sun, but all the outlying areas around their crops, their roads and everything else, they could easily put photovoltaic around all their roads, all their farming roads, and be able to probably produce, like we did in the avocado farm in 2003, be able to pump their water just using solar.

SPEAKER_01 18:05

From your website, it says half of your work comes from existing clients. What do you do to keep a relationship like that? Because there's a lot of choices out there, and you've got people coming back to you again and again.

SPEAKER_02 18:14

Well, again, it's our people, our boots on the ground, our project managers, our marketing departments. It's everybody who's involved within BEI with the same belief as when we started BEI. You don't go to your clients and try and take all the fruit off the tree at once. Right. You take a little bit of time and you keep your clients and you do a very good job and you finish the job, regardless if it's going to cost BEI some money in the end. We also are very, very cutting edge giving people VE value engineering on projects. So it's not a good idea to put that array or that canopy in that parking lot. Let's move it over here. It's closer to your point of interconnect, and it'll be a lot cheaper for you. Well, we will reduce our price, but we do that on every project that's engineered to give a better value to our clients. And the same clients keep coming back to us year after year after year after year because of that service.

SPEAKER_01 18:58

You got a big push on your literature website and your outreach on safety. Where does that come from? How does that actually pay off? I was in the safety industry and part of the discussion we would have, well, that costs too much money. No, it doesn't. Where's that coming from?

SPEAKER_02 19:12

As we grew, we realized that safety was a big part. And we want our folks to go home at night, period. You know, we're we work in a very, very dangerous field. Before I became CEO, I took over the safety program and hired some pretty good professionals to come in to evaluate our safety program. And he gave us a whole list. Myself as CEO now, safety reports directly to me still to this day. As we kept moving forward in larger projects, more people, we've had a couple of job sites of 300 folks working on them. We realized that in order to keep everything going the right direction, we really wanted a more and more robust safety program. And then we're at a million man hours without an incident. Wow. Which is a pretty incredible.

SPEAKER_01 19:47

That's that's a record. That's that's something to be proud of.

SPEAKER_02 19:49

But it's it's it's taught in our culture, whether it be our foreman, even an apprentice, they see a violation, they call it out. So that's our culture that we have with our folks.

SPEAKER_01 19:58

If you were advising someone who is a startup in the trades and they came to you and said, Dom, you guys are doing good, track record, history, your employees love you. If you could kind of come up with a little TED talk to the new person who's building a company, what would you let's let's keep it to three. What would you say this is what you need to do?

SPEAKER_02 20:16

Well, one, I would say be good what you're good at.

SPEAKER_01 20:19

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 20:20

If you wanted to start a construction company, if you're really good at electrical, stick with electrical. Don't go and start doing sidewalks because you're not good at sidewalks. Right. Take care of the customers that you have, regardless of the situation. A lot of times we call it combat construction because there's a lot of things that go on with arguments and things like with change orders and things like that. But understand where your client's coming from as well. They're on a budget. Understand how can you help them make their job easier? That's the number one thing. When we get hired by XYZ construction, we want to make sure that first of all, we're making their life easier. And second of all, that we're gonna do a great job for them. And the last thing is is take care of the people that are taking care of you. I'm a very, very operationally minded CEO. So obviously, from my background, I came from the field. Those are the people that are your revenue generating folks, and take care of those people too. Believe it or not, they will they will work for you. Hence the reason why we have very little attrition at BEI.

SPEAKER_01 21:08

What's a compliment you've gotten from, say, a fellow CEO from some other company, or they've come to you and said, have they said, How are you doing this? Or Dom, you're a great example of X.

SPEAKER_02 21:17

I've had both, and I've had why are you still involved with with your folks in the field as much as you are in your position, you're very busy. And I've also had folks say I admire that you spend the time with your people. But we run it like a team, my background as a coach, right? It's it's not my company, it's our company. You'll never hear me say I or or this is the way I want it done. It's always collectively decision-making amongst all of our folks, and I think that's the most important thing. Women in the industry, opportunities? Yes. One of our executive secretaries and project managers and do it all in at BEI is Michaela, Michaela Lindsay, who is my right hand woman, and she does everything to protecting the company to managing PGE projects. So she's got her hand. Hands and a lot of things, and it's very, very nice to see our women in construction nowadays. When we have some foremans, some folks that work in the field for us. It used to be a primarily male trade, but we see it more and more growing out of that now, which is great to see.

SPEAKER_01 22:12

You provide training in various areas of engineering. You have a training program, but you you're actually outsourcing something people come in and learn.

SPEAKER_02 22:19

Yeah, so we have a a class, Dave Sanders, who is an RCDD instructor. Basically, what it is is it's a technology degree you get. It's really sought after in the low voltage technology infrastructure. It's a very sought-after certificate. We decided to open a school for it. Dave Sanders is the instructor. He's world renowned actually. Just had a class. Matter of fact, I had a person who's in the business who reached out to me saying thank you very much. It was an incredible class. I think he does it three times a year to all industry professionals. So it could be a technology guy from Kaiser, a technology guy from Stanford, and they'll come and take this course.

SPEAKER_01 22:53

And you have scholarships available for that. Yes. How does one go about applying for that?

SPEAKER_02 22:57

You applied for the class.

SPEAKER_01 22:58

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 22:58

And then if there's a need for a scholarship, but we offer all different types of scholarships for that.

SPEAKER_01 23:03

One thing that I thought was interesting in your materials is healthcare's become so wired, and you're talking about wiring basically hospitals and hospital systems. People tend to forget that all that data's got to go through physical stuff. I don't know if one is honored or unnerved or both when you realize that you're literally laying the network for somebody's life.

SPEAKER_02 23:21

Absolutely. We do life safety systems, we do nurse call systems, we do all the operating room services in there. And I'll tell you, Oshpod, which is the governing body for hospitals, is a very special area to be in. You better know what you're doing when you're working in hospitals.

SPEAKER_01 23:34

People always have positions open, but who are you looking for right now?

SPEAKER_02 23:37

Right now we're looking for an accounting assistant, just to assist the accounting department, uh, project engineer for A V, a salesperson for A V audiovisual. When you're not doing all these millions of things, what do you like to do when you're off the clock? Well, I coach high school football. Really? Where? At Sam Moran High School. Okay. I've been there for 19 years. Oh my goodness. I've been the head coach for the varsity team and the program for eight years now. Very proud of what we've accomplished at a small public school in Marin County. Outside of that, traveling with my wife. Been married for 29 years. Congratulations. And my kids, I have three kids. I have a daughter who's in Italy right now studying abroad. My son Dante is apprentice electrician. Odd. My oldest son, Marco, uh, went to UNR and is now flying airplanes.

unknown 24:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:21

Let's go back to the football team for a minute. So, how has the success of the program been?

SPEAKER_02 24:24

It's been very, very, very good. We've won a couple state championships. Yeah, 2023 and 24 back-to-back state championships. League title, been in the NCS playoffs every year since I've been there. It's been quite a growing experience for me as well.

SPEAKER_01 24:39

And I've talked about this on the show before because I was a high school theater instructor for three years. And there was a study years ago that what is the difference between a good kid and a bad kid? And it turned out to be one involved non-parental adult that made the difference. For me, uh I w I'll take it a step further further.

SPEAKER_02 25:03

I don't think there is a good or a bad idea.

SPEAKER_01 25:04

No, I'll agree with that. I was just quoting.

SPEAKER_02 25:06

Yeah, yeah. But and parent involvement is very important. It's a hundred percent important. But I've had some really, really neat stories of bad kids, if you will, turned out to be very successful through the foundations of any kind of athletic sport, I think is very important. Or any kind of outside of school involvement. So I think that the kids that really need it the most, you kind of nurture and take care of them a little bit more. Seeing that the need for it, and and that's probably my most successful stories about coaching sports is seeing those success stories after they weren't successful, before they weren't success stories, now they become success stories. That's pretty important to me.

SPEAKER_01 25:40

I always loved to bridge the athletic creative divide because my favorite kids in the world to direct were athletes. I had a kid from the football team who was one of my three musketeers. That kid nailed it.

SPEAKER_02 25:53

He was probably really good.

SPEAKER_01 25:55

He was absolutely perfect. Here's a question that makes everybody on the show edgy. You've got company coming in from out of town.

SPEAKER_02 26:02

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 26:02

You have to take them to three meals on the island. It can be three dinners, it can be breakfast, lunch, dinner, it can be bites and notches, whatever. What three restaurants are you gonna take your guests to?

SPEAKER_02 26:12

Well, first of all, for for Mexican food, I would take them to La Pica de Azul. The only reason why I know that, by the way, is because I really like tequila and I used to like Class Azul. So uh a couple other places, Levi's bagel, because Levi's bag is.

SPEAKER_01 26:26

Oh, they're great. Yeah, my wife, my wife adores them. I love them, and my wife adores them because they carry gluten-free bagels. We can always get a good sandwich.

SPEAKER_02 26:31

And we also they they come to they bring bagels to the office every Monday. So very good. We have them come to the office, it's a great spot. And the last one is uh Trabaco.

SPEAKER_01 26:40

Uh websites, socials, ways people can uh keep up with what's going on at BEI.

SPEAKER_02 26:44

LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook. What's the web address? Uh ww.bei construction.com. Dom D'Amari from BEI Construction.

SPEAKER_01 26:53

Thank you so much for taking the time and spending time with us here on the Alameda Connection. Thank you very much. Take care. Thanks again to Dom D'Amari, the CEO of Alameda's BEI Construction, for spending time with us this morning here on the Alameda Connection. In order to keep up with what's going on with BEI construction, you can head to their website. That's BEIconstruction.com. To take a look at the positions that are available at BEI that Dom mentioned, head to that website and click on the Careers tab. They also have a presence on LinkedIn. There you can find them at BEI-construction. And you can also find them on Facebook and Instagram, BEI Construction. Coming up next week on the Alameda Connection, remember those days when your corner store not only had your groceries, but a really good deli where you could get a great sandwich and probably an excellent cup of coffee as well and some pastries to boot? Well, in Alameda, the good old days are back. My guest is Mike Stevens, the owner of Island Savoy Market. After a stint in the film industry, Mike moved to the Bay Area, got involved in the catering business, and after being a little frustrated that in his neighborhood there was no particularly good place to get a cup of coffee, he opened Island Savoy Market. We'll talk about what it means to be a true community market, highlighting foodstuffs from across the Bay Area, as well as the creation of a third space where community members come to not just shop, but to sit and to socialize. That's Mike Stevens, the owner of Island Savoy Market, next Sunday morning on the Alameda Connection. If you're new to the show and would like to check out our library of past episodes, each and every episode is available on my YouTube channel. That's at the Alameda Connection. If you have an idea for a guest on a future episode, please send me an email. That email address is Alamedaconnection at gmail.com. And if you think you might be a good guest, don't be shy. Let me know about that too. The best way to keep up with the show, including upcoming guest schedules, is to follow me on Instagram. Just look for Alameda Connection. As always, a big thank you to the California Historical Radio Society for providing our location for this week's sit-down with Dom DeMari. By the way, if you've never visited the museum, it is well worth your time. 2152 Central Avenue in Alameda, you can get a preview of what they've got to offer at California HistoricalRadio.com. The theme music to the Alameda Connection is courtesy of jazz guitarist Bill Hart. The song is called Beachside Idle, and it's from his album Watch the Sky. I'm Scott Peeler. I look forward to connecting with you again next Sunday morning, 8 a.m. The Alameda Connection, right here on KCSM HD 2.