Born Again

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Though most people don’t know Ray Adamyk by name, many are familiar with his work. Founder and president of historic restoration company Spectra Co., Adamyk and his team have worked to preserve some of the most iconic properties in Los Angeles, including the Pantages Theatre, Gamble House and Biltmore Hotel. Born in England and raised in Canada, he wasn’t always interested in preservation. Adamyk first entertained a career in sports management. But when he found God after college – a development he said saved him from a life of substance abuse – he moved to California to study theology. Rather than become a minister after graduating, he decided to grow Spectra, which he had started as a house-painting business in Canada in 1985. Today, the 150-person company manages up to 10 restoration projects at a time, with budgets ranging from about $10,000 to $6 million. The company expects revenues to reach $21 million this year. Adamyk recently sat down with the Business Journal to talk about his rough-and-tumble childhood, passion for preservation and recent mission to restore human lives.

Question: Where did you grow up?
Answer:
I was born in England and lived there for the first five years of my life until about 1966, when my family immigrated to Canada, to a city called St. Catharines in the Niagara Falls area. My mom was a factory worker and my dad remained in England. My parents split when I was maybe 2 years old. My mom later married my stepfather, who worked for General Motors.

I hear you used to be a boxer.

That was before college. I was boxing probably when I was 16 and 17 years old, for a couple years while I was in high school. After getting hit in the head a few times, I was like, “Eh, I don’t want to keep doing this. I think I’ll go to college.”

But before that, you boxed Lennox Lewis?

I did! He was young at the time, too. We were both amateurs. He’s a couple of years younger than me, but he was already a light heavyweight. I was a middle weight, so I was like one class lower. But my coaches were like, “Oh, it looks like you can take that guy. He’s big but just go try.” He was fairly well known by then; it was a year or two later that he was the super heavyweight world champion, amateur champion.

How was the fight?

It was a close fight. I almost knocked him down in the third round. I wish I would have won – that would’ve been a better story.

You went to college to study leadership – what did that mean?

I thought it meant I’d have something to do with sports as a career, because I was very involved in sports and athletics then, boxing, and I was doing triathlons at the time. But then I came to California for a year.

Triathlons?

I was doing a lot of triathlons. Before I moved to California, I went down to Florida and I was doing winter training because I was hoping to go professional. For training, I thought, “It’s winter, I’m going to ride my bike across the country to California.” So I started in Florida and I went halfway. I got to like the middle of Texas and I saw the Rocky Mountains in the distance. I just thought, “I don’t want to climb those on my bike.” So I stopped and took a bus the rest of the way. I never did get sponsorships and things like that.

How did you start Spectra?

After a year in California, I was back in Canada for a short time. I actually rented a room from a pastor, who was very helpful. I didn’t know what I wanted to do for work or a job. His parents lived in the house. They said, “We’ve got a van and we’ve got all this painting equipment. Have you done painting?” And I had done some painting previously. So they said, “Well, go ahead and start a business.” I worked for the summer, just knocking on doors. “Hey, you want your house painted?” I made about $10,000 in three months.

What brought you back to California?

I went to Life Pacific College. I did two years there and I had to work to support myself. I had a wife and three kids at the time. So I picked up the painting business I had in Canada and started it back up here. Then instead of going into theology and being a pastor or minister, I continued the business.

What made you think at the time you might want to be a pastor?

I made a lot of bad decisions while I was in high school – drugs, alcohol, different things like that. While I was going to Mohawk College, or shortly thereafter, I became a Christian and found God in my life.

How did you go from painting houses to the restoration work you do today?

It was an evolution. I started out doing houses in Canada, but even there I went into commercial and institutional work. When I started here, I did houses but slowly evolved into doing larger apartments and condominiums and commercial buildings.

Was that all new construction?

Historic preservation really didn’t take root until the late ’80s, but not till the ’90s did it become really popular to protect and save a building. Prior to that it was very easy to demolish a building. But now there are laws and ordinances in cities, and if you want to demolish a historic building now, there’d be a major uproar. Since that happened, there has been a need for what we do.

How did you learn the work? Did you take classes?

I really learned a lot of it on the job. But what I do best is I hire the best artisans, the best craftsmen and good managers. The leadership classes I took really taught me how to do that.

How did leadership classes help?

I try to relate to my employees on their level. One of the things I do two or three times a year is work as a laborer on the job that day, relating to those individual craftsmen in the field. I have an eye or a knack for picking out people who have qualities that I don’t have. A person with a good work ethic who’s quite bright can usually pick up a lot.

Was there one project you did that really got the ball rolling for Spectra?

The Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel in the late ’90s and the Pantages Theatre were the two that we did that were really iconic. We’d had some experience with some smaller projects, so we were able to get the projects through references.

What have been your favorite projects to work on?

The Catalina Island Casino was a good one. We restored the whole outside of the casino – the round building on the island. That was fun because I got to fly over in a helicopter every week for meetings. Our guys stayed over there during the work, but I flew in from Long Beach every week. It was a 15-minute ride instead of a two-hour ferry ride.

What would you say was the biggest turning point in your career?

I don’t know about a career turning point, but about three years ago I got involved in some recovery work with alcoholics, drug addicts, all kinds of things like that. We opened up a recovery home, and now we’re looking to open up a second one. So we restore buildings, but now we’re helping restore lives, too. That’s kind of my bigger passion now.

How’d you get into that?

I got involved in a group called Celebrate Recovery. It’s for anyone who has hurts, habits or hang-ups, just issues, struggles. I had my own personal struggles, I’d say they were more of emotional struggles and relationship issues, so I went and it really helped me in my life. But I would see all these people in the group. I’d ask them where they live, and they’d say, “Well, I’m living in the back of Wal-Mart, up on the roof. If you yell and throw a stone, I’ll come down.” Or they lived in their cars, in back of businesses, under a bridge. Still, every day they were trying to work on their lives. I said, “These guys need a place to stay, like a home where they can be together as a community and get a little better and maybe find a job and so forth.” So I got together with another friend – his name’s Izzy – and we opened up Izzy’s Place in La Verne. It’s a large, Edwardian historic home. Now we’re looking at another historic home in Ontario.

Who is Izzy?

Izzy Farrach. He and I co-founded the recovery house about a year and a half ago. Izzy was dying; he needed a liver transplant and had hepatitis C. He found drugs and alcohol when he was a teenager and ended up living on the street in MacArthur Park for five years. But it took its toll and he found himself in an abandoned building in Hollywood and fell to his knees, saying “God help me.” He got sober; he got better. That was about 15 years ago. He actually passed away (earlier this year). He was 51. He reached more people in his 51st year than he did in his first 50. He was dying, yet he could reach out to people and touch their lives. His memorial service was the largest we’ve ever had at our church, which is a church of some 5,000 people. Izzy’s Place is his legacy.

What do you do in your downtime?

I grew up in Canada, so I play ice hockey three times a week. When I sit behind a desk all day, my energy just plummets. For me, I feel like I want to go out and fight a gladiator fight, but instead I go out and play hockey and it gets all my energy out. My wife and I also hike every Saturday, from about noon to 8 o’clock at night. We always look for waterfalls. You’d be surprised at how many there are in Southern California. It’s a great time, just to talk and process the week. Something about walking and talking is just amazing for our marriage. We have a great time doing it together.

What’s a typical day like for you?

I’m not an early morning person so I usually get up around 9 or 10 o’clock. I have some breakfast, talk to my wife then head over to the office. I do whatever office work I need to do from 10 until 5 or 7 o’clock, then I go home and either go to the gym or have some dinner. Three times a week I go to hockey. Monday night there’s a Celebrate Recovery group I’m very involved in at my church; I’m one of the leaders of the group. On Friday, we have a recovery study at the recovery home, and I also lead that. Saturdays we have a meeting with the men in the home in recovery, and we do one-on-one short counseling sessions with them. My wife puts on a ladies day every Wednesday, and once a month we have a recovery party at our house, and we have close to 100 people there.

Sounds like a lot of your evenings and weekends are spoken for. How do you balance work with so many activities?

I don’t see these after-work activities as work. I really think it’s more blessed to give than to receive.

Ray Adamyk

Title: President

COMPANY: Spectra Co.

Born: Wokingham, England; 1961.

Education: Took a two-year leadership course at Mohawk College in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada; later studied theology at Life Pacific College in San Dimas.

CAREER TURNING POINT: Segueing passion for restoring historic structures into restoring the lives of those in need by opening a recovery home.

MOST INFLUENTIAL PERSON: Jesus Christ.

PERSONAL: Divorced and recently remarried; lives in Claremont with his wife, Michelle, and daughters, Caroline and Christy. Four adult children: Mary, Jack, Titus and Justin.

ACTIVITIES: Christian leadership, hiking, ice hockey and, when he was young, boxing.

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