Lonnie Coleman pulls into the Cleveland Clinic Neurological Institute construction site on a spring afternoon. Commuters along Carnegie have watched the Cleveland Clinic’s building rise over the past year. Cleveland Clinic Neurological Institute Coleman Spohn Corp., and their joint venture partner Helm Group landed the job to install the buildings mechanical piping systems. We’re talking mazes of pipes, air handling equipment, underground fuel tanks, central cooling systems, sheet metal work and plumbing systems. The contract is the company’s biggest to date. Walking down halls buzzing with workers — black, white, male, female, young, old — Coleman, can’t help but think about how far his business has come. His is now one of the region’s most successful minority owned companies, with more than 100 employees. But getting there wasn’t easy.
When Coleman originally went into business for himself, he and his partner asked the Small Business Administration for a $180,000 loan to buy a pickup truck and equipment. When the SBA turned them down, they trimmed the request to $80,000. Still, no deal. “We were told they did not think we would survive six weeks,” Coleman recalls. “Decades later, we’ve survived and have a story to tell.” Coleman’s story starts in rural South Carolina, where his parents and grandparents farmed. “Blair, S.C., had a post office, a general store and a train stop,” he says. Coleman’s father joined the African-American migration north after World War II, hoping for better opportunities. The family moved to Cleveland in 1950 when Lonnie was one. Coleman’s father worked as a machinist at a factory on St. Clair Avenue. And his mother worked in a garment factory, where she made sweaters. Coleman is the third oldest of seven children in a close family. Originally, he thought he’d become a teacher and started studying for a history degree at Kent State University. (The love for history is still there. Asked if he could meet anyone, living or dead, Coleman chose Hannibal Barca, the military strategist who crossed the Alps with elephants in 218 B.C. to defeat the Romans.)
But a summer job as a pipe fitter — installing and repairing pipes and tubes that carry water, steam, air and other liquids and gases for heating, cooling, ventilation, and sprinkler systems — changed Coleman’s path for good.
“The work was great, an opportunity to do something with both your mind and your hands,” Coleman says.
His last job as someone else’s employee was on construction of the Justice Center downtown in the late ’70s. By 1976, he struck off with a partner and started his own company, ColeJon.
“We were looking for upward mobility,” Coleman says. “Back then everybody was a risk taker to a point. There were a whole lot of changes taking place in our country.”
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