Lake Contracting

Lake Contracting builds offices, not houses. From 21 Spencer Street in Stoneham, it puts up conference centers, spec suites and amenity spaces for law firms, technology companies, investment firms and nonprofit schools, with most of the work in downtown Boston. It has been at that a long time. The company dates its founding to 1983 and calls itself privately owned and operated, naming Dana Lake as CEO and president; BBB counts 43 years, 11 employees, grades the company A+ and lists no complaints, though it is not accredited. What almost nobody has done is write about hiring them. There are two Google ratings, both five stars, and no reviews with words in them. The one outside confirmation of the work is a 2018 project page from a preservation architecture firm, which lists Lake Contracting as the general contractor on a door and window restoration at Harvard. The practical question is fit. A homeowner wanting a kitchen or an addition is probably in the wrong place — everything this company puts forward is commercial interior construction. An office tenant or property manager in Boston is the right caller, and with nothing published to read, the sensible first move is to ask for references on a build-out close in size and schedule to your own.