I have discovered that my employer has access to online records of The Lansing State Journal for the frustratingly limited years of 1980-2011. I thought I would see if I could find anything about the closure of McNamara Construction. Instead I found, in a roundabout way, the answer to my previous question of whether their baseball team pulled off a perfect season in 1971.

In the sports section of August 7, 1986 (page 5C), there is an article announcing the return of Tim May to coaching (women’s basketball and men’s baseball) at Battle Creek High School. The article notes that Tim May had been on two championship McNamara Construction teams, including McNamara’s 1971 20-0 season.

I am surprised to find that on page 6 of the August 27, 2000, Homes section, an advertisement from Forsberg Real Estate Company offers a plot, “Build to suit. Come over and see the quality of McNamara Construction. Ranch and 2-story plans available…” I’m puzzled by this as McNamara dissolved as a corporation in 1986 and sold their property on Waverly to Valvoline in 1988. I do find in the June 17, 1988 paper (page 3B) that the city had been engaged in a legal battle with McNamara Construction since 1985 over the use of a property on West Holmes Road as “a sewer contractor’s storage yard” which residents nearby called a junk yard. In the early 1980s they had lost a suit against McNamara to force cleanup of the property as a jury said it was not a junk yard. So apparently McNamara Construction was around for a while after the corporation ended, but I can’t say how long.