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Mayor Hillrey Adams handed contractor Will Gregory the key to the city of Mountain Home on Friday, calling Gregory the person he most wanted to thank for the Community and Aquatic Center that opened the same afternoon.
Adams pulled Gregory and his family up to the entry canopy at the end of his remarks, just before the ribbon was cut. The mayor told the crowd he had been trying to find a way to thank Gregory and had landed on the highest civic honor the city has to give.
“I’ve got a key to the city of Mountain Home for you, buddy,” Adams said. “We couldn’t have gotten here today without him and his people.”
Gregory Construction served as the general contractor on the roughly $36 million project, the largest public works build in Mountain Home’s history. The company oversaw three years of work at the McCabe Park site, from the first dirt move in spring 2023 through Friday’s opening.
“Five o’clock in the morning or ten o’clock at night”
Adams used part of his thanks to describe what working with Gregory has looked like for the city over the past three years.
“When I get phone calls from Will at five o’clock in the morning or ten o’clock at night, or 100 times during the day, something’s happening,” Adams said.
Adams told the crowd that the week before the ribbon cutting, the two men had been on a skid steer on the site for a day and a half moving dirt together. Adams said Gregory let him drive.
“Will let me drive the skid steer,” Adams said. “He said, ‘I don’t know how to run a wrecker.’ So he left me on it.”
Adams said Gregory’s son Chance Gregory, who has served as the project superintendent, has been on the job site nearly every day for more than three years. Chance Gregory was not at Friday’s ceremony as he recovers from an accident.
“Chance Gregory has been here every day for over three years,” Adams said. “When we started, Will said, ‘Chance is going to run the job.’ I hardly knew Chance. I’ll guarantee you, he’s done a hell of a job.”
A family business with three generations on the job
Gregory Construction was founded in 1971 by Jack Gregory and is now run by his son, Will Gregory. The next generation is already in the business, including Will Gregory’s sons Chance and Banks and his son-in-law Raymond Guasco.
Will Gregory’s wife, Lori Gregory, sang the national anthem at Friday’s opening, as she has at the openings of every major Mountain Home public building Adams has been part of, including the 1998 post office and the Sharp Family Station 2 fire station that opened last year.
The company has built much of modern Mountain Home over five decades, including the public library, multiple manufacturing facilities, hotels, school buildings, and Big Creek Country Club. Current Gregory Construction work in the city includes ongoing projects with Mountain Home Public Schools, a new GMC dealership, and residential subdivisions.
Gregory Construction received the Mountain Home Education Foundation’s Community Partner Award in October 2025, in part for the company’s long-running partnership with Mountain Home High School’s Keystone program, which sends ninth-graders to Gregory job sites each semester to learn the construction trades.
“It’s a privilege to get to live and make a living in a community like ours,” Will Gregory said when accepting that award. “We believe tradesmen are vital to the continued growth of the area and want to encourage students who want to pursue those careers.”
Steve Luelf, owner of American Stitcho, said at the same ceremony that Gregory’s personal involvement is what sets the company apart from other contractors.
“It’s rare that you find somebody that really cares and follows it up,” Luelf said. “I’ve seen him get personally involved. If there was a bottleneck or something, he’d grab a welding torch to do it himself.”
Sarah Czeschin, who has worked with Gregory Construction on projects for more than 20 years, said Gregory’s focus is on the parts of a building no one ever sees.
“I appreciate how Will makes sure that each building he builds has a solid foundation, from getting the correct base for the base, to making sure the footings are large enough to support the weight of the building, to making sure the concrete poured for the floor was done correctly,” Czeschin said.
A city contractor
The aquatic center is the largest Gregory Construction project on the city’s books, but it is not the only one. The company also handled the construction of Sharp Family Station 2, the new Mountain Home Fire Department station on Highway 62 East that opened last year, and the renovation of the new Mountain Home Police Department headquarters at 650 South St., which the city purchased from Bank of America and reopened as a police station in April 2025.
Adams said Friday that the company’s reliability across those projects is what made the aquatic center possible on the timeline the city needed.
“If you’ve ever had a chance to work with somebody like Will Gregory,” Adams said, “they have done a support job for us.”
Gregory accepted the key without making formal remarks. The ribbon was cut a few minutes later.
