Who We Are: A Brief History of the ATMI Companies

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In 1983 Automatic Teller Modules, Inc. was formed by two Aurora families. One family, a second-generation family architectural firm specializing in financial institutions, and the other a third-generation family in concrete products and construction. The company was initially formed to fabricate and install modular buildings housing ATM machines - hence the name "Automatic Teller Modules, Inc." The modular ATM buildings were precast concrete.

By 1985 the original firm had progressed to modular branch banks using precast concrete construction and full design build services for suburban branch banks also using precast concrete. The company began doing business as ATMI Design + Build. In 1987 ATMI Design + Build secured a multi-year contract with a large national financial institution to design and build a prototype branch bank and multiple replications each year for many years to come. The architectural piece was with the existing family firm, ATMI Design + Build brought the construction piece and the structure was precast, which closed the branch in rapidly for other trades to start. 

The precast was a specialty architectural product and was being produced by a small, unrelated fabricator in Aurora, Illinois.  At the beginning of 1989 the small specialty precast fabricator was showing signs of distress in the midst of trying to produce multiple branch banks. ATMI Design + Build found itself in a situation of a key supplier for all of these banks in jeopardy. 

By the summer of 1989, the principles of ATMI Design + Build and another member of the concrete products family (who had recently sold the family concrete products business) formed a new entity to produce the precast structures for the branch banks under a multi-year commitment. Since Automated Teller Modules, Inc. has been shortened to ATMI, the new entity formed to fabricate precast was named ATMI Precast, Inc. - which remains today. 

In 1991, the national financial institution was itself distressed and the multi-year branch bank program was cancelled due to all capital expenditures being stopped on a national basis. The architectural firm had a contract for a new casino and parking deck and it was to be designed with precast. This order provided a life line in the absence of the branch bank orders for ATMI Precast.

By 1993, ATMI Precast re-focused on the industrial building market and built core relationships with the developers and builders in this market. Two years later, the industrial building market was driven by large public REIT's. In addition, technology was allowing 30-foot clear height buildings and wider panels to accommodate dock doors. The market expanded beyond capacity for all of the key players including production capacity at ATMI Precast. As a result, ATMI Precast went from less than 500,000 square feet of walls fabricated in 1995 and 40 employees to over eight million square feet of walls, two million square feet of hollow core plank, over 500 employees, and the addition of two other fabrication facilities by 2006.

Today the ATMI Companies, consisting of ATMI Precast and ATMI Indy, LLC., fabricate approximately 19,000 pieces, nine million square feet of product, and 16,000 outbound over width, overweight, permitted truckloads to approximately 150 buildings per year. The ATMI Companies, service the industrial building market, the parking deck market, the urban multi-story retail market, and multi-story residential markets.

That's our story. Take a look at the projects we have worked on.