For Winter Haven builder of SouthState HQ, it's family before business

Downtown Winter Haven is witnessing the construction of its first major office building in decades – and the tallest one built in over a century.

SouthState Bank, which had its origins in Polk County as CenterState Bank, is now the largest bank domiciled in Florida ― and has steadily advanced to the 29th largest in the country. Its operations center will soon be on Central Avenue, one door down from the Ritz Theatre.

Through mergers and acquisitions, the bank has 371 branches in the southeast as well as Texas and Colorado. The bank could have built its $17 million headquarters in any of those markets, but SouthState CEO John Corbett and his board chose to keep it local, giving downtown a major boost while replacing an eyesore of an empty lot on Central Avenue that’s been vacant ― “the missing tooth,” as the building’s developer, SixTen’s Bud Strang, is fond of calling it ― ever since the original one-story structure burned to the ground many years ago.

When completed next year, the office will support 125 corporate employees occupying its 40,000 square feet. The five-story edifice is being built by Whitehead Construction, a locally based firm with more than 70 years of experience under its belt, captained by Ryan Whitehead, 50, the company’s third-generation owner.

Question: What do you remember about your grandfather, Everett Whitehead, the company’s founder?

Answer: Granddad had a massive heart attack, so he was no longer working when I was a kid, but he was always around. My dad gave him an office within the office ― a place to hang out and be around to lend advice. He loved to tinker with things and had a bay where he could keep his camper.

I remember my granddad just being around to give encouragement and show love. He passed away right after I was out of high school, but I had a lot of years to be around him and let his love of Christ, love of family and love of construction really sink into to me.

How did he get started?

Pop had been a Navy Seabee [phonetic play on “CB,” short for Construction Battalion]. He came from Virginia to Florida and worked on the railroad as a signal maintainer. His territory was from Central Florida south and his brother’s was from Central Florida north. While they were doing that, they decided to get into construction on the side – mostly residential. In the 70s, after he had his heart attack and was going to close the business, my dad took over and decided to carry on. Dad learned very quickly that his love was not the residential side of it, but commercial construction. So he started turning it more toward commercial and it kept growing from there.

Now you work in the business side. Did you have jobs in the company when you were growing up?

I grew up just wanting to be around this business as much as I could. Over the years, we’ve had a lot of great employees who were good teachers and who took me under their wings. I did concrete work and carpentry work and those were things where I got a lot of hands-on experience early on, but I first worked on a Saddle Creek warehouse with the guys. My job was to run the plate compactor as well as run back and forth to the trucks to get them Gatorade and water. Dad would let me be out there for hours with them and then take me to the next job.

That was different from a lot of kids in the sense that every chance I got, I would work ― always the three months we were off school. During spring break, I was working a full week at the office or working with the guys in the field and found that I really enjoyed the concrete side more ― laying out buildings and foundations and seeing the buildings come out of the ground ― way more than running crown molding and putting up door trim and that sort of thing.

Given your love of construction, what was the nature of your formal education?

I went to Winter Haven High School and played quarterback for a couple years and just loved sports. I did not love school. I knew I loved construction, but I was not a great student. I went to Polk Community College for a year and a half and came to the office one day and let my dad know that I did not want to finish school. I was ready to come to work full time. He said, “Well, turn in your books. Your full time starts tomorrow.” So I continued for a couple years in the field, learning the trade. And then I started working in the office, learning the business side and the management side of construction. A short time after that, I believe in 1998, I got my contractor’s license.

Will there be a fourth generation running the show one day?

Both of our kids have worked different summer jobs here over the years. Our 21-year-old daughter is finishing up her master’s program at Florida Southern business school and will be joining us full time toward the end of the year. We’re super excited about that. Our son is 18 and he has started his first year at the University of Florida. We’ll see what the future holds.

Aside from new construction, Whitehead has done extensive renovations, particularly for Six/Ten, which has been a major force in changing the character and viability of downtown. What are the special challenges involved in those efforts?

A lot of these buildings downtown were built in the 1920s, so you never really know what you’re getting into. There are a lot of layers – layers of plaster and rotten ceiling joists and that sort of thing.

We’ve touched a lot of these buildings downtown so we’ve pretty much seen it all, and the big thing is we have a great team ― great architects and engineers that we have worked with over the years who have come to know these buildings ― so we’ve never run across something that we just couldn’t resolve or solve. Most of these buildings have pretty good bones.

Still, it must be a challenge to bid on them, not knowing what you’re going to uncover, what unpleasant problems are going to reveal themselves.

We have the experience to know some of the things that could be a surprise, and we work through a budget process to really dig in. Some of it is based on assumptions and past knowledge of structures like this. Sometimes you just don’t know. We discuss all that with the owners, working together to include contingencies to make sure they’re covered. We understand that when they’re going into projects like this, in setting projected lease rates they’re going to strongly rely on our numbers.

Whitehead Construction has built schools, churches, parking garages, factories, apartments and car dealerships. Which has been the most challenging?

They’re all challenging. Every project has its special challenges, but the biggest thing is communication ― addressing issues head on and not letting them become a problem that festers. That’s when it becomes a real issue. I really can’t think of any one in particular that turned out to be a major issue.

Obviously, your company ― like all for-profit companies ― is in business to make money, but you also have developed a special civic relationship with the city as well as with Six/Ten. Can you discuss how those relationships came about and what the dynamics are.

From a city standpoint, there are a lot of competitive bid situations and sometimes we’re successful, sometimes we’re not. We work for a lot of municipalities and counties and they’re all great. But the city of Winter Haven has exceptional leadership, a can-do attitude of helping keep the process moving and working together as a team.

As to Six/Ten, our company has worked with the Strangs on projects since the 80s. Since the early 2000s, Whitehead has done a lot of projects with Six/Ten and we have a great working relationship with them. You couldn’t ask for a nicer group of guys to work with, guys who you can sit down and talk to if there is an issue or a problem that arises. We trust each other and have worked together on all types of projects, building a long-term partnership, not a one-off project and move down the road. We’re in it together.

The SouthState headquarters, which your firm is building, is a pretty big deal for this community. What’s your evaluation of the impact it’s going to have on downtown?

Well, it’s huge. You’re taking a piece of property that has been vacant since the sometime in the 90s and filling it with one of the biggest buildings in a long, long time, a site that’s going to bring over 100 employees to downtown where they will have a direct impact on the local economy ― restaurants, shops, that sort of thing. It’s going to be a huge impact for the economy downtown but also for the perception of our downtown and what it’s becoming, because it really is going to change its face.

What’s the most ambitious project you’ve undertaken since you became the owner?

We never shy away from any project. I’m a part of a great team of construction professionals that are capable of any project that we’ve thrown at them. We just finished a $16 million fire training facility for Polk County, which was a large project involving all kinds of things that we had never done before. At the time we built the first parking garage downtown, I would have looked at that and said, “This is the most ambitious project we’ve ever done.” But we’re contractors ― we follow plans and we know how to build things.

How far afield do you go geographically?

We have worked in Mississippi and Alabama and other southern states over the years, as well as in the Miami area, but now we are really focused within the Central Florida area ― we say Polk County and anything that kind of touches it. But we have customers that from time to time ask us to build elsewhere.

As you’re well aware, the Lakeland-Winter Haven metropolitan area is one of the fastest growing in the country. How do you see the landscape changing in the next few years?

We’re in an area of Florida that still has a lot of room for growth on the commercial side. And so, we’re excited about the next decade coming up.

What would you like readers to know that we haven’t talked about?

I’m very proud of the way our company focuses on our team as family ― and I know a lot of firms say that. Business is very important ― we have a job to do, we have deadlines, these projects can be stressful. But the number one thing is family. I made it clear early on that I am not going to miss even one of my kids’ games ― tennis matches or soccer games or anything else ― and not just because I own the company.

I don’t want our employees to do that either. I want them to be present for their families, set an example within their own families of that leadership as a dad or as a mom, and be there for their kids. Because business will come and go, contracts will come and go, there’ll be busy times and slow times. But at the end of the day, you have one family and you have one chance to do it right.

And so we encourage our employees to put family first and we give them that freedom and the time to be there for them. That way, we put our hopes in something far more important, not just the next project. Those are what our values are. Business is fun and it’s great, but it’s what we do ― it’s not who we are.

This article originally appeared on The Ledger: For Winter Haven builder of SouthState HQ, it’s family before business

Reporting by Thomas R. Oldt, Ledger correspondent / The Ledger

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This story was originally published September 14, 2026 at 5:03 AM.