John Cruz, president and CEO of Boston-based Cruz Cos., is the recipient of ENR New England’s 2025 Legacy Award. He will be featured in the March print issue of ENR East, the realigned magazine that now includes the New England region. 

Founded in 1948, Cruz Cos. has grown from a carpentry and framing subcontractor into one of the country’s leading 100% Black-owned real estate organizations. The multi-generation, family-owned business performing construction, development and management services is particularly focused on affordable housing. 

Aside from building and managing thousands of housing units across New England, Cruz has worked to dismantle legacies of sector redlining, displacement and disinvestment, while also promoting economic empowerment and community equity and wealth in New England’s Black and Brown communities. The five most recent Cruz Cos. development projects generated 78% of project dollars to minority business enterprises. Those projects also had 83% minority and 65% local residents working on jobsites. 

During the firm’s more than 70-year existence, Cruz Cos. has employed an average of 70% MBE contractors and consultants and 70% minority workers on all construction projects, seeding millions of dollars into minority communities such as Boston’s Roxbury and Dorchester neighborhoods and New Bedford, Mass. 

Cruz has also endowed scholarships worth hundreds of thousands of dollars at several universities across Massachusetts, enabling students from economically challenged neighborhoods to attend college and learn advanced building trade skills that enable them to enter the industry.

To learn more about Cruz and his work, read the March issue of ENR East.