Quake Will Help Builders in Southland : Economy: Freeway repairs, other rebuilding projects should boost recession-battered construction industry.

Monday’s 6.6-magnitude earthquake should mean a significant amount of new business for the industry, construction company executives say.

While earthquake damage won’t turn around the state’s battered construction industry by itself, it will at least help some firms.

Freeway repairs alone will total tens of millions of dollars, said Tony Grosso of Associated General Contractors’ Los Angeles regional office. AGC is a trade association for big builders.

The cost of repairing the intersection of the Golden State and Antelope Valley freeways in northern Los Angeles County and a stretch of the Santa Monica Freeway that runs through the Fairfax District could run to $100 million, Grosso estimated.

“It’s unfortunate that this is what it takes to get work,” Grosso said.

“Still, I wouldn’t be surprised if rebuilding all those shopping centers, apartments and freeways doesn’t wind up costing half a billion dollars.”

Investors certainly think so. At Kasler Corp., a San Bernardino County road builder, buyers bid up the company’s stock by $1.875 in heavy trading on the New York Stock Exchange Monday. The stock hit $10 a share.

“This usually happens right after an earthquake,” said Richard Guiss, a company spokesman.

Kasler isn’t alone: Granite Construction Inc., another road builder with offices around the state, closed at $24.75, up $2.50 on the New York Stock Exchange.

The investors may be right--if a little premature. “The potential for a lot of work is certainly there,” said Guiss. “But as for how soon it happens, that’s up to Caltrans.”

Take, for instance, the quake that rocked the San Francisco Bay Area in 1989: The California Department of Transportation, the state agency in charge of road-building, won’t be ready to put a big stretch of the Nimitz Freeway in Oakland out for bid until later this year--nearly five years after the quake.

But since the freeways damaged in Monday’s earthquake don’t initially seem to have suffered as much damage, Caltrans shouldn’t have to redesign and rebuild them from the ground up as it did with the Nimitz.

That means the work could begin in a matter of days, said experts--as soon as the rubble is cleared from the roadways.

Most of Southern California’s construction firms could use a boost.

The industry has been in a slump since at least 1990, the victim of the recession and overbuilding.

With only governments building much these days, a lot of firms have piled into that market, vying to build roads, hospitals, libraries and other public works.

So many companies are bidding on freeway jobs, for instance, that Kasler Corp. said it went more than a year without getting a significant contract.

That’s why David P. Prizio, chief executive of Prizio & Prizio in Fountain Valley, usually sticks to building factories for food makers--a business that’s still growing--and avoids public works.

“There have been public works jobs where there were 40 bidders,” he said.

“It gets to be a contest to see who can make the biggest mistake in the bidding.”