Newly Retired Former Clayco CEO Russ Burns Has Died

Russ Burns, who began steering the massive Chicago-based construction, development and design firm Clayco when its founder Bob Clark was forced to step back for family reasons, died Thursday. He was 65.

Burns spent 41 years as an executive at nationally renowned contractors, including the past 23 as president and CEO of Clayco. His death was confirmed by Clark, and the cause was cancer.

“He and I were like Simon and Garfunkel. We had an amazing run,” Clark said. “We could finish each other’s sentences, and yet we were good at different things which is what made the partnership so strong.”

Burns was a part of Clayco’s decision to move its headquarters from St. Louis to Chicago, where it maintains workspace in the historic Jeweler’s Building at 35 East Wacker Drive. Clayco also recently opened a new office building in St. Louis that the firm named the Russ Burns Building.

“We lost a great one in Russ. One of the most class acts of all time,” said Shawn Clark, son of Clayco founder Bob Clark and the CEO of its real estate development arm CRG.

The elder Clark brought Burns on to run Clayco as its president in 2007, as Clark was unable to lead the business as normal following the diagnosis of his late wife Ellen’s terminal illness around that time, according to Burns’ LinkedIn profile and Bob Clark’s blog.

Burns’ move to Clayco followed 21 years as an executive vice president for Turner Construction. He led a period of explosive growth for Clayco: in 2007 when Burns came onboard, the firm generated $700 million in revenue; last year it was about $8 billion, Clark said.

“Within six to eight weeks of Russ coming to the Clayco office three days a week as a ‘consultant,’ it became apparent that everybody in the company was not only impressed with him but was also following him — including me,” Clark wrote. “He had become the leader of all of us in very short order.”

After serving as Clayco’s president for seven years, Burns’ title became CEO for the past decade until he retired at the end of last year. Under Burns’ direction in recent years, Clayco set itself up to help lead the data center boom now underway as artificial intelligence innovation and the economy’s increasing reliance on cloud storage drive demand for computing power across the nation.

Burns is survived by his wife Allison and son Tyler, said Bob Clark, who called Burns “my closest buddy, mentor, and the good angel on so many shoulders” in a death announcement made Friday.

The CEO title was absorbed by Clayco’s Anthony Johnson earlier this year, following five years as president of the firm’s industrial business unit that led to $3.6 billion in revenue from data center projects last year, half of its total.

“Russ taught us all to be better leaders, better bosses, better fathers, better husbands, and better humans,” Johnson wrote on social media.

Editor’s note: This story was updated to clarify the amount of time Burns spent as CEO of Clayco.