A painting of an ice hockey scene hangs in Ron Allen's sixth-floor office in downtown Bradenton's SunTrust building. Allen, president of NDC Construction Company, is a hockey fanatic-he owns season tickets to the Tampa Bay Lightning-and played in an adult league until 2000, when a serious concussion sidelined him from work for a year. He spent six months in bed under doctor's orders not even to think about business.

Allen, now 44, downplays the experience. "The thing that saved me was the Winter Olympics and the presidential voting fiasco," he says. "It was high entertainment. I had everyone calling me for the latest updates. John McKay [former Florida senator and a business partner] used to call to find out the latest news on CNN."

The irony, says Allen, who grew up playing competitive hockey in Pittsburgh, is that he was playing a non-contact game the day he and another player rammed into one another head-on at J.P. Igloo, an arena his company built in north Manatee. Allen immediately picked himself up off the ice. "After I threw up, I went back and played for another half hour."

Luckily a friend of his, a trainer for the Pittsburgh Pirates, understood how serious a concussion could be and made arrangements for him to visit a neurologist at the University of Pittsburgh. He was diagnosed with a grade-three concussion, the worst kind, and was put on medications and ordered to bed. For months, Allen was disoriented, suffered severe headaches-especially when trying to accomplish mental tasks-and struggled with memory loss. "I would go to a movie, and 15 minutes later I couldn't tell you what I'd seen," he says. "It was like a heavy dose of the flu."

But asked if the event was life changing or if it altered his business practice in any way, Allen pauses for a moment, as if struggling to find something profound to report, and finally says, "It really didn't." His partner, Gary Huggins, and employees kept things together while he was recuperating, he says, and he had little doubt about his return. "You just have to fight to get back," he says.

Richard Fawley, president of Fawley Bryant Architects, who has worked with Allen for 15 years on at least six different projects, says, "Allen likes to walk up to the edge, lean over and say, 'That was hard, but fun-and not too bad. Perhaps we can lean over farther next time.'" Manatee Chamber of Commerce president Bob Bartz, who knows Allen from his long commitment and service (he was the chamber's youngest chair, in 1996), says Allen's low-key manner and self-deprecating humor cover an intense can-do attitude and competitive streak that does not allow him to contemplate defeat. "He just loves a challenge," Bartz says. It is this same attitude, according to Bartz, that propelled Allen back to health and his company-now 32 employees strong-to prominence in Manatee County.

Allen came to Bradenton in 1984 to work for Westco Builders, a subsidiary of the national design-build firm National Development Corporation, shortly after graduating from the University of Pittsburgh. He came with a degree in business administration and the blessings of his father, James Allen, one of the three founders of Pittsburgh-based National Development Corporation. "I finished finals, got married and moved, all in a two-week period," he recalls. Even then Allen knew he wanted to work in building and development. "I've always liked the ability to transform raw land," he says.

Initially, Bradenton was culture shock. "I was 23, and at 2 o'clock on a Saturday there was nothing to do," he says. But he did devote his time to learning the development business. Allen worked for Richard Olson, the owner of Westco, and credits Olson, now retired, with teaching him the ropes.

In 1997 Westco Builders was renamed NDC Construction Company to take advantage of National Development Corporation's larger reputation. Later, when subsidiaries of the parent company were encouraged to seek local control, Allen bought the Florida operation and recruited Huggins from a larger Fort Lauderdale firm to head the construction part of the business. "He is very good at what he does," says Allen, "so I don't spend my time with the details and can concentrate on the financial and business aspects."

Although NDC is one of the largest construction firms in Manatee-doing $40 million to $50 million in business each year-Allen is not interested in growing the company into a mega outfit. "We are very selective of the deals we chase and what we work on," he says. He prides himself on knowing the names of the wives and families of every one of NDC's employees. Although he's built three single-family homes, he sticks to commercial projects today: "The last home I built was for my parents, and I told them that's the last one I'd do. It's too personal." He also prefers to work locally. "If a client asks us to go outside the area, we will do that," he says, "but our focus really is Manatee County and some of Sarasota."