The sky's the limit: big success for prolific Timmins businessman J.P. Legault.

• Author: Stewart, Nick
• Position: TIMMINS - Jean-Paul Legault

When fire regulations required that Jean-Paul Legault build a two-million-gallon pond for his new Hobo Suites hotel, he super-sized it to 12 million gallons, with plans to stock it with pickerel.

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It's this kind of larger-than-life, out-sized approach that drives the self-made, frenetic Legault, whose boundless energy has been directed into an endless series of successful ventures.

Ideas that were barely a gleam in his eye two years ago are now flourishing, including two locations for his combination convenience store-laundromat, as well as his own brand of long-term stay hotels, the largest such chain in the city.

He's also overseen the creation of a local industrial park, an industrial equipment rental company, a small real estate empire, not to mention the growth of his core Panels and Pipes business, a mechanical contracting and fabrication firm he began six. years ago.

"We started off as a little grain of salt, and look at us now: we're the shaker," says Legault, grinning and leaning across a table in a lunchroom above his Timmins manufacturing shop.

Known far and wide throughout the business community only as "J.P.," the wildly energetic Legault has made his mark, though this level of spunk makes trying to pin him down for an interview a challenging task.

Amidst questions, he frequently pulls out his ever-humming BlackBerry, throwing responses about his business endeavors between key-presses and phone calls.

When distractions threaten to carry his attention too far away, marketing director Jim Brown pipes up and, on several occasions, verbally corrals Legault back into the conversation.

Even when speaking about the business, Legault can't stop: while he speaks in his rapid-fire, staccato style, he slips a large rubber band around his outstretched hands and moves them endlessly in small, quick circles.

Sometimes, he sets everything down and focuses intensely on answering, his eyes boring through you, laser-like, before another thought tugs him in a different direction.

"That's just the way he is, because he's dealing with all types of work and contracts," says Brown, after Legault dashes off to deal with one of his many business interests. "He's always on the go, he's always busy, he's always thinking and moving."

While many have been with Legault since the beginning, Brown is a new addition, brought onto the team specifically to take a more proactive approach to sales. Previously, Panels- and Pipes' sales had...