Home builder disappears after 30 years, leaving unfinished business in Belleville
One of the metro-east’s largest construction companies has disappeared from the market.
C.A. Jones Inc. left the Home Builders & Remodelers Metro East Association nearly a year ago after decades of close affiliation. The company stopped posting on its Facebook page in October.
The C.A. Jones website still can be found online, but its office on Lincoln Trail in Fairview Heights has been vacated, and its phone numbers are out of service. Company President Mike Needles couldn’t be reached for comment, nor could founder Chris Jones.
“They are out of business,” said Rick Swain, broker for the Keller Williams Marquee realty group in Edwardsville.
Swain served as vice president of C.A. Jones in 2024, when the company began a collaboration with the city of Belleville. It planned to buy up to 37 city-owned vacant lots and build homes on them.
Swain said he left the company more than a year ago due to management problems, and he was told that it had gone bankrupt. But no case has been filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Illinois, court records show.
Two years ago, C.A. Jones ended up buying seven vacant lots from the city of Belleville for $1 each and built homes on five of them under development agreements with the city, according to Mayor Jenny Gain Meyer. That included two on Scheel Street, one on Portland Avenue, one on Queensway Drive and one on B Street.
This week, the Belleville City Council voted to rescind an agreement that involved a sixth lot at 1008 Cart Lane. Meyer said the company failed to start construction on a home within 18 months, as promised.
“They’ve done nothing with the lot, so we are going to proceed with taking it back,” she said, adding that her administration has had no recent contact with C.A. Jones.
City officials also plan to rescind an agreement involving a seventh lot on Lebanon Avenue, Meyer said. C.A. Jones representatives had determined it to be unsuitable for development.
C.A. Jones was established in 1995 and remains an active business, according to an Illinois Secretary of State’s online business entity database. Needles is listed as president.
The database shows that O’Fallon attorney Joel Green was the company’s registered agent until 2024, when it switched to SLG Registered Agents in Fairview Heights. Attorney Doug Stewart, of Stewart Law Group, couldn’t be reached for comment.
C.A. Jones specialized in building “energy-efficient homes for all walks of life,” its website states.
“We want to help the people in our area by building them their dream home while doing everything we can to reduce our carbon footprint,” it states. “C.A. Jones works with local business to help others in the community in any way we can. Buying or building with us means you are helping the community and environment.”
Needles took over the company in 2022, when Jones retired as president, according to a story in the St. Louis Business Journal.
C.A. Jones then was celebrating the milestone of closing on its 900th home. It also shared information on its many charitable projects, ranging from food-pantry donations to college scholarships, autism programs to Habitat for Humanity construction.
“It is so important that we continue to give back to the communities that we serve and that have given us so much,” Needles stated in the story. “We will continue to find ways to grow our community involvement and have a positive impact on as many lives as we can.”
Both Jones and Needles are past presidents of the Home Builders & Remodelers Metro East Association.
Executive Officer Shannon Stelling said Needles left the association last spring. She noted that C.A. Jones was the metro-east’s largest construction company for residential development.
The company’s collaboration with the city of Belleville in 2024 was part of an effort by former Mayor Patty Gregory to jumpstart the Infill Redevelopment Program, which encouraged building on vacant lots and renovation of derelict buildings owned by the city.
At the time, Swain said C.A. Jones was building about 100 homes a year and didn’t need the Belleville projects but wanted to do something positive for the community.
“Building these homes in St. Clair County, which is the No. 1 county that we serve, it’s a privilege, and anytime we can help out Mayor Patty Gregory, we definitely want to do that,” he said.
This story was originally published March 19, 2026 at 5:30 AM.
