Perini Corp. built the Prudential Tower, the Massachusetts Turnpike Extension and a good part of the Big Dig as well.

Now, after more than 80 years running what has become a global building empire from its modest offices in Framingham, Perini is getting ready to plant its corporate headquarters flag on the other side of the country.

When Perini’s top executives and shareholders huddle next month for the firm’s annual meeting, for the first time in the company’s storied history they won’t be gathering in Framingham.

Instead, the big confab will take place this year at the company’s new, worldwide headquarters in Sylmar, Calif. While Perini will retain some employees and operations in Framingham, its days as a locally based company are over.

It’s the end of an era for Perini, which over the past few years carved a lucrative niche as a casino builder as it rode a massive Las Vegas building boom. That boom, though, has gone bust big-time, leaving the company scrambling, with Perini’s biggest project, MGM’s $8.6 billion City Center, on the brink of bankruptcy.

But Perini’s pending departure from the Bay State is also a sign of the times for the local construction industry, which has faced a dramatic winnowing out over the past few years. A number of long-time builders have vanished from the Boston area amid a surge in competition, with the survivors bulking up to add critical mass.

Perini’s big move comes several months after its merger last year with construction mogul Ron Tutor’s Tutor-Saliba, based in Sylmar. The deal cements Tutor’s role as the top dog at Perini, a process that began when he helped recapitalize the company during a rough patch in the late 1990s.

“The Perinis have a lot to do with things in Boston and Massachusetts,” said one industry executive familiar with the company’s local legacy. “It’s tough. There is just a lot of history there.”

Perini’s decision to move its corporate headquarters to the West Coast comes as the company races to stay ahead of a tidal wave of potentially disastrous business setbacks.

Over the past few years, Perini became one of the largest casino builders in the world, taking on, among other projects, MGM’s mammoth City Center project on the Las Vegas Strip.

It is an industry Perini began betting on successfully as far back as the 1980s, when it built thousands of hotel rooms for Atlantic City’s then newly minted casinos.

So as Perini began building glitzy new Vegas casino projects during the height of the late boom, it looked like the long-time Framingham builder had hit the jackpot.

The Luck Runs Out

But the first shoe to drop was a number of construction deaths at the huge City Center project, equivalent to building seven John Hancock Towers. Apportioning blame is always complex and difficult in such situations, especially so in the Wild West environment of the Vegas construction industry.

That said, when you are the general contractor on a job and something goes wrong, all eyes are on you, unfair or not.

Now, to make matters worse, the economic downturn has hit the casino industry hard. And City Center appears to be on the verge of a bankruptcy filing amid a falling out between MGM and one of its main investment partners. If so, it would become just the latest casino project to halt in mid-construction in once-roaring Las Vegas.

With the writing on the wall for all to see, Perini executives, led by Tutor, who engineered last fall’s merger, are racing to reposition the company.

Perini and merger partner Tutor-Saliba both had thriving civil engineering divisions, taking on all sorts of public works projects.

Now, with the Obama administration poised to spend hundreds of billions on new roads, bridges and schools, the newly merged and enlarged Perini is gearing up to compete for this work.

“These executives will be leading this company as we execute our strategy to become a premier national player in civil construction and to maintain our leadership position in the building industry,” Tutor said in a recent statement laying out Perini’s new business strategy.

Still, regardless of whether it is casinos or bridges that Perini will be building, the executives calling the shots will no longer be in Framingham.

Despite the problems facing the casino business, the company’s future increasingly lies out West, not back here.

It’s not clear what the impact will be on the 150 or so employees still on the Perini’s payroll in Framingham, which will remain a center for its international operations.

But it will no longer be Perini’s corporate base. And that is a loss for the Bay State, which is quietly losing one of its more powerful and storied companies.

The list of longtime contractors that have gone belly-up grows by the year, and now includes Payton and Macomber.

Others, like Perini and Suffolk Construction have avoided their fate by steadily expanding their market share and acquiring the bulk and the versatility needed to compete and survive.

And by being tough, as Perini is now showing as it cuts some very potent sentimental ties to the state it has called home for decades.