Large Project Totals Plummet

The top 10 Northwest Arkansas construction contracts among the state’s largest active commercial projects in 2011 total $266.5 million. That’s just a slice of the statewide total of $1.3 billion, a drop of more than 20 percent from a year ago and the third straight year commercial construction activity has fallen.
Education-related construction remained a dominant category for business. All but one — the $62.5 million VA Hospital Addition in Fayetteville — of Northwest Arkansas’ top projects are education-related.
Nabholz Construction Corp. of Conway tallied the most projects in the statewide list, including three of the top ones in Northwest Arkansas. Those contracts amounted to $70.5 million, second only in the area to Little Rock’s Baldwin & Shell Construction Co.
Baldwin & Shell’s three Northwest Arkansas projects total $72.6 million. Baldwin & Shell registered 11 statewide projects, with a combined value of almost $250 million.
William Clark, CEO of Clark Contractors, which had six projects on the statewide list, said things are shaping up nicely for 2012 and he believes his firm is over the financial hump after opening its doors for business in 2009.
“We have been selected to build a $20 million hotel project in Dallas, and we’re chasing an $18 million hotel in Omaha, Neb.,” Clark said. “We were recently awarded the contract for the [$17 million] McIlroy Building on the University of Arkansas campus in Fayetteville.”
He sees a more varied menu of bid opportunities heading into the new year, a departure from the concentration of institutional work that kept general contractors going the past few years.
“We’ve been looking at more private-money projects than we have in a long time,” Clark said. “I hope that’s a sign that things have bottomed out and are improving.
“We’re thinking our revenue is going to be around $100 million in 2012. We’re very pleased and grateful.”
Three other firms — VCC of Little Rock, Kinco Constructors LLC of Little Rock and Tate General Contractors Inc. of Jonesboro — had five large projects each this year,
“We haven’t had any slowdown in work,” TGC president Wayne Tate said. “We could’ve had some of those projects half done by now, but we were waiting on the architects to get the drawings to us.
“That tells me the architects are too busy, and that northeast Arkansas is doing fairly well.”
Formed in 1970, TGC does most of its work within a 100-mile radius of Jonesboro.
The completion of the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville opened the No. 1 spot on the statewide list to the ongoing $84.8 million South Wing Expansion at Arkansas Children’s Hospital in Little Rock.
The ACH work is among a dozen health- care contracts bearing a combined value of more than $240 million.
(Rob Keys of the Northwest Arkansas Business Journal contributed to this story.)