School Construction Tops Commercial List

Construction at schools in Northwest Arkansas continued to dominate the area’s commercial projects in 1999. The largest commercial firms also tackled more expensive projects than they did in 1998.

The Northwest Arkansas Business Journal takes at look at Benton and Washington counties’ top commercial contractors and projects in this issue. Contractors are ranked by their 1999 revenue, although that number generally varies greatly from year to year among commercial firms. One large project can skew revenue for an entire year.

The Journal also looked at the largest projects, as tracked by F.W. Dodge in Little Rock, a division of The McGraw Hill Cos.

Nabholz Construction Corp. of Rogers kept the No. 1 contractor’s spot with $69.7 million in revenue, a 42.8 percent increase from $48.8 million in 1998. That was largely due to the firm landing Fayetteville’s Town Center project on the downtown square. The project was the region’s fourth-largest at $9.2 million.

Matt Bodishbaugh, Nabholz’s vice president of business development, says flexibility and adaptability have given the firm a steady stream of repeat business. He says, 70 percent of Nabholz’s clients in 1999, were repeat customers.

Bodishbaugh says the most important part of his company’s business is building and maintaining relationships with people.

“The key to our success is that we have multiple delivery formats that we can adapt to a customer’s specific needs,” Bodishbaugh says. “That’s how we set up our business. Whether it’s a $20 million project, or a $20,000 [project], we have a business unit that’s geared up to respond to those needs.

“That’s allowed us to perform in every market in Northwest Arkansas.”

Nabholz is followed by APAC-Arkansas/McClinton-Anchor Division of Fayetteville, which had $44.2 million in 1999 revenue, or a 9 percent decrease from 1998. The company also occupied the No. 2 spot in 1998. Its largest projects this time around include work at Fayetteville’s CMN Business Park and several highway and street widening projects in Rogers and Springdale.

Next on the list are Buildings Inc. of Springdale ($20 million), Commerce Construction Co. ($18.1 million) and Oakridge Builders Inc. ($18 million). Buildings Inc. was up 5.8 percent and kept its No. 3 ranking. But Commerce leaped into the No. 4 spot thanks to its $23 million contract to build Rogers High School — 1999’s largest commercial project in Northwest Arkansas.

Commerce didn’t make the list in 1998.

Springdale firms Kinco Inc. Constructors and Baldwin & Shell Construction Co. rounded out the list with $13.5 million and $9.5 million in 1999 revenue, respectively. Kinco built the University of Arkansas’ new Randal Tyson Indoor Track Center for the Razorback Foundation Inc.

The Polymer Group of Rogers had the second-largest individual project, a $15 million plant expansion at PGI Nonwovens in Rogers. Polymer was followed by Lenk Development Corp. of Costa Mesa, Calif., which did the $13 million construction of the Fayetteville Townhouses, Nabholz’s convention center, McClinton-Anchor’s business park and Kinco’s indoor track facility.

Baldwin & Shell had the seventh-largest project, a $6.1 million elementary school building in Springdale — Bernice Young Elementary School.

Two-thirds, or $85.8 million worth, of the largest commercial projects were done in Fayetteville ($36.7million) and Rogers ($49.1 million). One-fourth, or $15.6 million worth, was done in Springdale.

That’s a shift from 1998, when the largest projects were evenly distributed between the cities. Benton County, however, had fewer of the big projects in 1999 than it did in 1998. It had six of 11 largest projects in 1998, compared with five of 12 in 1999.

The University of Arkansas’ Reynolds Razorback Stadium, estimated to cost between $62 million and $100 million, is expected to be the largest commercial project in 2000. The contract for that project hasn’t been awarded yet.