Site Visits

Spa Castle, Carrollton, Texas - July 21, 2012

We visited Spa Castle, a really exciting new real estate project in Carrollton today. The Spa building, the size, architecture and amenities were truly breath-taking. The VP of Operations gave us a tour and talked about the project as a whole. $35 million dollar investment in Carrollton urged me to ask him "why did you choose Carrollton as the site." After all site selection is the essential first step of any real estate project decision after financing.   I felt the target income group would have been more north Dallas, Frisco type community. The location had its inherent advantage of being along President George Bush Turnpike (Toll Road), still there are other toll roads in the metroplex, why Carrollton? The answer was that there was already a big Korean investor group that has set up a grocery mall near the site and the investor being Korean, valued the sense of community and helping each other. Also the previous group could provide useful insight into City business and good contacts to get the project off-ground. Being a City Planner myself, I also inquired about any City financial help if provided. Off course these types of deals are well guarded by both private and public entities so no clear answer was given.

The Spa Castle employs 80 people for their services. Membership rates are competitive but daily entrance fee provision may dilute the exclusivity concept for high-end customers. The tour was useful from a Real Estate project analysis point of view, but not so much helpful for Construction Management. The VP of Operations wasn't directly involved with the construction and the only insight he could provide was that the City of Carrollton graciously amended their ordinance to allow the height of the building which was beyond the maximum height allowed by ordinance at that time.

Ridgemont Construction office and one of their construction sites, Irving, Texas – August 4, 2012

Ridgemont Construction is a General Contractor (GC) company, privately owned, and has a solid reputation dating back to its inception in 1976. Ridgemont as GC does not perform any construction function themselves; they hire subcontractors to do the respective hobs. This reduces in-house overhead, labor, equipment, and administrative costs of operations. Seth Williams, alumni of UTA Real Estate Masters degree program and a former student of Dr. Peterson, currently holds the Director of Business Development title at Ridgemont. He not only gave us the tour of their office at 1520 W Walnut Hill Lane, Irving, he also gave some insider tips and challenges that the GCs in this industry face. The office space interior was designed and laid out in a creative way with careful choice of color and open arrangements of office spaces to make the interior more inviting, roomy and exciting at the same time. There is an employee gym downstairs with video game console; very unusual setup for a GC office. But as Seth mentioned, as a company they want their employees to have all resources available to succeed. These are ways to motivate and energize staff, especially when the industry they operate in is highly challenging and competitive.

We drove to 2880 W. Mockingbird Lane, Irving, Texas to visit an auto dealership building site that is under construction. We met with the site superintendent who walked us through the building and discussed the material, City inspection process, wind load, noise insulation (being so close to Dallas Love Field airport), and framing etc. This is a metal building that would house sales offices, back office functions (financial, administrative etc) and new car display area in front. The project is almost mid-way and expected finish in another twelve weeks. The City inspection division went through some restructuring and as a result the City does not want to do interim inspection on foundation concrete. They will do a final inspection that raised concerns among students as well as the site superintendent, which is why he brought that issue up to begin with. We learned about two thefts on the site, the first one costing almost $20,000 in stolen power tools. Later they installed security gates and secured the building via wooden boards so that theft can be avoided. The site appeared to be well kept and well managed with minimum storage of material on-site; indicating just-in-time material supply and it was also driven by the security concerns. Materials can be stolen if left unused on construction site for too long. As an Architect-Urban Planner, in short, design professional, we do not think about these day to day details and issues which are equally important if not more important than the design part of the job. This site visit improved my understanding of these topics.