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Volume 17
Number 12
DECEMBER 2014
An all-new Norton
Captured!
Starting Norton Company has been a “liberating and challenging” adventure for Bill Norton.
Norm Christensen, project director for Skyonic, takes board members and VIP guests on a tour of Capitol SkyMine at the Capitol Aggregates cement plant.
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fter 26 years in the construction industry, Bill Norton felt a need to start his own business, Norton Company, emphasizing quality over quantity as well as positivity. “What has kept me in the construction industry is I enjoy working with the people, the owners, the contractors and subcontractors, and the architects and engineers, helping to guide the project in a positive atmosphere,” says Norton. “Construction can be a pretty mean business, but it doesn’t have to be. If I can get into a project early enough, I can set the tone of the project team, and then it’s a better process.” Founded in May of last year, Norton Company does project concept and plan-
ning, design and construction management, and ongoing consulting and communication. Norton handles exclusively commercial work, currently working on two Class A office buildings on the 1604 corridor and a small retail center on the northwest side. “It’s liberating and challenging at the same time,” he says of building his own business. “It’s new for me. I’ve always been employed by someone else. And I’m having a blast with my company. It’s exciting.” After earning his bachelor’s degree in construction science from Texas State University (TSU) in 1987, Norton spent 11 years working for Guido Construction, continued on Page 22
T
he Capitol Aggregates cement plant recently became the first commercial-scale facility to boast new carbon capture and utilization technology. Skyonic Corporation, whose founder and CEO, Joe Jones, invented the technology, officially opened Capitol SkyMine on Oct. 21. The $125 million SkyMine facility, which sits on property leased from Capitol, will directly capture 75,000 tons of CO2. The captured carbon will then be used to make products such as baking soda, bleach and hydrochloric acid. Jones had the initial idea about 10 years ago. He figured out a way to capture carbon to combat CO2 emissions
and treat the CO2 as an input to a green chemicals process, allowing them to run carbon capture at a profit. Skyonic pipes over post-combustion flue gas from Capitol’s cement plant to the separate SkyMine chemical plant. Capitol SkyMine will reduce greenhouse gas emissions for a total carbon impact of 300,000 tons every year and is expected to generate $48 million in revenue and $28 million in annual earnings for Skyonic. Zachry Corporation is one of Skyonic’s investors and the owner of Capitol Aggregates. “We started partnering with Zachry back in 2009 to write the grants that we continued on Page 22
A corner of mixed Sunshine
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multi-faceted business needs a multi-faceted building. And that’s what Tejas Premier Building Contractor built for Sunshine Distributors, Inc. The new facility includes 4,473sf of retail space, 2,334sf of office space and 1,027sf of residential space. The store for Sunshine Medical Uniforms, distribution offices upstairs, and a residential condo for the owners’ private use were built from the ground up at the intersection of Brooklyn and Camden in the new River North District. The new building replaced the old retail shop, which was demoed for this job, and was added to Sunshine’s existing 7,920-sf warehouse for its hotel and hospital products distribution company. Completed in early October, the design-build project took 13 months for both design and construction, and it came in at a project cost in the under $2 million range.
The mixed use made the new building unique and challenging. The owners wanted to include a space for possibly staying downtown overnight or for use by out-of-town guests. Julissa Carielo, owner and president of Tejas, notes that this required a tricky balance during the design stage. Oscar Carielo, Julissa’s husband and project manager on the job, explains, “We had to attend numerous hearings and get [the design] approved as far as all the requirements on those areas. We actually went through a couple of months with different reviews on it before we were able to finalize what they needed. The City of San Antonio has a committee involved that’s making these decisions as far as how much glass they need on the street side, how much square footage, how far the building has to be from the property line.” Tejas Premier Building Contractor built the mixed-use Sunshine facility, consisting of retail, office and residential space, in the River North District.
continued on Page 22