Covering the Industry’s News
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CONSTRUCTION
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The Industry’s Newspaper Lone Star Park, Grand Prairie Tx
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(210) 308-5800
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Volume 13
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Number 2
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FEBRUARY 2015
Check our new website
West was best
Plenty of fun features and expanded access await viewers to the new constructionnews.net
L-R: Ryan and Lance Halfmann’s ConScape headed west to Fort Worth.
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onstruction News is pleased to announce the launch of its new, redesigned website. Welcome to constructionnnews.net, a site where you will find instant access and expanded capabilities to enhance our five printed publications. Our new website has been crafted to reflect what our readers need and want to know. Additionally, the redesigned site builds upon technology capable of addressing future needs. Upon visiting our site, you will immediately notice streamlined menus, simple navigation and access to the information you want. It’s all there for the viewing! What’s different? New features run the gamut from
easy access to all of our stories – or, if you prefer – stories broken out into the city newspaper they originated in. We now offer classified ads and at present, they are free! So, help us kick it off by taking advantage of this section. Do you need a reprint of your story to add to your walls? It is now easy to order one or more online. Did your secretary keep your copy of the latest Construction News? No problem! Use our easy to find rack location maps to find the closest location to pick up a copy in most areas of the state. Additionally, you can find a full PDF version of our latest papers – even getting a past issue is a breeze.
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ith a rented office in Hurst and rented yard in Euless, concrete contractor ConScape needed consolidating. That’s why owner Charles Halfmann’s sons Lance and Ryan, who work for the business as an estimator and a foreman, respectively, were excited to purchase the west Fort Worth property at 3210 Joyce Drive. “We were specifically looking for an office on the west side of Fort Worth. Ninety-nine percent of our work is in Fort Worth; I don’t think we ever go east of 360,” Lance explains. “Also, [the move] is in anticipation of the development of the Walsh ranch area and the development headed west and our proximity to 820
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and I-30; we can go in either direction.” The search for the perfect property was a five-year mission; Lance even asked a supplier to keep an eye out for potential real estate. Last October, the call came; one of the supplier’s customers was selling a property and, within a month, ConScape moved in with only computers and raw materials, with everything else provided by the previous owner. The 1,400sf office is the perfect size for the Halfmanns (including Charles’ wife, Gretchen, who handles accounting and billing) and their 20 employees. To accommodate future supply increases, the 3000-sf warehouse has the option of expanding to twice its size. continued on Page 18
Up on the roof
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hen Autobahn Motor Group needed additional storage for its BMW inventory, one option was to buy more land around Fort Worth’s 7th Street/University Drive corridor. Instead, the dealership adopted a use-what-you-have attitude and, with the help of design-build general contractor Speed Fab-Crete, looked up for inspiration. “The original new car sales building was there, and those buildings actually date back to the 1940s,” Speed Fab-Crete project manager Mitch Hanzik explains. “They were big concrete warehouses; not only are the walls built out of concrete, but the roof is built out of concrete. By doing some structural testing, we were able to verify that the roof structure that was there would support a parking lot. There is limited land on the 7th Street corridor, so here was an opportunity to put a lot of inventory up on the roof without having to buy any more land. We ac-
Rooftop parking and a new clock tower took this dealership to a whole new level.
tually built a new structure over the top of the existing concrete building.” Load testing of the building was Speed Fab-Crete’s first priority to ensure the project could be safely executed, especially since employees would be working in the offices directly below the rooftop parking. “Essentially, swimming pools were fashioned on the roof,” Hanzik explains. “We framed out an area, put a plastic liner in there and filled it with water to simulate heavy loading. Water weighs a little over 8 pounds a gallon, so we can determine how much weight based on the volume of water that we’re stacking this area. Then we can see the deflection of concrete, we can see how much, if any, is pushing down. Obviously, we did all of this testing on a weekend when no one was around and verified that the roof system could handle the loads that we continued on Page 18