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San Antonio
CONSTRUCTION NEWS
The Industry’s Newspaper
www.constructionnews.net H (210) 308-5800 H Volume 24 H Number 8 H AUGUST 2022
100 years and going strong
L-R: Scott Nunnelly, Philip Nunnelly, Doug Nunnelly, Blaine Beckman, and Greg Vaughn
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he year 2022 marks a major milestone for one of San Antonio’s oldest commercial general contractors. F.A. Nunnelly General Contractor is celebrating it’s centennial year in business. While many businesses struggle to maintain success through a generational transfer of ownership and cyclical economic highs and lows, F.A. Nunnelly is proud that they have not only continued success and growth, but they have done so with the majority of their support partnering with clients, design firms, and subcontractors building projects in the San Antonio and surrounding areas. Floyd Arthur Nunnelly, Sr. founded F.A. Nunnelly General Contractor in 1922. At that time, F.A. Nunnelly relied heavily on their ability to self-perform in concrete and carpentry scopes and even had a ma-
R
ay Mendez served in the United States Navy Reserve as a Civil Engineer Corps officer for 14 years. During those 14 years, he was called to activity duty twice, both times to Iraq. He spent the first seven years of his career in the private sector. It wasn’t until he started his company that he began focusing on providing cost-effective and responsive engineering to include logistics, technical, management, and professional services for municipalities, state and federal agencies. In 2012, after completing his tour of duty, Mendez started Mendez Engineering. When the company first started, Mendez was a one-man show. A year and a half later, he hired his first employee. Today, and 10 years later, he employs 19 talented individuals. “We started as a small civil engineering firm,” says Mendez. “We got a lot of private work in the beginning but slowly
terial yard containing a small concrete batch plant. The ‘20s were an exciting time for the company as Floyd was beginning to make a name for himself in San Antonio and even had several projects in Cuero, TX, just south of San Antonio. Just as F.A. Nunnelly began to gain traction, the Great Depression of the 1930s created a headwind against their success. The depression hit and work was hard to find. To keep his workers busy, Floyd began participating in work programs for some of the national parks and was part of the construction team that built the Indian Lodge in Fort Davis. While the ‘30s were difficult, F.A. Nunnelly developed strong relationships with continued on Page 18
Old-world skills
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igini Paint & Design brings oldworld art, paint, and skills to modern-day life. The talents of Nicola Vigini and Leslie Morrison can be seen in the San Antonio Missions, the Pearl, personal yachts, residences, and aircrafts, to name a few. Nicola Vigini started painting as a young boy. Born and raised in Rome, Italy, Nicola always knew he wanted to be an artist. He grew up around museums and art. His father was an architect, and his mother was a librarian with a Ph.D. in Art-History. Nicola graduated from the Liceo Artistico in Rome and went to Paris to the Institut Superieur de Peinture Decorative (IPEDEC), a painting school run by craftsmen who specialized in historic decorative painting techniques. Both of his parents were very artistic.
His business partner, Leslie Morrison, is a graduate of Alamo Heights High School. She went to college in Boston at Pine Manor and received a double major in French, and Art History with an emphasis on textiles. She completed an internship at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston during her sophomore year. Her junior year she spent in Tours and Paris, attending the Ecole de Louvre and L’Institute Catholique. She spent a summer in Greece studying the Greek language and archaeology at Deree College in Athens. After graduation, she attended the two-year Cooper Hewitt Masters Decorative Arts Program in Manhattan, accredited through Parsons School of Design, followed by another summer in Paris studying modern continued on Page 18
Engineering on ten
Ray Mendez, president and owner of Mendez Engineering
shifted over to the other side. We probably do about 85 percent public work and 15 percent private. We do a lot with the City of San Antonio, City Public Service (CPS), and San Antonio Water Systems (SAWS). We’ve done a lot of roadway projects for the city of San Antonio, which we are proud of.” One such project was a team effort with the city’s maintenance group where the city wanted to make some modifications and repairs to nine streets in the Camelot subdivision. Mendez identified a major drainage issue, which was not part of the project and would have negatively impacted the modifications and repairs of those nine streets. Coordinating with the city, the Mendez team made some adjustments with results the city and neighborhood were happy with. Mendez believes their success comes from their quality of work. “People like continued on Page 14