Seattle-based Howard S. Wright Construction Co. has opened an office in Newport Beach, its sixth regional office and first in Southern California.
The company, which had estimated 1999 revenue of $250 million, also has offices in Portland, Ore., San Francisco, Sacramento and Phoenix.
District manager Jim Trammell said the Orange County location “enables us to serve our clients from Ventura to San Diego and be a part of the growth of the Tech Coast.
“We see a strong level of commercial activity continuing over the next 24 months in both the retail and office sectors,” Trammell said.
The company is the general contractor on the construction of the 55,000-square-foot Irvine BMW near the Lake Forest exit of the Santa Ana (I-5) Freeway that is being developed by the Irvine office of the Staubach Co.; other OC retail projects are pending in Huntington Beach and Yorba Linda.
The regional office, headed by Trammell (who is a 25-year OC resident but says he is not related to principals at Trammell Crow), has a staff of about 10 and is expecting to add employees as other contracts come online. The company, which has been operating in temporary quarters, also hopes to be in permanent Irvine quarters in the airport area by the first of the year.
The Irvine BMW facility, worth about $7 million to Howard S. Wright, is the first step in a reported $12 million expansion by the dealership, which already considers itself the second-largest BMW dealer in Orange County, behind Crevier.
The new dealership, designed by Laguna Beach architect Whitfield Associates, sits on 6 acres in the Irvine Spectrum and is expected to be complete in January.
Though Howard S. Wright has not previously had an office in OC, it’s no stranger to work in Southern California.
Among other projects it has done in the region:
n A two-phase tenant improvement project for AT & T; Cerfnet in San Diego
n The Toyota Vehicle Services facility in Torrance
n GameWorks entertainment center in The Block at Orange
In addition, Howard S. Wright is handling work for MFN/Paix.com, a Web-hosting facility in downtown Los Angeles.
Elsewhere in California, the company built the Genomics Lab at UC Davis.
In Seattle, Howard S. Wright has worked on more than a dozen buildings for Microsoft in Redmond, Wash. It also counts Washington Mutual, MCI, Nike and the U.S. Navy among its clients.
Trade publication Engineering News Record earlier this year ranked Howard S. Wright No. 134 among the top 400 contractors nationwide. n
