Linbeck Group
www.linbeck.com
Over the past three decades, Linbeck Group has built numerous high-profile buildings around the Fort Worth-Dallas area, and now the venerable construction firm is creating its own new digs.
After 30 years in downtown Fort Worth’s Sundance Square in the Wells Fargo Tower – a building it constructed – Linbeck is relocating its offices in October to booming Fort Worth South, in another building the company built a few years ago for a longtime client.
The firm will occupy 8,400 square feet of much needed space in the 40,000-square-foot Carter BloodCare building, located at 1263 W. Rosedale Ave. in the Near Southside Medical District. The expansion, a 40 percent bump in space, gives Linbeck additional, more efficient space for its 80 regional employees to design and manage projects for clients in the health care, higher education, hospitality, cultural, private primary and secondary education industries. And there’s ample room for future growth.
“We needed more space,” said General Manager Mark Linenberger. “We’ve been downtown for 30 years. We considered expanding in Sundance but had a desire to get down in the Fort Worth South area. Fort Worth South has become quite the destination. There’s some really good energy here. This new location allows for growth and the opportunity to better serve our clients, trade partners and the community.”
Drive-up parking, easier access to and from major freeways and the close proximity to two of Linbeck’s core clients – Cook Children’s Medical Center and Texas Christian University – were key factors in moving to the Fort Worth South location, Linenberger said.
“The idea of having easier access was very attractive to us because of the way we now work,” he said, “but more important is the added meeting space and training space and the room to grow. The new space allows us to fully integrate our applied technology for our project teams. As our industry evolves, there’s a lot more technology that we use to implement our work.”
Founded in Houston in 1938, Linbeck, which also has offices in San Antonio, uses a variety of commercial and proprietary digital technologies and a lean operating system that eliminates waste and improves the flow of work.
The firm’s new Fort Worth South offices feature several open collaboration spaces for client meetings, group work sessions and project planning. Two “big room” workspaces will accommodate entire project teams – clients, designers, engineers, builders and trade partners – to communicate and work together.
“The big room workspace, which comes out of lean, allows cross-functional, multidisciplinary teams to advance the work very early in the project,” Linenberger said. “This co-location space will jump start the design process. It’s a whole new approach to how we work.”
Linenberger, a 32-year veteran of Linbeck Group, said one of the attractions in moving into the Carter BloodCare building is the building itself.
“We built it in 2009. It’s nice to be in a building that we built,” he said. “It’s a plus in our plus column.”
Linbeck’s list of construction projects in Fort Worth reads like a who’s who. The firm’s first major project was the Worthington Renaissance Fort Worth Hotel, constructed before the City Center Towers, now the present Wells Fargo Tower complex. Other notable projects, many of them award-winning, include: Bass Performance Hall, Sundance West, Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth Museum of Modern Art, National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame, Sid Richardson Museum, Moncrief Cancer Center, Ronald McDonald House of Tarrant County, The WARM Place, Trinity Valley School and Presbyterian Night Shelter’s new Morris Foundation Women and Children’s Center.
Linbeck will wrap up early next year a major expansion at Cook Children’s and this quarter will finish the T. Boone Pickens Hospice in Dallas. The firm continues renovation projects at ACH Child and Family Services and will start next year on an expansion project at All Saints’ Episcopal School. The company is in the pre-construction phase for the expansion of the Dee Kelly Alumni & Visitor’s Center at TCU as well as a new building for the Neeley School of Business.
“They’ve all been great partnerships. We look forward to continued growth with them,” Linenberger said. “And we’re looking forward to our move. I’ve always enjoyed Fort Worth South. I came to town 22 years ago. It feels like home. I was involved with Cook at the time. I was project manager and I watched Fort Worth South really grow from its beginning. It’s been very exciting to see the Near Southside evolve and emerge. It feels innovative. It really is an incubator for new businesses. That’s exciting. That’s energizing.”