By Mark Rea

Minority and women-owned contracting companies can take pride in construction of the new $220 million Toyota Center, thanks to Hunt Construction Group following through on its commitment to those businesses.

Construction of the arena with public funds was rejected once by Houston voters. But when it appeared a second time on the ballot, it was emphasized to the community that a strong program implemented into the project would commit to no less than a 30-percent participation of minority and women-owned businesses in construction of the arena and adjacent parking garage.

As a result, the arena's MWBE program was launched to coincide with the August 2001 groundbreaking of the arena. One month later, an event was held at the George R. Brown Convention Center to introduce and educate the community on minority opportunities at the project.

"We had a tremendous turnout, and right there and then we knew our program was going to be successful," said Gilbert De La Cruz, coordinator of the project's MWBE program. As the arena neared completion in August, the 30-percent goal was surpassed with just under 33-percent participation by minority and women-owned businesses.

De La Cruz put together a program to go to the construction community and bombard it with information. Similar MWBE programs implemented during construction of Houston's other two major sports venues - Minute Maid Park (formerly Enron Field) and Reliant Stadium - failed to achieve minimum goals for minority and women-owned business initiatives.

But De La Cruz was provided with an office onsite, received comprehensive support from Hunt Construction and reported directly to project executive Mike Fratianni.

"To us, it was a very, very important aspect of this project," Fratianni said. "We wanted to be the first sports venue built in Houston to achieve the goal we set for MWBE participation, and we're very proud of the fact that we not only achieved the goal, we exceeded it."

"Hunt put a lot of focus on this program," De La Cruz said. "Not only did they give me a job to do, they gave me the means to do it. I had excess to the staff, system management and access to all construction meetings. There was an infrastructure built in to help us achieve our goal."

De La Cruz also received assistance from Reuben Brown of Houston-based BW Architects as a program consultant.

Planning For Success

Hunt Construction has built numerous new sports venues throughout the country, including SBC Center in San Antonio. Using a similar MWBE program in building the NBA champion San Antonio Spurs' new home last year, the company turned to one of the fastest-growing, Hispanic-owned construction firms in Texas: the Houston-based Trevino Group Inc.

The Trevino Group supplied project superintendents as well as consultants such as De La Cruz, who in turn was charged with making sure the construction team featured a distinctive Houston flavor. He immediately established an alliance with the area's three major minority organizations: the city of Houston, Houston Minority Business Council and the Women's Business Enterprise Alliance.

"Networking through those entities, we sponsored town meetings, barbecues and other similar events," De La Cruz said. "We attended breakfasts and gave small, five-minute talks, we ran notices in organizational newsletters, sent out emails and did everything else we could think of to get the word out."

Some minority and women-owned businesses were not large enough to bid on entire construction packages for the project.

"When we received interest from those companies, we were often able to team them with larger, non-minority companies that were interested in complying with our 30-percent participation level," De La Cruz said. "Those collaborations allowed companies which may not have otherwise been able to bid successfully on this project to secure contracts.

"The bottom line of that is that we had companies that not only established relationships on this project, but now they have something in common moving forward to other projects. Even the businesses that were not able to secure contracts for this project were able to begin a dialogue with larger contracting firms that will benefit them in the future."

The Toyota Center project awarded more than $16 million in contracts to women-owned businesses in the Houston area and was ranked No. 6 among the top 25 corporate projects recognized by the Women's Business Enterprise Alliance. Some of the notable women-owned businesses on the project included Sugar Land-based Jimerson Underground, which completed the extensive underground tunnel construction for the arena.

In addition to the Trevino Group, top minority-owned subcontractors that completed work on the arena project included Primis Corp. of Houston, which performed all hardscape and concrete sitework around the arena.