The Beck Group, architect of Fort Worth Inc.'s 2019 Dream Office project under construction in the West Side River District, has been building its resume for years.
The firm, with a Fort Worth office for 14 years, is general contractor for the new Dickies Arena under construction. It built Sundance Square Plaza, including the Commerce and Westbrook buildings downtown, and it built the Piano Pavilion at the Kimbell Art Museum. Its longstanding relationship with TCU includes the TCU Frog Alley Parking Garage, which it designed and built. Beck also is making a big push into design.
"We've been known as a construction firm, but important for us building our reputation as a designer," Scot Bennett, regional director of Beck's Fort Worth office says.
Beck has designed several buildings in The River District, a mixed-use West Side development led by developer Fort Capital. The Dream Office is the first of Beck's buildings, a 22,000-square-foot building underway at White Settlement Road and Nursery Lane. PRIM Construction is the general contractor, and Royer Commercial is designing furnishings for the interior common areas and rooftop deck. The Dream Office, rapidly filling with tenants, will follow an old-industrial style, with 1800s-era interior brick salvaged from a defunct factory in South Carolina. The exterior brick will be of a vintage style.
As in the long-running series of Dream Homes and Showcase Homes put on by Fort Worth Inc.'s sister publication, Fort Worth Magazine, Fort Worth Inc. and PRIM Construction are teaming with some of the area's finest vendors to build a project with the latest design trends and amenities. The $3.6 million building is scheduled to be complete in the spring.
The Dream Office, and Beck's series of planned follow-up buildings it's designed in the district for Fort Capital, is an opportunity for Beck to showcase its design capabilities. The firm has seven designers in its Fort Worth office. "As we've really tried to push design out there, we've been slowly recruiting talent," Hoyt Hammer, a Fort Worth office principal, says. About 25 percent of Fort Worth office projects are design-build, which allows the firm to manage clients" expectations more easily. "I want to work with my own construction people," Hammer says.
Traditionally, clients separate design and build. "It's difficult to tear [the silos] down," Hammer says. "The newer generation is looking at what we're doing from an integration perspective a lot more closely. The pendulum hasn't swung yet. It's still very traditional."
Beck began developing its relationship with Fort Capital several years ago when Hammer and Fort Capital's CEO, Chris Powers, met. The relationship kicked into higher gear early in 2017, and Fort Capital brought Beck on to design several buildings in the River District. "Like a lot of relationships in Fort Worth, they take time to build," Bennett says.
