Dallas Blog

Thanks for the heads-up. It is working now.

RE DART Green Line Contractor Comment

I had 2nd thoughts on my comment as I hadn't bothered to research the major contractor on the DART Green Line project

I had envisioned a suite of shabby offices in Detroit with babe of a receptionist named Kitten wearing a red hard over raven black hair. The Detroit Mayor was cooling his heels with guys in the coffee break room.
He had just returned from one of his frequent
trips to Dallas......

So I looked them up at:
http://www.archerwesternherzog.com/

They at least have a website and they have
offices in Dallas. They even have a PR guy:

Eddie Belmarez
D/M/WBE & Community Relations Liaison
Archer Western Herzog
DART CM/GC-3 Project
Phone: 214-876-0052
Fax: 214-352-0608

I didn't call him as I'm just an interested
reader not an investigative journalist. Maybe he will have more information than Kitten.

The website looked pretty much like DART is their only customer and their doesn't seem to be much other than boiler plate stuff. I enjoyed the Quality Control and Safety sections.

I want to apologize for my cynical attitude regarding them in my previous comment. It was not as accurate as it should have been.

Archer Western-Herzog is the team building the northern 13 miles of the Green Line, from Inwood to Carrollton. It's actually a separate contract from the project discussed here.

Archer Western Brunson Carcon is the name of the group building the southeast section of the Green Line, from downtown to Buckner Blvd., as well as from Victory Park to Inwood. That's the one contract that Schutze wrote about.

Although both teams are clearly led by the same company (Archer Western), each team actually has a separate office here in Dallas, and thus presumably different staff involved in each project. Someone you contact at the above listed web site may not know anything about the issues with the work in East Dallas.

"Interesting note Carcon Industries' tag line is 'A Hispanic Woman Owned General Contractor.' "

Most projects funded by taxpayers require that a certain percentage (often between 15%-30%) of contract value go to small businesses owned by women and/or minorities, often known as Disadvantaged Business Enterprises, or DBEs. This is not exclusive to Dallas; it happens nationwide. Sometimes privately funded projects do the same...for good public relations, I guess.

It's a policy that was rooted in good intentions, but it has led to the formation of companies whose primary value-added is helping regular contractors fulfill their DBE requirements. I'm not saying all DBEs are this way, nor do I know anything about Brunson or Carcon. But if a company meets the requirements for a DBE, they'd be foolish not to market themselves that way.