Everything’s Bigger in Texas

This issue spotlights hospitality and entertainment projects, so when Susan Miller of 5MetaCom contacted me about a story on the new Dickies Arena in Fort Worth, Texas, I was excited for several reasons — including the fact that the project was close to the site of the 2020 International Roofing Expo, which will be held in Dallas February 4-6. But the more I dug into the story, the more complicated it looked. There was a domed roof on the main arena, which was surrounded by flat roofs. There were metal roof systems on the arena’s towers, and below was a pavilion with a standing seam metal roof system on it.

Susan wasn’t talking about any of those roofs, however; she proposed an article focusing on the plaza deck, the area that extends around every side of the 140,000-square-foot main arena and covers event space below. The plaza itself serves as an outdoor event space, and at the rodeo, attendees can look down through windows in the pavilion to view the warm-up area for horses during the event.

It was a lot of information to cover, so we included articles on both the Dickies Arena roof systems and the plaza deck in this issue. If you need another Texas-sized project, check out our article about The Star, a complex located on 91 acres in Frisco, Texas, that includes the Dallas Cowboys indoor practice facility. That project serves as the basis for the Roofing Alliance’s sixth annual Construction Management Student Competition, where teams will present their bids to the judges like actual companies offering a proposal to a general contractor. KPost Roofing & Waterproofing, the Dallas-based roofing contractor that installed the roof on the practice facility, will be working closely with the Roofing Alliance to prepare documents for the competition.

I hope to get a look at these projects and take in the student competition when I’m in Texas for the IRE. I hope to see you there. I also hope it will be a record-setting show. After all, they say everything is bigger in Texas.