We Covered a Lot of Ground in 2019

By all accounts, 2019 has been a banner year for the St. Louis construction community. Cranes, bulldozers and construction crews are visible across every corner of our region.

It was also a great year for Castle Contracting as our team completed work on several high-profile projects, expanded to new regions and volunteered to enrich our communities. And we set up our future for success by achieving our best sales year ever in 2019 and securing Castle’s largest backlog in company history heading into 2020.

Because so much of our work occurs at the earliest stages of construction, it’s not always as noticeable as other parts of commercial developments. But we were proud to play a significant role in several prominent projects that wrapped up construction in 2019. These include major components of the East End transformation at Washington University in St. Louis, the seismic renovation of the Robert A. Young Federal Building downtown and the soon-to-open St. Louis Aquarium at Union Station.

Castle is fortunate to work on projects at various scales and across many different market sectors. Our current engagements range from electrical infrastructure upgrades on Saint Louis University’s north campus to site development of the new La Collina residential development in the Hill neighborhood. On this project, Castle’s in-house civil design and construction teams worked directly with Chicago-based developer Draper and Kramer. We’re excited to expand this unique civil design-build offering in 2020.

This year, we also brought innovative solutions to our clients, such as our collaboration with Triton Stormwater Solutions and Hanes Geo Components on the first Missouri installation of the Triton stormwater management system at HBE Corporation's office building in Creve Coeur.

Other Castle projects completed in 2019 included site work for City Foundry STL, a new parking lot and tunnel for TD Ameritrade, and several water main replacement projects for Missouri American Water.

And speaking of water mains, our emergency services team worked overnight last April to repair a water main break at Ladue Middle School. Thanks to their expertise, the school reopened the following day.    

Earning Recognition

Serving clients is always our top priority, but we’re also proud to receive recognition for our team’s hard work.

Castle projects and people earned numerous awards in 2019, including:

• The Gateway Arch redevelopment racked up numerous accolades, including “Project of the Year” in the 2019 Building St. Louis Awards presented by the St. Louis Business Journal; “Best Project” winner in the ENR Global Project of the Year Awards; and a Gold Award in the Reconstruction Awards, presented by Building Design + Construction.

• The Pedestrian Bridge Replacement at Washington University in St. Louis (which we worked on with Tarlton Corporation) earned Best Practices and Diversity Awards from the St. Louis Council of Construction Consumers.

• The AGC of Missouri recognized our safety performance with the 2018 Zero Recordable Accidents Safety Award and 2018 Construction Project Safety Award for the Washington University East End Transformation project.

• Journeywoman Danyeal Crittenden received an honorable mention in the Missouri Women in Trades (MoWIT) Tradeswoman of the Year Awards.

• These awards not only recognize the exceptional efforts of our own people, but also the many industry partners we collaborate with to bring these amazing projects to life.

Expanding Our Impact

Castle continued to expand our footprint outside St. Louis through project work that included the new Tomahawk Creek Wastewater Treatment Facility in Johnson County, Kansas, and a new solar farm development in Shiawassee County, Michigan.

We also planted a flag in Omaha, establishing our first permanent local team outside of St. Louis, with office space to follow in 2020. This is an exciting growth market for us, and we’re thrilled to work on high-profile projects such as a Facebook data center in Papillion, Nebraska.

Castle now ranks among the top 50 specialty contractors in the Midwest and one of the 500 largest specialty contractors in the U.S., according to ENR. 

Growing Our Team

In 2019, we welcomed a few new team members and celebrated several promotions.  

Jeremy Wood joined our MEP civil team as project manager and Tanner Bunch (a former intern) came onboard as project engineer. Dustin Moyer joined our Omaha team as project manager. We were also excited to welcome back Estimator Tanner Search, who returned to Castle after briefly working at another company.

Both Stacey Lampe and Dan Grasham were promoted to project manager, and other promotions included Angie Langford to project accountant, Lisa Niemeier to project coordinator and Trey Patterson to senior regional safety manager.

We also celebrated the successful careers of retired partners Kimberly Staats, who was with Castle for 16 years, and Gary Chasteen, who had worked with us for nine years.

Enhancing Our Communities

This year, our people donated their time, expertise and resources to many organizations, including Home Sweet Home, Women’s Safe House, The BackStoppers and Missouri Military Memorial Foundation. Castle also helped to revitalize St. Louis city neighborhoods as part of Operation Clean Sweep, the largest clean-up operation in St. Louis history.

Several Castle team members made active commitments to the community: Stacey Lampe joined the Young Professionals Advisory Board for Junior Achievement of Greater St. Louis and the Board of Directors for NAWIC St. Louis. Christie Brinkman was appointed president of the Board of Directors for Home Sweet Home and Nora Bresnahan completed a year as president of the Board of Directors for SMPS St. Louis.

As we wrap up another successful year, we’re gearing up for an even busier 2020 that will kick off with site development work on the Next NGA West campus in north St. Louis.

Next year also represents Castle’s 25^th anniversary, and we’re planning some terrific activities to commemorate milestones that have shaped the company.

All of us at Castle are grateful to our clients and industry partners for the opportunity to work together to improve our communities.

Wishing you a terrific holiday season and a prosperous 2020.