Satterfield & Pontikes Completes Wal-Mart Supercenters

By Camelia Bulea, Associate Editor

Satterfield & Pontikes Construction Inc. has completed three new Wal-Mart Supercenters in Corpus Christi. The centers were all finished in under a year.

The San Antonio business unit of Satterfield & Pontikes built two of the three Wal-Marts. One is a 180,000-square-foot Supercenter on Staples Street, on the site of the former Parkdale Plaza shopping mall, according to the San Antonio Business Journal. The second is located on Saratoga Boulevard. Construction costs for the two Walmart Supercenters were $11.8 million and $13 million, respectively.

The third retail project, built by Sattterfield & Pontikes’ Houston business unit, is located on Flour Bluff Drive in Corpus Christi. All three stores were built with energy-efficient features that reduce energy and water usage, the San Antonio Business Journal reported.

According to the Houston-based Satterfield & Pontikes’s Web site, the general contractor has built more than 20 supercenters and a regional distribution facility for Wal-Mart, totaling millions of square feet.

And Wal-Mart is not the only business hiring in the area. The unemployment rate in the San Antonio-New Braunfels area dropped from November to December 2011. According to a report released by Workforce Solutions Alamo, unemployment in the metropolitan area fell to 6.8 percent in December, according to the San Antonio Business Journal.

The report states that there were 69,000 people listed as categorically unemployed in November 2011, while in December 2011 there were 67,000 people. The San Antonio unemployment rate was 1.5 percent lower than that of the nation, which in December measured 8.3 percent.