San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Prominent builder discusses challenges
San Antonio-based contractor G.W. Mitchell Construction is among the companies behind some of the city’s most iconic buildings, including the Villita Assembly building downtown, the building that’s now the McNay Art Museum, Alamo Heights High School, the former Clear Channel Communications headquarters near Alamo Quarry Market, buildings at the former Kelly Air Force base and the University of Texas Medical School that’s now the Health Science Center.
When the Spurs needed more room, the firm raised the roof of the team’s former arena at Hemisfair — “an engineering feat,” president Bill Mitchell said.
George W. Mitchell founded the company in 1921 after graduating from Texas A&M University and serving in the Army in World War I.
He built houses on San Antonio’s South Side before shifting to larger custom homes, commercial work and schools. In 1929, he built the Atkinson residence that would eventually become the McNay.
Over the decades, the company built office buildings, churches, industrial structures, schools, automotive dealerships and health care clinics — primarily in San Antonio but also in other cities across Texas.
And along the way, Mitchell Construction has defied the odds that work against family companies surviving multiple generations.
Bill Mitchell, who joined the company in 1982 after working for Texaco Inc.’s engineering department in Houston, is among the fourth generation of the Mitchell family to lead it. At any given time, the company is working on 13 to 15 projects, currently including a medical clinic on the
South Side and a Ford dealership on the East Side.
“It’s fun to go drive around and see the jobs that you’ve had a part in,”
Mitchell said. “That’s really very rewarding.”
Mitchell recently talked to the Express-News about how the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting real estate and how he manages to avoid clashing with
the family members he works with. The following has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Q: What additional segments has the company expanded to since you joined it?
A: We’re still in the medical business, and it’s one of our focuses. We do a lot of automotive dealerships — that wasn’t really a focus back then. We’re working a little bit on the industrial side on manufacturing
facilities, which is a fairly new endeavor for us. We’re still doing churches. Churches have been a backbone of ours since back when my grandfather went into the