Construction group calls it quits

In an announcement on its website this month, the Greater Ozarks Building Systems Association said it was disbanding after 31 years.

Board members of the trade association for metal building contractors and vendors cited declining interest and said GOBSA.org would go dark Nov. 30. The group last met in October and issued its final $3,000 installment of student scholarships – a key role in its effort to advance the construction industry – at the Nov. 1 Salute to Construction banquet.

Kurk Brown, the organization’s president-elect, said the writing was on the wall by September, after the group had canceled its three annual fundraisers earlier in the year. GOBSA's membership had dipped below 60 people during the last two years after a peak of about 90 in the years immediately prior to the recession.

“It felt like we were just trying to carry something that was big in the ‘90s and early 2000s, but had fallen away,” Brown said. “With the economy going into a nosedive, nobody wanted to put money into it.”

Membership renewal notices this year only netted responses in the single digits, according to 2012 President Walter Warren, an engineer at Warren & Goodin Inc. Engineers-Architects.

Prior to the recession, Warren said it was common for 40 to 50 people to show up at monthly meetings, which often featured guest speakers.

“Around 2008 was when things started to go south,” he said.

According to GOBSA.org, a small group of contractors met in 1981 to start the Greater Ozarks Chapter of the National Metal Building Dealers Association. Four years later, it voted to drop its national affiliation and establish the independent Greater Ozarks Building Systems Association.