Reeds Spring schools, Coca-Cola construction team win top honors

The Reeds Spring School District, the team behind the Ozarks Coca-Cola/Dr Pepper Bottling Co. building project and a trio of construction and development powerhouses are the top honorees in the Salute to Design and Construction Awards.

The 41st installment of the annual awards banquet was held Nov. 13.     

The Springfield Contractors Association tapped the team behind the Ozarks Coca-Cola/Dr Pepper Bottling Co. new can line and corporate office facility as the winner of the Design Team of the Year Award.

The project, the final part of a multiphase campus-wide update, offered the century-old family-owned company a modern building with a curvilinear glass facade and Coke-red accent colors. The nomination provided by SCA also points out sustainability woven throughout the design, like natural daylight streaming through a continuous clerestory window along the factory wall, reducing the need for artificial lighting on the line operations.

The team behind the design-build project included the company’s ownership plus Buxton Kubik Dodd Design Collective, architect and mechanical, electrical and plumbing engineer; Own Inc., civil engineer; Miller Engineering LLC, structural engineer; Creative Design Consultants Inc., interior design; and Ross Construction Group LLC, construction manager.

SCA also named the Reeds Spring schools as winner of the Developer of the Year Award for its work on three projects spurred by a $40 million voter-approved bond. They are a $14.9 million primary school renovation and addition, completed in 2023; and its $36 million Table Rock Career Center and its 125-acre Wolf Pack Park, both completed in 2024, according to past SBJ reporting. 

District Superintendent Cody Hirschi credited the community for its support.

“Each project we’ve taken on is part of a broader vision to make Reeds Spring a place where every student and every family can thrive,” he said via email. “We don’t build buildings just for the sake of having new facilities; we build them to create experiences that prepare students for the world they will enter after graduation.”

Project goals
Kent Sanders, senior project architect and project manager with Buxon Kubik Dodd, said the same design and construction team has worked with Ozarks Coca-Cola/Dr Pepper Bottling Co. for multiple years, going back to the first phase of the campuswide project in 2018 – a $40 million investment that included a 432,000-square-foot expansion to the factory line, according to past SBJ reporting. The cost of the final phase of the project is undisclosed.

“We have a good relationship with Ross, Coke, our team,” Sanders said. “We’ve been working together for several years, and we just enjoy being with each other. It makes for a good team.”

Sanders said his favorite feature of the building is its glass-fronted entryway and the atrium and lobby space inside. There, artifacts from the company’s history, including a vintage delivery truck, are on display.

There were some puzzles to solve along the way, Sanders said, particularly in linking the warehouse building from the first phase with the new building in the second. A connecting wall had to be built between the two buildings to weather the time period between the phases, he said.

“It was a design challenge,” he said.

Another challenge was the need to work hand-in-hand with the vendor that provided canning equipment in the phase one project

The nomination form highlights a design that combines creativity with functionality.

“The Coca-Cola facility stands as a testament to what thoughtful, innovative design can achieve – even in the face of complex site constraints and industry-wide construction challenges,” it states. “From the outset, this project demanded a high level of creativity, coordination and technical precision to transform a previously developed corner site into a cohesive, high-performing addition to Coca-Cola’s existing campus.”

The nomination also highlights precision in execution and quality control in an era of shrinking labor pools, when managing construction quality can be challenging.

The other finalists for the design team award were the team behind the Evangel Valor Center and Randy Rowden Field House, including Buxton Kubik Dodd, RTM Engineering Consultants Inc., Fields Mechanical Systems Inc. and Williams Construction Co.; and the team behind Baird Bridge at Camp Wakonda, which included R.E. Werner Architect LLC, Miller Engineering LLC, Heithaus Engineering & Associates Inc. and Own Inc.

In Reeds Spring Hirschi said the recently completed facilities serve to reflect the principle that education is personal, purposeful and connected to the real world.

Hirschi said each project has distinctive goals. The primary school provides modern yet nurturing environments for the youngest learners to learn – “spaces that invite creativity, exploration and joy,” he said.

The career center, which serves 11 school districts, allows high school students to earn credentials, college credit and confidence in their futures, he said, and Wolf Pack Park provides a central place for families to gather and children to play.

“For years, our region had incredible natural assets such as lake and outdoor recreation, but no true central gathering space for families,” he said. The park bridges that gap, he added.

“It has become a hub for connection and community pride, something our entire area needed,” Hirschi said.

Lifetime Achievement Awards
Three Lifetime Achievement Awards were presented – two posthumously – by the Salute Council to recognize recipients’ lifetime commitment to the design and construction industry. They are Dwain Gold; the late Sheryl Letterman, who died in September; and the late Bill Nesbitt, who died in October.

Dwain Gold, founder of Gold Mechanical Inc., is retired now, but he told Springfield Business Journal he is thrilled to be recognized with a Lifetime Achievement Award.

“When you retire and you go away, you wonder if you’re thought of at all,” he said. “It makes it special that I’m still thought of in the construction industry.”

Gold said he also thinks well of the industry.

“It treated my family and me well over the years,” he said. “I grew to have many friends in the industry, and I feel blessed.”

Gold said he and his wife, Mary Jo, began small.

“We had $8,000 in the bank and an old, wore-out blue truck,” he said.

He said other contractors helped him in his early days.

“I look back and think, wow, those companies gave basically one man and a truck an opportunity to build a business,” he said. “It really touches me that they would do that. There are a lot of good contractors in Springfield, and they were the ones that helped me get a foothold in the business.”

Ron Bogart, current CEO of Gold Mechanical, said Gold is a deserving recipient of the honor.

Bogart said Gold said farewell on his last day in April 2015.

“I thought, ‘He’ll be in next week,’” Bogart said. “I was wrong. He knew if he hung around we wouldn’t take off.”

The rest of that year, Bogart said, Gold came in twice – once for a board matter that required his attention and once to use the copier.

Now the company holds a founder’s day celebration each July, Bogart said, and Gold always comes by to hear a report on the new share price for the year as the company celebrates the man who made it happen.

Gold declines to speak, however, Bogart said – he gets choked up.

Bogart said Gold is doing retirement right and having a great time with his children and grandchildren.

“It’s been nice for me that I can continue to learn from him on what my next phase is going to be when I get on the other side of it,” he said.

Letterman led SCA as executive director for nearly three decades, from 1986 to 2015, according to SBJ reporting. She died Sept. 29 at the age of 74.

During her time with SCA, she helped lead the construction of its headquarters at 1313 N. Nias Ave. after starting with no formal office.

Outside of her professional life, Letterman also helped to launch the organization Women in Need of the Ozarks, which helps area women in short-term financial crisis.

Bill Nesbitt, who founded Nesbitt Construction Inc. in 1977, died Oct. 22 at age 82, according to SBJ reporting. His son Michael became president in 2017 and owner in 2022.

Michael Nesbitt praised his father in a statement at the time of his passing. He said his father devoted time to doing projects the right way, to the extent that he often spent his own time and money to build something right instead of the way it was drawn up. He also put his employees’ needs before the company’s bottom line, the statement said.

Nesbitt devoted his time outside of the office to the Springfield Symphony Orchestra, the SCA and the Springfield Area Chamber of Commerce.

Additional awards
The American Institute of Architects was scheduled to surprise two people with awards at the event: Craftsman of the Year Nathaniel Turner with Performance Contracting Inc. for his work on Reed Academy and Superintendent of the Year David Simkins with Nabholz Construction Corp. for his work on the Springfield-Branson National Airport general aviation terminal.

The National Association of Women in Construction presented two Outstanding Women in Construction Awards: the Rosebud Award, for someone who has been in the industry for less than 10 years, to Jessi Looney of Springfield Builders Inc., and the Vesta Award, for someone who has been in the industry for 10 years or longer, to Stephanie San Paolo with DeWitt & Associates Inc.

The agenda for the event at Oasis Convention Center also included the presentation of 32 scholarships, the recognition of four Missouri State University teams that placed in the Associated Schools of Construction Region IV Management Competition and a display of the annual photo contest award winners.