As a fourth-generation family-owned company, G.W. Mitchell Construction can point to dozens of local projects as examples of its work, including some of San Antonio’s most notable buildings.
In addition to houses on the South Side and one that’s now a museum, the company also built Alamo Heights High School, the San Antonio Municipal Airport terminal and La Villita Assembly Hall, all in the 1950s.
Now with more than a century under its tool belt, the company has new offices and a very large and noteworthy project underway, the kind of place the local builder has become known for over the years.
The Cavender Ford Truck Center under construction on 26 acres of the former site of Splashtown water park will be about seven times the size of the average auto dealership when it is completed in fall 2024.
G.W. Mitchell is one of the only contractors in San Antonio that specializes in auto dealerships, said Dan Houghton, facilities director for the Cavender Auto Group, and has become one of two builders the auto group relies on. Founded in 1939, Cavender also is a longtime business in San Antonio.
“[Mitchell] did the original build on our Cadillac store, and just the relationships that we’ve had with them throughout the years has been very, very good,” Houghton said. Their expertise is critical, as well.
“For the contractor to be able to disseminate all the different areas and everything that has to come together to make a dealership work, they’ve got to really understand the dealership world,” he added.
The company began as a homebuilder, founded by George W. Mitchell in 1921.
“He went to [Texas] A&M and he didn’t graduate because he got called into WWI before he graduated,” said G.W.’s grandson Bill Mitchell, president of G.W. Mitchell Construction. “But when he got back, he just started his own construction business and he built homes.”
One of his first big breaks was the Atkinson residence, built in the late 1920s on ranchland north of downtown San Antonio. Designed in the Spanish-Colonial revival style, the residence is now the McNay art museum.
The elder George had three sons who followed him into the business: George, Bob and Melvin.
“My father [Melvin] is 92 and he comes in five days a week and he works every day,” with reduced hours, Bill Mitchell said. “He’s still here and he’s the chairman of the board and will remain so until such a time as he can’t do that anymore.”
Bill Mitchell’s two brothers, Lane and Andy, joined the company’s leadership team in the 1980s, and his son Matt started working at G.W. Mitchell as a senior project manager three years ago.
Another son, Will, manages the Pella Windows and Doors franchise owned by the family. “It’s great to be able to be here with him in the same building and just create some good synergy,” he said.
The group marked its 102nd anniversary this year by moving into new headquarters. The 40,000-square-foot office building at 1926 Gulfmart St. features views of takeoffs and landings at the San Antonio International Airport.
In 2022, G.W. Mitchell crews began construction on the truck center. The project involved extensive environmental remediation due to the 1950s-era landfill that existed there before Splashtown was built in 1985, Houghton said.
When complete, the facility will be the largest truck center in South Texas and have a large commercial sales department, in addition to consumer retail. But it’s not considered a Ford dealership, he said.
Dealerships sell all Ford-manufactured cars and Ford trucks up to a 1-ton capacity. A Ford truck center sells only sport utility vehicles and medium- and large-body trucks.
In addition to auto dealerships, G.W. Mitchell built the Laurie Auditorium, the South Texas Medical School and Hemisfair Arena, later raising the roof on that sports venue to create more capacity in 1978.
“I don’t know if anything like that had ever been done before,” said Bill Mitchell, who was a teenager at the time and recalls how hydraulic jacks were used to push the roof up. “Then we built the structure underneath and built the walls around it and all that while it was still being used by the Spurs.”
The company will begin work in January on a Pre-K 4 SA building on the East Side, Bill Mitchell said, and is building a Health By Design medical clinic on Roosevelt Avenue and working on several multifamily residential projects.
Earlier this month, G.W. Mitchell broke ground on the Texas Cavaliers Education Center at the Alamo.
The company employs 60 people and works mostly in San Antonio and a few other places throughout the state, but expects to expand into Oklahoma doing work for one of its clients.
Though finding labor is still a challenge, as are delays in the supply chain resulting from the COVID pandemic, the construction business is good, Mitchell said.
G.W. Mitchell is one of a handful of San Antonio’s family-owned, construction-industry-related firms marking 100 years or so in business, including Guido Construction (1927), Allen & Allen Lumber and Hardware (1931) and Cardona Welding (1921).
A map of San Antonio’s legacy businesses can be found here.
Doing business as a family is also good, Bill Mitchell said. “We were just blessed with good parents and … we get along well and we respect each other and when we disagree, we disagree respectfully. So it’s been fun.”
