From the needs of local health care facilities and universities to the vacuum of outer space, Arlington-based SBL Architecture has been helping clients design their business facilities for more than 30 years.
Founded in 1994 by James Little and Michael Barnett, the firm specializes in the health care, hospitality, sports and entertainment, and institutional design arenas.
Arlington City Council recently gave the go-ahead for an SBL project to expand the booming Arlington-based aerospace products manufacturer Circuit Systems Co. Inc.
Circuit Systems will add about 23,000 square feet to its facility on West Pioneer Parkway to accommodate additional manufacturing space. The original building was a liquor store that was converted to manufacturing.
Circuit Systems is a family-owned business that launched in 1983 and is owned by Arlington businessman Grady King. It is one of a few U.S.-based, first-tier contract manufacturers making aerospace bonding jumper cables, bus bars and grounding straps.
The property at 5301 W. Pioneer Parkway spans 7.168 acres north of West Pioneer Parkway and west of West Green Oaks Boulevard. A part of the property is developed with the original 11,880-square-foot building. The company’s products are used in all commercial and military aircraft as well as many other aerospace applications, including the F-22 and F-35 aircraft from Fort Worth-based Lockheed Martin Aeronautics, and on the International Space Station.
In 2015, King bought and moved into what was previously a Big Daddy’s liquor store that had been vacant for a while. King had plans to expand the building, as business grew and that growth has become a reality.
Council member Andrew Piel said during the Oct. 14 council meeting that he was impressed with the expansion.
“I do want to say this is the best adaptive reuse of a liquor store ever in the history of mankind,” Piel said.
SBL principal Jordan Pennington is the lead on the Circuit Systems project and Barnett said that Pennington has known King for years.
“Grady and Jordan had met each other years ago, and they talked about it. Jordan had done a preliminary kind of study for him several years ago,” said Barnett. He said that Arlington-based engineering firm MMA also is working on the expansion.
“Our first contact was with Jordan Pennington through a recommendation by MMA. When he moved to SBL and had already started with preliminary plans for the expansion, we naturally moved with him,” King said. “Our relationship with SBL has been very satisfying to this point and is moving along according to our schedule and priorities. Jordan and his team are well qualified and responsive to our needs and questions.”
King said that when the remodel was finished on the former Big Daddy’s liquor store in 2017, “we moved from four smaller locations in Arlington and almost immediately filled the space.”
He said that in anticipation of further expansion, the original plans included the remodel and purchase of adjoining property for the future.
“In the years since, we have added more equipment as well as purchasing a complete and operating machine shop that is presently in one of the old, smaller locations we moved from.”
King said the original plans for Circuit Systems’ growth called for a 9,300-square-foot expansion, but the company amended it to about 23,000 square feet.
Barnett said that expansion based on an older building presents opportunities as well as challenges.
“Fortunately, the function is close to the same as in the old, and we’re going to do in the new,” Barnett said. “We’re bringing it all up to code, current codes, and then it’s just, how you plan the expansion has to connect in certain places so it all flows properly.”
King said, “Hopefully, we anticipate being able to be fully operational by the first quarter of 2027. Keeping fingers crossed, we still have a long way to go.”
As a longtime Arlington businessman, King said the city has plenty to help businesses grow.
“Commercially, being centrally located in the AFWD (Arlington, Fort Worth, Dallas) area as well as the international airport is a great advantage to all local, national and international markets,” King said. “We have experienced great cooperation and help from the Arlington City Council, the Arlington Economic Development Corp., the planning and zoning department through Douglas Cooper and Nikki Moore with MMA Inc. and their expertise.”
Along with being business friendly, King said that Arlington is a good place to live.
“Personally, I have seen Arlington grow from being a ‘bedroom community’ to one of international recognition as a major destination for entertainment and sports venues as well as maintaining the ‘family first’ attitude that makes it a great place to raise a family and live comfortably and safely,” he said.
SBL has many other projects underway in addition to Circuit Systems, Barnett said.
“We do other projects besides health care, but health care is the majority,” Barnett said. “We work at several different universities in Texas, and we’ve got a new client — Carter BloodCare.”
SBL is working on Carter’s corporate headquarters in Bedford.
“We just broke ground on a new expansion to their corporate headquarters on 121 in Bedford,” he said.
As a mid-size architecture firm, Barnett said that SBL does work all over the country.
Barnett said that locally, the firm has worked for USMD, JPS in Fort Worth and in Arlington where the firm has done several clinics for them. SBL also is working on a surgery center and it’s working on a clinic for Cook Children’s in Burleson.
Lance Murray is a freelance contributor covering business for the Arlington Report.
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