Home / Development
01 Path C · Building & land developers
By the time there is a wall to build, the expensive uncertainty is already behind you. The question is not "can you build it." It is "can you get it approved, and how long."
Site development
The pad is the cheap part.
→ The short version
On a ground-up commercial project, the approvals routinely cost more calendar than the construction. Drainage, access, utility capacity, setbacks and permitted use are all knowable before you close — and every one of them is cheaper to find during due diligence than after. S&T handles land and building development, site development and entitlements, construction drawings, jurisdiction coordination and ground-up construction, and carries the same project through delivery. The party that tells you the approval timeline is the party accountable for hitting it. Weatherford, DFW, Waco and Houston.
02 Due diligence
Ordered by cost to discover late, not by sequence of work. The ones at the top are cheap to check and catastrophic to miss. Most of them can be answered in a week, before earnest money goes hard.
| No. | What to check | Why it kills, and when you can still walk | Cost if late |
|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | Permitted use & zoning | The cheapest question and the one most often assumed. If the use requires a zoning change or a specific-use permit, you are adding public hearings to your schedule — and hearings have outcomes, not durations | Deal |
| 02 | Drainage & detention | Added impervious cover means post-development runoff cannot exceed pre-development rates. If there is no room for detention, it comes out of your parking count or your building footprint | Deal |
| 03 | Utility capacity | Water, sewer, gas and electrical service have to reach the site at the capacity your use needs. Extending a main or upsizing a service is six figures and months, and the utility answers to nobody's schedule | Deal |
| 04 | Access & driveway permits | A curb cut onto a state highway is TxDOT's call, not the city's. Spacing, sight distance and turn lanes are decided by someone who has never heard of your pro forma | Deal |
| 05 | Floodplain & wetlands | FEMA mapping and any jurisdictional waters on site. A LOMR or a Corps determination is a long calendar item that no amount of money accelerates | Deal |
| 06 | Geotech & subsurface | Rock, expansive clay, fill or a buried surprise. Borings are cheap relative to a foundation redesign, and this is the item most commonly skipped to save a few thousand dollars | Six figures |
| 07 | Setbacks, parking & landscape | Ordinance-driven and unglamorous. They decide whether the building you drew actually fits on the parcel you bought, and parking count is usually what breaks first | Redesign |
| 08 | Easements & plat status | Existing easements can sit exactly where you wanted the building. An unplatted or improperly platted parcel adds a replat — with its own review cycle — before anything else can move | Months |
Nothing on this list is exotic. All of it is standard due diligence — which is exactly why it is worth publishing. A developer who has done twenty deals knows every line; one who has done two often finds out about number three from a utility letter after closing. We will walk a site and work this list with you before you close, and we do not charge for it.
03 What we carry
You can engage us for the whole arc or any piece of it. What we will not do is carry a schedule we do not control the submittals for — if someone else holds the permit, they hold the date, and we will say so rather than pretend otherwise.
04 Proof
We are not going to put someone else's building here and imply it is ours, and we are not going to write "trusted by developers across Texas" under a stock photo.
This page launches with the scope stated plainly and the proof section empty on purpose. Ground-up project references are furnished during proposal, and named case studies go here as owners release them.
If you are evaluating us for a ground-up project right now, ask for references directly — you will get names and numbers, not a logo wall.
This block is a placeholder with a spine. The moment one real ground-up or site-development project comes back on the intake sheet, it becomes a case study card here and this page gets its hero treatment.
An empty proof section that says so costs you nothing. A confident one a developer cannot verify costs you the referral network he sits in — and developers check.
05 Questions we get before anyone signs anything
Yes, and it is the single highest-value thing we do. Send the parcel and the intended use and we will walk it, work the eight-item list above, and tell you what we find. If the answer is that the site cannot carry the use, you will hear that — early, while walking away is still free. We do not charge for this and there is no obligation attached to it.
Somebody else, always — and be careful with any contractor who tells you otherwise. S&T is a general contractor and construction manager. Sealed civil, structural, mechanical, electrical, plumbing and fire-protection documents are prepared and sealed by independently retained Texas-licensed professional engineers, and architectural documents by a registered architect where the size or scope of the work requires one. We produce construction drawings and the permit set within the Texas exemption for smaller commercial buildings, and we bring in the registered professionals when the project needs them. What we hold is the contract, the building permit and the schedule.
It depends almost entirely on whether the use is already permitted. If it is, you are dealing with administrative review on a fairly predictable cadence. If it needs a zoning change or a specific-use permit, you have added public hearings — and a hearing is an outcome, not a duration. Nobody can promise you a date on that, and anyone who does is selling something. What we can do is tell you which category you are in during due diligence, which is the answer that actually affects your decision.
Yes, and often the owner already has an architect and a civil consultant engaged. We will coordinate around them and build. If you would rather we assemble the team, we will retain them and manage the interfaces. Either way the arrangement is written down before work starts, because the most expensive ambiguity on a ground-up job is who is responsible for the submittal.
Small to mid-size commercial — shells, multi-tenant buildings, flex and light industrial, restaurant and retail pads. We are not going to bid a mid-rise, and telling you that is more useful than a capability statement that claims everything. If your project is outside what we can carry well, we would rather say so and stay in your phone for the one that fits.
No. Due diligence alone, entitlements alone, the permit package alone, or the whole arc on one contract.
06 Start
We will walk it, work the list, and tell you what stands between the dirt and a Certificate of Occupancy — before you owe us anything.
Bring these
Parcel and survey if you have one
Intended use and rough program
Survey or title commitment, if in hand
Target delivery date
Where we work
Weatherford · DFW · Waco · Houston
— and everywhere in between
