NRMCA Vice President, National Resources, Amy Miller was recently invited by an NRMCA Producer member to meet a developer who also serves as his own general contractor. This developer has built and continues to build Dollar General projects. When the pricing question arose, the contractor shared a spreadsheet he recently populated with numbers of initial construction of parking lots in both concrete and asphalt: concrete was lower. The contractor went on to add that the company had conducted a financial analysis on maintenance and learned that concrete maintenance was 20% of the cost of asphalt maintenance.

‘The maintenance dollars are of particular importance to developers, like this one, who enter triple-net lease arrangements," Miller said. "These deals are becoming more popular as they place the full responsibility of maintenance on one party. In this scenario, the developer/contractor gathered pricing from his own subcontractors and determined he could save money at the time of construction and on an ongoing basis as well by building with concrete. Needless to say, in 2014 this developer plans on constructing all upcoming Dollar General projects with concrete."

For more information, contact Amy Miller at amiller@nrmca.org.