Remembering Sumner Redstone

Date: August 27, 2020
Location: Arlington, Texas

In August of 1992, Hurricane Andrew, a Category 5 storm, devastated South Florida. One of the casualties was the Blockbuster Corporation. Their major distribution center and data center lost operations for many days.

Blockbuster was a subsidiary of Viacom whose Chairman was Sumner Redstone. Immediately following Hurricane Andrew, Mr. Redstone made the decision to move the operation away from Hurricane prone areas. They chose McKinney Texas.

Many developers in the North Texas area were put to work competing to build the giant facility on a build-to-suit basis for Blockbuster. Bob Moore Construction teamed up exclusively with CMC Commercial Realtors. After several months of competition, our team was awarded the project.

Jesse Pruitt and Subash Gaitonde, principals of CMC and the Bob Moore Construction team worked hand in hand together to bring the huge project in ahead of schedule to meet Blockbuster’s needs.

At the time, it was the largest project Bob Moore Construction had built. It was state of the art and included several features to assure that Blockbuster operations were never interrupted by weather again. There were two independent power company electrical feeds to the facility coming from two independent grids such that if one grid went down the other was still operational. In addition, a full diesel generator operated sub-station was always on standby.

The data center was a 30,000 square-feet reinforced concrete structure designed to withstand 300mph winds. The rest of the facility included 40,000 square-feet of corporate office space and over 800,000 square-feet of distribution center.

At one time during the construction of the project, Mr. Redstone visited the site to monitor the progress. He rode in my car and we toured the entire site. He asked a lot of questions and was genuinely interested in the methods and procedures used in the construction. Mr. Redstone was very cordial and polite, and it was a pleasure to be a part of his project.

We are sorry to hear of his passing but are proud to have played a small part in his successful career.

 

Phillip W. Bell

CEO

Bob Moore Construction

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