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President’s Message - January 2014

Happy New Year!  I hope that everyone had a safe and happy holiday.  Our centennial year is over now and we are looking to get the next century of civil engineering in Texas started off on the right foot.  You may have noticed that we have reformatted our website.  We hope that this new format will be more dynamic and more user friendly than the previous version.  I would like to thank Sean Merrell, Lisa Woof, Phillip Alcorn, and all others who have put in a lot of effort to get the new website up and running.

This month, we are excited to hear from Tod Maurina, Assistant City Manager with The Colony about the Nebraska Furniture Mart development.  The Furniture Mart is a 1.9 million square foot facility, which will anchor a $1.5 billion mixed use development.  When it is complete in 2015, it will be the largest furniture store in North America.  I drive past it daily, and the size of the facility and the speed with which it is being constructed are extremely impressive.

Starting this month, we will be hosting two technical sessions per meeting.  The first technical session will be before the luncheon and will be hosted by the Construction Institute on the West 7^th Street Bridge (by Ricardo Gonzales, PE, Euless Area Engineer, TxDOT Ft. Worth District).  The second technical session will be after the luncheon and will be hosted by the Transportation and Development Institute on the DART Connection to DFW Airport (by Greg Royster, PE, Sr Airport Planner, DFW Airport Planning Department)

If one of your New Year’s resolutions is to get more involved with ASCE, we have got plenty of opportunities for you to do so.  In January, we will be participating in the Future City competition again and are looking for volunteers to help judge.  We have a couple of different fundraising events that we plan to host this year, other educational events such as Engineering Clubs and career days at local schools, and several social and charitable events hosted by the Younger Members group that we will need volunteers for. Stay tuned for more details on these events in this month’s and future months’ newsletters.

See you January 13, 2014 at the Addison Marriott!

Kristin Green, PE, ISI ENV-SP
President
ASCE Dallas Branch, 2013-2014