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The following
article is a reprint from the national Rural Builder
magazine, December 2005:
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Full Story
December 2005
Horse
Barn Builder: Equine explosion
By Mark Ward, Sr.
W hen
you’ve got eight Wal-Marts within a 30-mile radius, most
of them built in the last five years, “then you know
your area is growing very fast!” exclaims Bill Myrick,
president of Myrick Construction Inc. in Pea Ridge,
Arkansas.
 Anchored by the twin
cities of Fayetteville and Springdale, the economic boom
of northwest Arkansas prompted Myrick to set up shop
with his own AMKO Buildings in 2001. Since then he’s
been building steel-truss-and-wood-frame horse barns
“from the economical to the eloquent,” plus other
structures from suburban garages to commercial
warehouses.
Myrick’s journey into the horse barn business started 40
years ago when he began as a feed and fertilizer
salesman in southern Iowa. Soon he leveraged his
customer base and entered the agricultural construction
business, becoming an Iowa representative for Morton and
later Wick Buildings. After the Iowa economy slowed
during the recession of the early 1980s, Myrick and his
wife Eva decided to pull up stakes in 1986 and take a
friend’s advice to head for northwest Arkansas.
 Predictions of an
economic explosion proved accurate. Then, as development
began to transform the region, Myrick found his market
moving away from agricultural construction and into
commercial and residential opportunities. “I was the
division manager for an existing building company,” he
recalls, “but they were focused on poultry facilities
and I was the only one of their dealers who was doing
barns and buildings.” Thus in 2001 Myrick founded his
own AMKO Buildings brand, a name taken from the initials of
the four states in his sales territory: Arkansas,
Missouri, Kansas, and Oklahoma.
 Back then, Myrick
built one or two equestrian facilities per year. Now he
builds about a dozen, from small two-stall backyard
barns to large complexes of up to 20 stalls with indoor
riding arena and offices. Along the way, his company,
which uses steel roofing and siding panels from Jenisys
Engineered Products, has become a dealer for Plyco (barn
doors, windows, and stall components) and Ritchie
Industries (stall watering systems) in order to offer
AMKO customers a complete equestrian package.
“It’s surprising to me how many horses we have in just
our two-county area of northwest Arkansas,” Myrick says.
“The way our area has developed, most of our horse barn
customers are people who have jobs in marketing or
administration. They often live in gated communities
that have horse trails and boarding. When they’re ready
to move up to a barn of their own, that’s where I can
help.” Myrick figures about half of his equestrian
contracts are obtained through word of mouth and the
remainder through local newspaper and yellow pages
advertising, plus his own company Web site at
www.amkobldgs.com.
 Today Myrick
estimates that 75 percent of AMKO’s work is in
commercial and residential projects and the other 25
percent in horse barns. Or put another way, equestrian
facilities increase his bottom line by one-third.
“There are a lot of red-iron builders in our area doing
commercial work,” he says, “and at age 67, I don’t want
to get into a head-to-head, cutthroat competition. Horse
barns are a good market for me because it’s less
competitive, and the clientele is loyal and more
concerned about craftsmanship than price. And as a farm
boy myself, I enjoy building horse barns!”
AMKO Buildings is aided in its quest for horse barn
contracts by offering a product that stands out from
competitors.
Its innovative steel-truss-and-wood-frame system allows
for greater clear-span ceiling heights and increased
endwall door versatility. “We engineer and manufacture
our own steel trusses,” Myrick says, “and our designs
are engineered for bracing throughout the building.
Also, because our trusses are designed to be 12 feet
on-center — and most horse stalls are 12 feet wide — our
product lends itself real well to equestrian
facilities.”
 In addition, with
three experienced crews and about a dozen employees,
Myrick believes his steel-truss-and-wood-frame building
system is fast and economical. As an example, he cites
AMKO’s recent construction of the Mader barn and indoor
arena. Though the owners wanted a building with a
T-shaped design and needed sophisticated ventilation and
environmental controls to house their champion show
horses, the facility was built for only $160,000.
To create a front
view of the barn with the desired residential look, AMKO
designed a covered front porch accented by carriage wall
lighting, gridded windows with shutters, and sliding
front doors with gridded windows. The barn exterior also
reflected a residential look by breaking up the metal
wall siding with 36-inch color-matched wainscoting. The
living quarters themselves achieved a residential feel
with the addition of attractive roof dormers for natural
lighting.
 The 40-foot-wide
barn itself was built with a number of innovative
features. Stall fronts were designed with center-entry
sliding doors, rather than having the doors to one side
as is common, so that each stall’s feeder and waterer
could be located in opposite front wall corners. So the
owners could quickly create a two-stall foaling area
when needed, Myrick and his team designed stall divider
walls with sliding-bolt vertical latches at the top so
that any wall can easily be swung out and lifted. The
barn connects lengthwise to the center of the
72-foot-long riding arena.
Yet if hinged doors were used between the two areas, as
with most barns, the doors when open would cover up
several of the horse stalls. The owners did not want an
overhead door so AMKO designed and built a pair of
attractive knotty pine “pocket-type” wooden sliding
doors.
 Because the barn and
arena meet at the center of the arena’s long wall,
normally the opening between the two would have been
bisected by a steel truss leg.
Instead, the single leg was eliminated by substituting a
set of legs and cross-header to bear the roof truss at
that point. Also, at the endwall where the arena opens
to the outside, AMKO installed special “high-lift”
overhead doors so that the door rails would remain well
above the height of a mounted rider.
 To board their
champion show horses, the owners required fresh-air
ventilation as well as the ability to control climate
changes through the seasons. The challenge was met as
Myrick subcontracted a local ventilation company to
build 36- and 48-inch custom roof cupolas with
electronically controlled louvers. The owner likewise
desired to maximize natural lighting in the arena, but
without significant loss of insulation value or creating
water and condensation problems, as often happens from
using roof-type skylight panels. AMKO provided the
answer by installing large endwall gables, together with
smaller wall-type skylight panels.
 “The Plyco and
Ritchie dealerships are good for us,” Myrick says,
“because we’re able to supply all of our own horse barn
components without having to buy them at retail. More
important, we can serve our customers by giving them
turnkey facilities.” Equestrian building is also a good
fit for Myrick’s company because, he believes, “the
actual construction of a horse barn isn’t all that
different from other commercial and residential
buildings we do. So our crews can handle these projects
very well. The main difference is that, with livestock,
environment equals money. The interior has to be the
right environment for the animals inside.”
As for the outside environment, Myrick says northwest
Arkansas has the right mix — plenty of water and a mild
climate — to fuel economic growth into the foreseeable
future. “The region has really bloomed in the last three
to five years,” he says, “and building horse barns is
giving our company a great way to profit from that
growth.”
Copyright 2004-2007 Myrick Construction, Inc.
Exclusive Manufacturers of AMKO Quality Metal
Buildings™
Northwest Arkansas; Arkansas, Missouri, Kansas, and
Oklahoma
All
Rights Reserved
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Myrick
Construction, Inc.
