'Consultive contracting' builds repeat business

At the northern end of the nearly two-mile-long Domestic Avenue, off Alico Road in Fort Myers, stand three adjacent industrial plants either under construction or recently completed. It’s a gradually developing industrial area of southern Lee County, where afternoon winds whip dust across open fields beneath the glide path, just west of Southwest Florida International Airport and Interstate 75.

What the three plants comprising 360,000 square feet of office and manufacturing space and $19.4 million in construction costs have in common is the general contractor building them: Fort Myers-based Chris-Tel Construction. It's a 30-year-old firm founded by owner and president Howard Wheeler at age 22 as a one-man, high-end residential renovation company.