Arlington Construction and Weather Data for Cranes and Heavy Equipment

Last reviewed 2026-10-24. Journalists, researchers, and community groups are welcome to cite any figure on this page with attribution and a link.

Arlington's Entertainment District, home to AT&T Stadium, Globe Life Field, Choctaw Stadium, Texas Live!, the Loews hotels and the National Medal of Honor Museum, keeps adding work. In its April 21, 2026 notice on the AT&T Stadium lease extension, the City of Arlington says the Dallas Cowboys will invest a minimum of $750 million in the stadium, finished by 2043, and the City's June 3, 2026 notice announced the old Sheraton's implosion to make way for a 507-room Americana by Loews hotel. This page sets out the published numbers behind projects like these in Arlington and ten nearby cities, along with the heat, wind and storm records that decide which days a crane can work. None of these projects is ours. Every figure belongs to the owner, agency or publisher named beside it, as of the date shown.

Each table row comes from a single publisher and gives that publisher's date, or says that none was printed. Figures from companies, teams and the City are their own statements as of that date; where two of them disagree on the same thing, the table shows one and names it. The weather rows draw on two federal products that are not interchangeable, station data from NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) and the climate tables of the National Weather Service office in Fort Worth, so every value names its source. The rules these numbers feed, from street permits to FAA notice, are laid out in our Arlington crane permit guide, and the crane rental cost page lists dated price ranges from national guides.

The Entertainment District by the Numbers

The district's stadiums and museum are long-span steel structures, and the teams, designers and City publish their sizes. The Texas Rangers' Globe Life Field facts page gives a 5.5-acre retractable roof weighing 24 million pounds, and Walter P Moore, AT&T Stadium's structural engineer, gives arches spanning 1,225 feet and a roof supported by 14,100 tons of structural steel. A crane's load chart lowers capacity as the radius grows, so on structures like these the heaviest piece and its distance from the crane choose the machine. Steel at stadium scale calls for crawler cranes or the largest all-terrain cranes, ground mats and a written lift plan. The table lists each venue's published figures, one publisher per row.

Big events bring their own heavy work. The City of Arlington reported on October 15, 2026 that AT&T Stadium hosted nine FIFA World Cup matches with a total attendance of 631,048, and NBC DFW reported on May 14, 2026 that the stadium's general manager put the change to a natural grass pitch at roughly 45,000 man-hours, with 15,000 tons of materials hauled in. The City reported the public opening of the National Medal of Honor Museum on March 25, 2025, and Texas Highways (April 3, 2026) describes its exhibition hall as a 200-by-200-foot steel structure hovering 40 feet above the ground. Event days limit the calendar too. Section 3.1(4) of the City's Right-of-Way Manual reads "No work shall be permitted within the Entertainment District on the business day preceding the date of any event" that qualifies under the Special Events chapter.

Each row is one publisher's figure as of its date, rounded the way that publisher rounded it. Owners', designers' and the City's numbers are their own statements, and the ENR and FOX 4 rows are news reports. The rows describe the venues; none of them is work of ours.

Arlington's Other Big Builds: Airport, Plants, Schools and Streets

Outside the district, Arlington's large builds sit at the city airport, the GM plant, the hospitals and schools, and the streets. At Arlington Municipal Airport the E-Space job pairs a 480,000-square-foot plant with a 33,450-square-foot hangar, an aircraft apron and an access road, and the City's E-Space topping-out notice of October 23, 2026 estimates completion in summer 2027. Building at the airport takes the City's prior written approval under section 5.2 of its Airport Rules and Regulations. For General Motors' Arlington Assembly plant, opened in 1954, the Arlington Economic Development Corporation's June 9, 2023 repost of GM's announcement lists more than $500 million for new tooling and equipment across the plant's stamping, body shop and general assembly operations.

Public spending is moving on several fronts. Arlington voters renewed the quarter-cent street maintenance sales tax on May 2, 2026, a tax the City says brings in $25 million to $30 million a year, and Arlington ISD voters passed Propositions A and B at the same election, $438,755,000 of it for facility upgrades. Tarrant County College cut the ribbon on the $193 million overhaul of its Southeast Campus on October 7, 2026. The City's 2025 bond package of $200.8 million appears below only as a proposal, because the City's page does not report the election result. A crane or machine that restricts a street or sidewalk on jobs like these needs a Temporary Traffic Control Permit, filed at least five business days ahead under section 6.06 of the Streets and Sidewalks chapter of the City Code.

Each row is the City's, the Arlington EDC's, the company's or the school's own statement as of its date. The 2025 bond figures are a proposal, since the City's page does not show the vote. The rows describe public and private projects; none of them is a job of ours.

Highways, Power Lines and Water Projects Around Arlington

TxDOT's Fort Worth District finished two SH 360 projects through Arlington in 2021 and 2023, and its pages list what comes next. The SH 360 corridor page records the $233 million I-30/SH 360 interchange reaching substantial completion in December 2023, and the Southeast Connector page prices that project at $2.3 billion for roughly 16 miles of I-20 and I-820, finishing in an estimated 2028. TxDOT's proposal to rebuild I-20 between Park Springs Boulevard and SH 161 carries a $434 million estimate but no construction funding. Oversize loads in Tarrant County also run on TxDMV's clock: no weekday moves between 7 and 9 a.m. or between 4 and 6 p.m., though mobile cranes are exempt, and the permits for such moves are explained under heavy hauling and machinery moves.

The power and water networks are growing alongside the roads. A Notice of Approval for Oncor's Division 138 kV transmission line project was signed on January 26, 2026; the project strings a new double-circuit line on steel monopoles across parts of Arlington and Grand Prairie. Oncor's Liggett Switch to Skyview Switch 345 kV project, near Trinity Boulevard and SH 360, expects a Public Utility Commission decision in February 2027. Crane work near lines like these falls under OSHA section 1926.1408 and under the State of Texas's six-foot clearance law, Health and Safety Code chapter 752. On the water side, the Trinity River Authority's Central Regional plant holds a permit for 189 million gallons a day and serves 20 cities in whole or in part, Arlington included.

TxDOT's project pages print no page date, so costs and status are as the pages read in October 2026. Oncor, the Trinity River Authority and the cities describe their own projects. Status changes; check the agency's page before planning a move or a lift beside the work.

Big Projects in the Ten Nearby Cities

Factories, data-center campuses, schools and interchanges fill the nearby-city rows, each from a city, a school district, a state agency or the owner, with one news report marked as such. Fort Worth's city page on data centers counts four developments in 10 individual buildings with more than 3 million square feet, one more under construction, and a council resolution that starts the legal process for a moratorium on new applications. In Grand Prairie, a registration with the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation puts Poly-America's new manufacturing building at $30,000,000, due June 30, 2027. Mansfield calls its Staybolt Street Entertainment District a $2.5 billion mixed-use development with a stadium of approximately 7,000 seats; a Mansfield Economic Development Corporation release gives a different seat count, so the table uses the City's.

At L.D. Bell High School in Hurst, Hurst-Euless-Bedford ISD is building the new school while classes continue on campus, with demolition of the old building planned from late 2028 through mid/late 2029, so any lift or delivery there works around an operating school. The same district broke ground on Trinity High School work in Euless on May 1, 2025, and Bedford's 2023 financial report puts $20 million of infrastructure behind the 30-acre Bedford Commons. In Cedar Hill the job is civil: TxDOT lists a US 67 interchange at Lake Ridge Parkway from summer 2026 to spring 2029, and Kennedale plans a gabion wall along Village Creek for 2027 and 2028. For street rules, the permit guide's nearby-city section lists what Fort Worth, Irving, Grand Prairie and Mansfield publish.

Each row is the city's, the agency's, the school district's or the owner's statement as of its date, or a state registration; the Lockheed Martin row is a Defense News report. The rows show what is being built near Arlington, not work of ours.

Weather That Sets Lift Days in Arlington

Heat sets the hours of a lift day and storms set the dates. In a normal year, by NOAA NCEI's 1991-2020 figures, Arlington Municipal Airport reaches 100 degrees F on 21.9 days against 20.3 at DFW Airport, and the Weather Service's Fort Worth office dates DFW's first 100-degree day to July 1 and the last to August 27 on average. Its provisional count for DFW in 2026 reached 52 such days. The office's DFW normals and extremes table has thunderstorm days peaking in May and puts April at the top for mean wind, and under NWS Instruction 10-511 a Severe Thunderstorm Warning goes out for hail 1 inch or larger or gusts reaching 58 mph.

Wind is where the numbers meet OSHA's rules. Under 29 CFR 1926.1417(n), wind, ice and snow are the competent person's to account for, by changing the setup or the work to protect stability and rated capacity, and under 29 CFR 1926.1417(h) a local storm warning puts the same person in charge of deciding whether to secure the crane as its manufacturer recommends. 29 CFR 1926.1431 brings in a qualified person whenever wind at a personnel platform, sustained or gusting, passes 20 mph, and that person decides whether workers can be lifted. Liebherr says crane load charts generally hold only while gusts stay within 20 mph, and that work halts once the wind tops the chart's permissible speed. We follow the forecast, call off a lift when wind or weather, in the judgment of the operator or competent person, has made it unsafe, and write those limits into the lift plan.

NOAA NCEI's station data and the NWS office's tables are separate products, so their gust figures sit on separate rows: NCEI reports a fastest 5-second gust, the NWS table a 3-second gust, and the two list different directions for August 2025. The 2026 heat counts are provisional. None of these values is a crane's wind limit; that comes from the manufacturer's load chart.

Sources & Methodology

Every figure above was taken from the primary sources below (accessed 2026-10-24). Where a number is derived (arithmetic on published figures) or covers a broader period or area, the text says so.

1. City of Arlington: City Council Approves Agreement to Extend Dallas Cowboys Lease (April 21, 2026) — The lease extension terms: the team's minimum investment, the completion deadline and the City's contribution.
2. Texas Rangers: Globe Life Field Facts & Figures — Roof, height, steel, seating and cost figures for Globe Life Field; no page date shown.
3. National Medal of Honor Museum, official site — The museum's own site; the building figures in section 1 come from the City of Arlington and Texas Highways.
4. City of Arlington: Topping Out Ceremony Marks Progress on E-Space Project (October 23, 2026) — Topping out, jobs and the completion estimate for the plant and hangar at Arlington Municipal Airport.
5. General Motors: Arlington Assembly facility page — What the plant builds and the year it opened.
6. TxDOT: Southeast Connector — Cost, length, lane counts and the estimated completion for the I-20, I-820 and US 287 rebuild.
7. TxDOT: SH 360 corridor — The I-30/SH 360 interchange, the SH 360 widening south of Abram Street and the next SH 360 phase.
8. City of Fort Worth: Data Centers — Fort Worth's count of data center developments, its pipeline and its moratorium process.
9. City of Mansfield: Staybolt Street Entertainment District — The district's published value, stadium seating, hotels and opening targets.
10. NWS Fort Worth/Dallas: DFW Normals, Means and Extremes — Mean wind by month, peak gusts by month and thunderstorm days at DFW.
11. NWS Fort Worth/Dallas: Annual and Consecutive Occurrences of 100-degree days — Yearly counts of 100-degree days at Dallas/Fort Worth, with the provisional 2026 count.
12. NOAA NCEI: 1991-2020 U.S. Climate Normals documentation — Defines the normals used for DFW Airport and Arlington Municipal Airport; the station values come from NCEI's data service.