WARRENTON Standing in the parking lot, watching his nearly-finished building get spattered in the rain, project superintendent Rick Magistrale doesnt see the hours hes spent on the phone since June, talking to suppliers, subcontractors or his boss in Seattle, coordinating the projects many parts.

Instead, Magistrale, who works for Seattle-based Pennon Construction, Inc., finds artistic elements in creating a structure before passing it on to its owners.

Magistrale sees the thousands of separate details hes coordinated like musical notes.

Its a bit of a symphony, you choreograph the whole thing, he said.

He has overseen the construction of a three-store building and its winding 241-space parking lot within the new Warrenton Highlands complex. Staples and Dollar Tree stores are just days away from opening and they will be the first two stores to come to life within the Highlands. 

The complex, located off Ensign Lane between U.S. Highway 101 and Lums Auto Center, will hold at least 10 stores when finished. 

Next, construction on the buildings that will house a 7,000-square-foot OReilly Auto Parts and six other smaller stores is scheduled to begin in March.

The first two, however, are bookend tenants within one larger building, and the 12,000-plus-foot center space earlier slated to be a Big 5 Sporting Goods store before they backed out in November still hasnt found its taker.

Subcontractors are pulling together last minute details in both stores, with the clock ticking away the moments left before the retailers take over their new spaces.

Staples plans to open Jan. 17 and occupies 15,000 square feet of space. Dollar Tree is scheduled for a Jan. 30 opening of its nearly 11,000-square-foot store.

Where Ensign Lane meets the highway, a small restaurant pad is ready for construction to begin. 

The only hitch? No ones biting.

All the utilities are there and its ready to build. The area desperately needs a restaurant, Magistrale said.

Magistrale arrived in Warrenton to break ground on the project in mid-June. He has documented much of the progress in 69 short YouTube videos along the way. Hes proud of the weekly updates that anyone can watch on the Web at http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=rickmagistrale&aq=f

It shows the growth of the project, from dirt to bricks and mortar, he said.

The projects developer, Scott Shanks, a partner with First Western Development Services, Inc., of Edmonds, Wash., keeps tabs on the Magistrales work and the 14 subcontractors who work for him. First Western purchased the land from Home Depot after the crews finished building.

First Western often develops on land adjacent to a big, popular store like Home Depot or Costco, knowing that people will drive further than usual to shop there, Shanks said. It helped that Costco and Home Depot have both had strong sales lately, he added.

We had a sense of the type of project we wanted to be in, Shanks said. 

A fourth retailer for the space between Staples and Dollar Tree should be announced very soon, he said.

The project was delayed in 2008 and 2009 while the economy was hiccuping, Shanks added.

Now, the economy has turned around in their favor, Magistrale said.

This is a great time to build because labor and materials costs are as low as theyve ever been, he said.

Local, permanent jobs have been created at Staples and Dollar Tree, though no local subcontractors submitted winning bids for constructing the stores, Magistrale said. Their bids just werent competitive, he added.

The work had plenty of challenging moments, especially because most of the job was done in the fall and winter. From the pavers to the painters to the folks who poured the concrete, Magistrale had to master the art of creative scheduling to take advantage of pockets of good weather.

I became an amateur forecaster.