Walter Kessling Rebuilds Family Legacy Into Shreveport's Red River Structural Group

Walter Kessling grew up mixing mortar on weekends for his grandfather's small masonry crew, never imagining the company would one day carry cranes over downtown Shreveport. Today, Red River Structural Group is a full-service construction firm with roughly 180 employees, and its projects have reshaped several blocks of the city's core.

"My grandfather laid brick by hand on buildings that are still standing on Texas Street," Kessling said, standing near a mixed-use development his company completed last year near the riverfront. "I don't think he could have pictured us running a tower crane, but I think he'd recognize the way we still do the work."

From Masonry Crew to General Contractor

Kessling took over the family business in 2011 after his father's retirement, inheriting a company of nine employees that primarily handled residential brickwork and small commercial repairs. Rather than staying in that narrow lane, Kessling spent his first five years at the helm earning a general contractor's license and slowly building relationships with architects and developers eyeing Shreveport's underused downtown properties.

The turning point came in 2017, when Red River Structural won its first ground-up commercial contract: a four-story office and retail building near the Red River waterfront. The project ran nearly a year behind schedule due to permitting delays and material shortages, a rocky start that Kessling now credits with forcing the company to professionalize its project management practices.

"We were a good masonry crew pretending to be a general contractor at first," Kessling said bluntly. "That project taught us the difference, the hard way."

Anchoring Downtown Shreveport's Comeback

Since then, Red River Structural has completed nine downtown projects, including two adaptive reuse conversions of vacant early-20th-century buildings into loft apartments, part of a broader push by city planners to bring residents back into Shreveport's historic core. The company's most recent project, a mixed-use development combining ground-floor retail with 64 residential units, opened its first tenants in the summer of 2025.

"Walter has an instinct for old buildings that most contractors don't," said Yolanda Prejean, a Shreveport-based architect who has partnered with Red River Structural on three adaptive reuse projects. "He doesn't want to gut a building and start over. He wants to figure out what's worth saving first."

Kessling has also made workforce development central to the company's identity, launching a paid pre-apprenticeship program aimed at young adults from Shreveport's Cedar Grove and Allendale neighborhoods, areas historically underrepresented in the city's skilled trades. The twelve-week program combines basic construction skills training with mentorship from Red River Structural's veteran tradespeople, and roughly two-thirds of graduates have gone on to union apprenticeships or direct employment with the company.

"I want kids from these neighborhoods driving past a building downtown and telling their families they built it," Kessling said. "That matters as much to me as the balance sheet."

Looking ahead, Kessling says Red River Structural is bidding on its largest project yet, a proposed convention hotel expansion near the riverfront casinos that would roughly double the company's current workforce if awarded. Whatever comes next, he insists the company will stay headquartered in the same Shreveport neighborhood where his grandfather started it. "We're not moving to Dallas or Houston to chase bigger contracts," he said. "The whole point was always to build up this city, not leave it behind."