As a sign of its continuing enrollment growth, Colorado Mesa University in Grand Junction, Colorado is hoping to build a new student garage on campus. The project is in response to complaints from students who say that parking spaces have become harder to find, especially as the school’s enrollment has jumped from around 10,000 five years ago to more than 11,000 today. As members of the Colorado General Assembly are meeting for their 2020 legislative session, Colorado Mesa University is asking for $23 million in funding to build the new garage. That request is lower than the $25.4 million the school previously estimated the garage project would cost. The university is also asking for $20 million in funding to build a new electrical and computer engineering building. An additional $18 million is being requested for the renovation of the school’s Department of Kinesiology, which focuses on physiology, biomechanics, and physical therapy. Colorado Mesa University has taken on several large construction projects in recent years, including the $15.7 million building of its Hotel Maverick, an upscale hotel that also serves as a teaching facility for the school’s hospitality students, and the $26 million Confluence Hall engineering building. The Colorado General Assembly is scheduled to remain in session until the first week of May. By Garry Boulard
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Additional tariffs on up to $160 billion of Chinese goods will be cancelled as a result of a phase one agreement just signed by President Trump and Liu He, China’s vice premiere. The 86-page agreement lifts tariffs that were imposed by the U.S. last fall primarily on consumer electronics. The White House has intimated, however, that other tariffs put on China by the U.S. will remain in place until the successful conclusion of phase two negotiations between the two countries. As part of the phase one agreement, China has promised to increase by some $200 billion its purchase of manufactured and agricultural goods, along with energy products, between now and 2022. The agreement, according to analysts, fails to include a wide range of construction materials, including cement, vinyl tile flooring, circular saw blades, and medium-density fiberboard. The news service Housing Wire noted that a 25 percent levy on more than 6,800 goods from China, including construction materials, will remain in place. From the other end, last spring China imposed tariffs on up to $60 billion on U.S. goods, including pipes, tubes, and bricks. In a statement, Wendy Cutler, the vice-president of the Asia Society Policy Institute, called the just-announced agreement, “meaningful, but modest.” Speaking with the New York Times, Cutler added: “Because the United States was willing to compromise with China and not press them on the most difficult issues, they were able to reach positive ground.” By Garry Boulard In an effort to move away from the use of private septic tanks, the City of Las Cruces is making plans to build a new waste water system in one of its northeast neighborhoods. Work has already launched on the building of one such system in the residential section of Hacienda Acres, some nine miles to the northeast of downtown Las Cruces. Now, city officials have announced plans to request $1 million in captital outlay funds from the New Mexico State Legislature to complete phase three of that project. That $1 million request is part of a total $31 million capital outlay request the City of Las Cruces is submitting to state lawmakers for their approval. In the last decade, Las Cruces has made a concerted effort to do away with individual septic systems that are not connected to the city's waste water collection and treatment system. Those individual sysstems are often times decades old and, through leakage, contribute to ground water contamination from household wastes. A reporter earlier issued by Las Cruces identified more than 1,800 individual parcels in the city where private septic tank systems were still in use. The city's Council District 5, which includes Hacienda Acres, was identified as having the greatest number of private septic tank systems in the city. The number has since been significant reduced through the city's Septic Tank Identification and Prioritization Plan. New modern systems have since been built not just in a portion of Hacience Acres but also the Salopek/Sunrise subdivision. By Garry Boulard Emphasizing the importance of Internet access for Arizona residents living in some of the most remote parts of the state, Governor Doug Ducey is calling for tripling the state’s investment in rural broadband grants. In his annual State of the State address, Ducey also said he wants to invest $50 million in the Smart Highway Corridors program designed to increase broadband access along rural highways. The Smart Highways Corridors program has been tasked with installing 500 miles of broadband conduit and fiber optic cable throughout Arizona. The immediate effect will see cables installed on Interstate 17 between Sunset Point and Flagstaff, as well as along the more than 330 miles of Interstate 40 between the New Mexico and California borders. A third project area is focusing on cable installation along Interstate 19 between Tucson and Nogales. “This will make our highways safer and smarter than ever before and pave the way to get all of rural Arizona logged on,” Ducey said. Last year the Arizona State Legislature provided up to $3 million in funding for the rural broadband initiative, targeting cities and towns with fewer than 150,000 residents. Counties with less than 750,000 people, along with federally-based Indian tribes located within the state, have also been eligible for funding. Grants have been awarded in two categories: for shovel-ready projects and larger broadband planning efforts. Grant recipients so far have included the town of Springerville in northeast Arizona with a population of around 2,000, and the city of St. Johns, near the New Mexican border, with a population of around 3,500. By Garry Boulard Some $7.2 billion in military construction and defense funds are being diverted to the continued construction of a border wall between the U.S. and Mexico, the Washington Post is reporting. That funding is coming from a combination of $3.7 billion intended for construction projects on military bases across the country, along with another $3.5 billion originally approved by Congress to be used to combat drug trafficking. The funds transfers have engendered widespread criticism, with Texas Representative Henry Cuellar charging that the White House decision will “weaken our natural security, hurt the quality of life of our military and their families, and undermine Congress’s constitutional authority in determining spending priorities.” Although Senate Appropriations Chairman Richard Shelby said he wished the White House would “get the money somewhere else, instead of defense” for the border wall work, he emphasized his overall support for the project. The White House has maintained that the President has the authority to transfer such funds based upon an emergency order he made last year in which he transferred $3.6 billion for military construction projects, along with another $2.5 billion, in anti-narcotic spending. While Congress last year allocated $1.3 billion for the additional construction of the border wall, it declined to restrict the President’s power to transfer Pentagon funds from one project to another. To date, notes the New York Times, “the administration has now allocated more than $18 billion for Mr. Trump’s border wall.” The additional funding means that another 880 miles of new border wall will likely be built in the next two years, on top of the 100 miles recently completed. By Garry Boulard Officials in a city of around 8,100 people in northwestern New Mexico are pushing for the construction of a new water reclamation facility. To that end, they hope to secure $1.5 million in state capital outlay funding from the New Mexico State Legislature to build the project. Long discussed by local leaders, the waste water facility would replace the existing Water Reclamation Facility, located at 1176 South Church Street to the west of U.S. Route 550. That facility treats waste water collected from a defined sewer service area in Bloomfield. Treated effluent is then discharged into the San Juan River. An additional $11 million in funding to build a new plant has already been received from a clean water revolving loan fund through the New Mexico Environmental Department. A public information meeting is scheduled for February 4 to reveal the latest engineering, design, and environmental impact information regarding the project. An earlier document prepared by the Las Cruces civil engineering firm of Bohannan-Huston noted that a modern facility is needed to “meet effluent permit demands that are expected to become more stringent in the future” under the federal Clean Water Act. By Garry Boulard Work to rebuild and improve stormwater drainage bordering the site of the Citadel Mall in Colorado Springs is expected to begin later this spring. The City of Colorado Springs has issued a Request for Proposals for what is called the “Citadel Mall Improvements” project at Chelton and Santa Rosa roads. The $1 million project will see the design and building of stormwater capture and conveyance improvements designed to prevent flooding in the surrounding vicinity. Those improvements will include the installation of multiple curb inlets, new storm drain pipes, and concrete cross pans. The work area is just to the west of the parking lot of the Citadel Mall, which was built in 1972. To the other side of the project area is a residential neighborhood. The project, centered on improving a current insufficient storm water drainage capacity, was several years ago identified as one of list of priority infrastructure projects by the city’s Stormwater Advisory Committee. Submission deadline for the RFP is January 21. By Garry Boulard As of the end of last year, there were more than 66,500 job openings in the national construction industry, according to a new survey just released by the Mill Valley, California-based employment research service Glassdoor. That number is up a large 12.6 percent over the end of the year 2018, and underlines a growing gap between job demand and supply in the industry. In fact, the percentage of new open jobs in the construction industry was among the largest in all industries, tying only with the consumer electronics field, which also saw a 12.6 percent increase in the number of new jobs available. Other job-heavy industries, such as marketing and advertising, private security, and telecommunications, actually saw a decline in their percentage of open jobs. The Glassdoor Job Market Report also shows that the nation’s 3.5 percent unemployment rate was the lowest the country has seen since December of 1969, with monthly job gains for last year coming in at around 176,000. Despite those strong numbers, the report notes that actual wage growth in December declined to 2.9 percent, the lowest level since July of 2018, and that the monthly job gains for December were the lowest since 2011. The slow-down in pay growth, says the report, “reverses the recent trend toward escalating pay growth we’ve seen as the labor market has tightened in recent years, and remains the one aspect of the job market that hasn’t fully recovered during the decade since the Great Recession.” Looking at 2020, the report forecasts the two biggest risks facing the nation’s job market as “oil market instability due to escalating conflict in the Middle East, and continued trade tensions.” The report additionally contends that the scheduled signing this week of a phase one U.S./China trade agreement will prove a positive step forward, “putting a welcome Band-Aid on the severe hit U.S. manufacturing and agriculture sectors have taken in recent months.” By Garry Boulard In an effort to reduce bicycle traffic and potential accidents near a rail crossing in Santa Fe, a study has been commissioned to look at the potential of building an underpass. As envisioned, the underpass would be built beneath the six-lane St. Michael’s Drive adjacent to the single-track rail crossing. The Santa Fe City Council has now tentatively approved spending $41,000 to pay for the study, funding that will be combined with another $243,000 coming through the New Mexico Department of Transportation using federal Congestion Mitigation/Air Quality Program monies. The Congestion Mitigation/Air Quality Program, launched in 1991, has to date provided nearly $23 billion in funding for more than 16,000 such congestion-reducing projects. The St. Michael’s Drive underpass study funding is expected to receive the final approval of the council on January 29. City and state officials have long wanted to find an alternative route of travel for both bike-riders and pedestrians at the Mt. Michael’s Drive location, especially after the $6 million construction of a similar underpass three years ago on St. Francis Drive near the Cerrillos Road intersection. That earlier project came about after months of design work and public input meetings. By Garry Boulard A unique mixed-use project that could eventually see the construction of a sports stadium, combined with office and hotel space, has been announced for the Scottsdale metro area. What is being called Akimel 7 will be built on more than 550 primarily vacant acres near the busy Loop 101 and Loop 202 exchanges, about 7 miles to the southeast of downtown Scottsdale. That site is owned by the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community. The project is being spearheaded by the Scottsdale-based Solana Group, and will also include at least a dozen sports fields and open space that may be used for special events. To be privately funded, Akimel 7 has a long build-out schedule of up to 10 years, with a price tag that could ultimately near the $4 billion mark. For several years, the site was been regarded by investors as prime for development, with plans for a football stadium and film studio never materializing. As currently envisioned, Akimel 7 would combine sports and entertainment amenities with facility space for sports medicine and technology. Work on the first phase of the project, on some 220 acres at the site, could launch later this year. By Garry Boulard |
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