Some two dozen new passenger gates are scheduled to be built in the next two years inside the sprawling Denver International Airport. In a statement, Steve Jaquith, vice president of United Airline’s Denver hub, noted that the need for the gates is pressing due to the fact that last year the airline saw more than five hundred departures coming out of the Denver airport. Jaquith said the additional gates will help get passengers to “that important business meeting, family event, or home to loved ones.” The new gates will be built in the airport’s Concourse A and Concourse B, adding to the current 66 gates that the airline has up and running at DIA. According to statistics, United currently accounts for around 45 percent of all airline traffic at DIA. Upon completion of the gates, say airport officials, United could be seeing as many as 750 departures from DIA on a daily basis. The airport is, in fact, regarded as a primary hub for United’s east-to-west traffic. Airport officials have said that they would like to see all of United’s new gates completed by 2022. In signing an official agreement approving the new gate construction, Denver Mayor Michael Hancock remarked, “As United increases daily flights and continues to add new routes, they are creating economic opportunities that benefit our entire community.” By Garry Boulard
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Construction could begin this summer on a project that is regarded as a vital piece of a master plan in Lake Havasu City. What is being called a co-working center will be designed to provide space for small business startups to develop and grow. The facility, to go up on a street lined with small businesses at 2121 McCulloch Boulevard, is being seen as the first of at least three catalyst projects coming out of the city’s sweeping Vision 2020 Revitalization Plan. The other projects include modernizing and upgrading the city’s downtown district infrastructure, and the construction of an eco-environmental center along Arizona State Route 95. As envisioned, the 11,000 square foot co-working structure, which is receiving partial funding from Lake Havasu City’s Partnership for Economic Development, will house collaborative space, workshops, and special events. Additional amenities, at what is being called the Nomadic, will include studios, shared desk space, and both small and medium-sized offices. The new building is expected to cost just over $2 million to build. A prototype of the center called F106 is located at 1100 London Bridge Road and opened its doors in the spring of 2018. By Garry Boulard In an ongoing funding battle, members of the Senate Appropriations Defense Subcommittee have gone on record condemning a move by the Trump Administration to divert some $3.8 billion in Defense Department funds. By executive order, that money was removed from a number of Defense Department programs and projects across the country to pay for the continued construction of a border wall between the United States and Mexico. In a letter to Defense Secretary Mark Esper, the Democratic members of the committee charged that the funding transfer will especially negatively impact Army National Guard, Air National Guard and Reserve Components programs. “The raid on this funding is quite simply an attack on the efforts to ensure our citizen-soldiers are prepared to respond to disasters, both overseas and in nearly every community in all fifty states and four territories,” the letter reads. According to the publication Roll Call, funding will particularly be subtracted from F-35 fighter jet and V-22 tiltrotor aircraft programs. The $3.8 billion diversion of Defense Department funds comes on the heels of the more than $11 billion that has been previously identified for building the border wall. Pentagon officials say the $3.8 billion will be used to build just under 180 miles of fencing. So far, around 122 miles of the wall along a nearly 2,000-mile border has been built. By Garry Boulard New construction or upgrading work could soon take place at a former federal government site in Roswell, New Mexico. The City of Roswell is issuing a Request for Proposals for the possible future use of several buildings on the site that was once owned by the federal Department of Interior. The site is located at 3801 E. Second Street on the east side of the city, and was formerly known as the Roswell Test Facility. It also includes at least one large storage tank, fencing, and parking space. The structures, built in the early 1960s, along with the 12-acre property, was part of the Interior’s Office of Saline Water, which was tasked with desalting saline water into potable water. In 1963 the facility was reported to be converting around 250,000 gallons of saline water a day. Just over a decade later, the saline water office was merged into the Office of Water Resources Research. In the mid-1980s, the structures on the site, as well as the site itself, was turned over to Roswell after the federal government decided to close the facility. In the more than three decades since, city officials have been trying to find a new purpose for the property with the idea of eventually selling it. Currently the main facility on the property is being used by the Milwaukee-based water heater and boiler manufacturer A.O. Smith, which is leasing the site from the city. At least three of the five current buildings on the site have structural issues that may make their upgrading too expensive to justify, say city officials. It has been thought in the past that the remaining two buildings could be repurposed for future warehouse or plant use. The Roswell City Council’s infrastructure committee in January approved issuing the RFP, with a submission deadline of March 20. By Garry Boulard More than $1.8 million may be spent on a project that will see the construction of a new swimming pool, lounge, and bar on the rooftop of the iconic Rosewood Inn of the Anasazi in Santa Fe. The three-story boutique hotel, at 113 Washington Avenue, also says it wants to build a rooftop outdoor events space. Although City of Santa Fe planning staff have recommended approving the project, it must still go before the city’s Historic Districts Review Board. If the project wins that body’s ok, it will join two other downtown Santa Fe hotels that also have rooftop swimming pool and amenities space. In hoping to secure the Review Board’s approval, the Rosewood Inn will be asking for a height exemption beyond the current 20-foot, one-inch limit to 56 feet exactly. The hotel was built at the end of World War II and for years served as the State Securities Building housing a variety of state offices. It was converted into a hotel and officially opened as the Rosewood Inn in 1991. By Garry Boulard The number of parking lots across the country being sold for future development use has nearly doubled since 2013, a new report says, particularly in urban environments. The report, issued by the New York-based National Real Estate Investor, notes that the current average annual volume of urban parking lot sales has equaled around $130 million, a figure substantially up from the less than $100 million during the depths of the Great Recession. In fact, the low point of urban parking lots transactions was reached in 2010 with a dollar value of $30.7 million. Providing fuel for the volume growth is two separate, but related trends: the decline in vehicle use, and with it the need for parking space in urban areas; and the demand for new multifamily development. The report additionally notes: “Along with multifamily properties, vacant parking lots can also be repurposed into office buildings or hotels.” Despite the trend, the report contends that local zoning laws have not always been flexible enough to respond to parking lot repurposing projects, quoting architect Ben Kasdan, who remarked: “Zoning ordinances need to catch up with this trend, as the cost of constructing code-required parking contributes significantly to the challenge of providing new attainable housing.” Kasdan is a principal with the KTGY Architecture & Planning firm, which has offices in Denver, among other cities, and is currently working on nearly a dozen parking lot repurposing projects. One of the most recent parking lot repurposing projects was approved last week by the San Diego City Council. It will see the building of a new pedestrian plaza on the site of the city’s Balboa Park, replacing some nearly 150 parking spaces. In Denver, one of the largest such projects is seeing the redevelopment of some 60 acres of parking space to the south of the Empower Field football stadium into a mixed-use site with room for housing, retail, and offices. By Garry Boulard A developer who has for several years talked about building a massive master planned community near the Grand Canyon has been given a green light for an important aspect of that plan. Members of the Tusayan Town Council have voted to approve a proposal for roads and utility easements on two separate 20-acre plots. That approval gives the Scottsdale-based Stilo Development Group USA permission to build a new road in a part of the Kaibab National Forest, as well as upgrading segments of existing roads in the vicinity, needed for the project. For the better part of a decade, Stilo has been talking about building more than 2,000 homes, along with hotels, restaurants, and a convention center on land located some 10 miles to the south of the Grand Canyon National Park. Last fall Stilo said it needed access to more than 28,000 feet of roads and utility corridors. The overall proposal has generated great controversy in northern Arizona with the nonprofit Grand Canyon Trust of Flagstaff raising the issue of the development’s potential water usage. “Allowing new developments to pump more water from a shrinking supply of groundwater would do irreparable harm to Grand Canyon National Park and to the Havasupai Tribe, and it would not be in the public interest,” the group charged last fall in a statement. Four years ago, the U.S. Forest Service turned down Stilo’s initial application for a special-use authorization. With the approval of the Tusayan Town Council, the roads easement application is now subject to an environmental review as required by the National Environmental Policy Act. By Garry Boulard Work could begin later this spring on the $18 million upgrading of a fourteen-story, 220,000 square foot office building originally put up in the mid-1960s. Located at 300 E. Main Street, the structure was purchased by the El Paso-based Esperanto Developments with plans to transform it into an 80-unit apartment building with up to 12,000 square feet of retail space on the ground floor. Plans also call for the creation of shared work spaces on several of the building’s floors, as well as a botanical garden, which will be connected to the next-door Hotel Indigo. That hotel, built in 1963, was redeveloped four years ago by Esperanto. The project, one of the largest upgrades of an existing downtown El Paso high-rise in recent years, is expected to receive up to $3.6 million in both city and county tax rebates. The 80 one- and two-bedroom apartments will range in size from 700 to 1,000 square feet, with new windows and balconies added to the structure. A project in the talking stage now for several months, work on the upgrading and repurposing could be completed by no later than the summer of next year. By Garry Boulard The costs for U.S. companies taking out insurance for any amount or scope of coverage is on the rise, says a new report just published by the Wall Street Journal. The newspaper notes that after a protracted period of declining liability and property rates, “insurers have raised prices aggressively in the past year.” The report adds: “And they have warned that price hikes are likely to continue.” Overall, the rates for property-casualty insurance jumped nearly 7 percent last year, making it the largest such percentage increase in nearly two decades. The paper notes that reasons for the insurance cost hikes are related to the more than $2 trillion the insurance industry paid out in the last several years due to wildfires, hurricanes, and other natural disasters. Losses due to mechanical breakdowns within production facilities and even building fires have also contributed to the cost increases. According to survey put together by the Associated General Contractors of America, insurance costs for contractors have nearly doubled over the last 8 years. Speaking late last year at a Council of Insurance Agents & Brokers meeting in Colorado Springs, David Bresnahan, vice-president with the Boston-based Berkshire Hathaway Specialty Insurance Company, predicted that companies should be “planning on rate increases every year for the next five years.” Bresnahan explained his forecast by noting that “there is no sign of tort reform or anything else coming that would stem this tide.” By Garry Boulard A company specializing in the manufacturing of steel ramps and material handling equipment has just received $250,000 in state funding to finish building at a former Walmart site in Alamogordo. The Santa Fe Springs, California-based Medlin Ramps Incorporated late last year announced it was going to build a full-service plant at the 25-acre site located at 1900 Highway South. The project, with an initial $2.5 million Local Economic Development Act grant approved in late 2018 by the City of Alamogordo, has included the demolition of the former Walmart building, and construction of a planned 30,000 square foot manufacturing facility. The site, called Square 47 in a salute to New Mexico being the 47th state to join the Union, has additionally been envisioned as a mixed-use property that will include a full-service travel center housing a marketplace, laundry and shower facilities, and truck wash. In order to receive the funding backing of both Alamogordo and the New Mexico Economic Development Department, Medlin has committed to hiring at least 45 people. In a statement, New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham lauded Medlin Ramps and its decision to locate in Alamogordo, remarking, “This company is simultaneously helping us invest in employment opportunities tomorrow while delivering for New Mexicans who want to work today.” The largest yard ramp manufacturer in the country, Medlin Ramps, with facilities in both California and North Carolina, additionally produces steel dock board and portable loading docks, among other products. By Garry Boulard |
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