A bill that would provide $500 million for the upgrading and expansion of highways and roadways in Colorado, while also putting on an upcoming ballot a $2.5 billion road bond, is working its way through the Colorado Legislature.

The $500 million would be specifically allocated for what are regarded as Colorado’s top tier transportation projects.

Senate Bill 18-001 would allot money from the state’s general fund to pay for such projects as the expansion of north to south Interstate 25, as well as I-70, which runs from east to west.

Under the provisions of the bill, sponsored by Senator Richard Baumgardner, about 10 percent of Colorado’s sales and use taxes would go for transportation projects.

While the $500 million allocation for highway projects has won the backing of Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper, he has been less enthused with the $2.5 billion road bond.

The legislation has made its way out of the Senate, but will face an uncertain future in the House.

Members in the lower chamber have been critical of what they say is an overemphasis on highway and road projects and would like, instead, to see more funding for multi-modal projects.

By Garry Boulard

An overwhelming majority of hospital executives say they are increasingly interested in, and promoting the concept of, resiliency when it comes to the design and construction of new spaces.

That emphasis, according to a survey of 274 such leaders, reflects a growing industry question: are today’s hospital facilities being built with an eye to surviving such natural disasters as hurricanes, earthquakes, and flooding?

The survey, conducted by the American Society for Healthcare Engineering and Health Facilities Management magazine, shows that 80 percent of hospital executives are currently including power outage resiliency solutions, followed by 53 percent incorporating fire resiliency, and 42 percent prioritizing for water storm events in the design and building of their facilities.

What is known as “resilient design” is increasingly the result of hazard-vulnerability assessments that more and more hospitals today are undertaking, with an emphasis on soliciting input from multiple departments.

While hospital officials view such trends favorably, the 2018 Hospital Construction Survey also reveals that 12 percent of respondents said their facilities have been forced to close temporarily or relocate patients as a result of a national disaster.

At the same time, hospitals incorporating resilient design concepts say they are increasingly placing power systems above ground while converting to wireless instead of underground hardwiring.

By Garry Boulard

A proposal to build a new 120-bed hospital in Albuquerque may be altered to allow for a smaller facility due to budgetary considerations.

After months of review and discussion, members of the University of New Mexico’s Board of Regents last summer agreed to let a project to build a new hospital advance to the design phase.

As proposed, the project would also include half a dozen operating rooms and clinical offices.

Initial plans additionally called for the hospital to be built on land owned by UNM just northeast of the University Boulevard and Lomas Boulevard intersection.

But now, some seven months after that vote, Dr. Paul Roth, UNM Health Sciences Center’s chancellor, has suggested a smaller facility may be more in order.

During a recent regents’ meeting, Roth said that although the need for more hospital beds remains unchanged, the university should conduct further studies before proceeding with what is anticipated to be a project that could cost as much as $250 million.

So far, the school has reserved some $200 million to build the hospital.

The project was earlier regarded as only the first phase in the eventual construction of a $684 million hospital with just over 400 beds.

UNM officials have long maintained that a new hospital is especially needed not just because it would provide more bed space, but also because the current structure built in the 1950s is no longer adequate for the hospital’s needs.

By Garry Boulard

A growing wholesale data center and retail colocation company based in Denver has announced plans to build a new location in Albuquerque.

H5 Data Centers says it will build out at least 225,000 square feet inside the downtown Compass Bank Building at 505 Marquette Avenue NW.

That structure, built in 1966, measures around 270,000 square feet.

Although an exact timetable for the project has not been announced, a company official says work on the center will most likely begin later this year.

With similar data centers up and running in Atlanta, Cincinnati, Phoenix, and Seattle, H5 Data currently has more than 2 million square feet of operating space, up from around 1 million square feet in 2016.

Company website information regarding the Albuquerque project says the new location will feature “direct access to the key Southwestern metro and long haul network providers.”

The center will particularly serve companies “seeking the benefits of data center customization without the significant time and capital expense to start from the ground up.”

The Albuquerque site will also include private data center suites and on-site parking.

By Garry Boulard

New architectural projects in the West and Midwest are leading the way for the industry’s national billings thus far in 2018.

In its Architectural Billing Index for February, the American Institute of Architects is reporting that while the pace of growth in design activity has marginally slowed in recent weeks, the overall climate for the industry remains positive.

In particular, says a release from the AIA, “firms with residential or an institutional specialization continued to respond to extremely strong billings.”

With scores above 50 representing billing growth, the Institute’s index for February shows the regional average range for the West at 57.6 and the Midwest at 54.5, closely followed by the South at 54.4 and the Northeast at 47.5.

Following the leads in the multi-family residential and institutional sectors are projects in the commercial and industrial sectors.

The Architectural Billing Index is an economic indicator produced by the AIA’s Economics and Market Research Group.

The most recent Index also indicates that firm billings have been on the up side for 11 months out of the last year.

Architectural firms based in the West, according to the Index, have been reporting their strongest numbers in more than a decade.

By Garry Boulard

One of the largest warehouses in metro Tucson could be seeing construction later this year.

Members of the Tucson City Council are currently reviewing plans for a structure measuring nearly 900,000 square feet that will go up on a currently vacant site inside the 264-acre Century Park Research Center.

The Century Park property is also home to the intermodal Port of Tucson.

According to documents submitted to the city’s Planning and Development Services, the planned structure will have enough room for light assembly production as well as both customer product pick-up and return services.

The facility would also house 64 loading docks and parking spaces for roughly 2,500 vehicles as  well as just under 400 tractor/trailers.

The targeted 94-acre site for the project will see a specified 80 acres for the facility itself, with the remaining 14 acres set aside for possible future building expansion.

Although exact plans for the project at 6701 S. Kolb Road have not been officially announced, sources indicate that the facility will almost certainly be a new Amazon Distribution Center.

The online commerce giant currently has around 140 such centers nationally, but most are located on the West and East coasts.

What is for now being referred to only as the “Project Wildcat at Century Park Development” could also be eligible for a series of economic incentives from both the State of Arizona and Pima County.

It is expected that both Amazon and local public officials will reveal the full details of the project sometime in mid-May.

By Garry Boulard

Construction could begin late this summer on the expansion of a prominent Toyota dealership in Fort Collins.

In the talking and planning stage for several years, the work at Pedersen Toyota will see the building of a 25,000 square foot addition to the dealership’s current facility at 4455 S. College Avenue.

That dealership is located on the south side of Fort Collins in an area of mostly one-story modern department stores and restaurants.

Also included as part of the project is an upgrading of Pedersen Toyota’s current 27,700 square foot main building and a possible four-story garage that will be used for inventory and as parking for employees.

The expansion will go up on the site of the former Mini U Storage facility that was demolished in 2016.

The $7 million expansion and upgrading project is expected to take around 18 months to complete.

By Garry Boulard

While money has been secured in the latest federal government’s omnibus spending bill for border wall work, funding for the entire project remains elusive.

The $1.3 trillion omnibus legislation designed to avert a government shutdown ultimately included money for the construction of a barrier riding the southern border of Texas, as well as new levee walls in the Rio Grande Valley.

But that money is significantly less than what the Trump Administration originally called for when it comes to building one single massive wall.

Included in the spending bill is $445 million for new levee walls, $196 million for bollard-style fencing, also in the Rio Grande Valley, and $38 million for the planning and designing of the border wall.

Altogether, Congress approved just over $1.6 billion in border infrastructure projects, far short of the $25 billion the White House had earlier asked for.

But, according to sources, additional border funding might be secured through the Defense Department’s budget, approved in the same omnibus bill.

That funding totals $700 billion, although it remains uncertain whether any money for the wall could be separated from the military budget without an act of Congress requiring 60 votes in the Senate.

The $1.6 billion included in the spending bill for border projects is limited to what are called “operationally effective designs” already established last year targeting fencing repairs previously approved by Congress.

The proposed border wall itself would comprise up to 900 miles of the nearly 2,000 mile-long border between the U.S. and Mexico.

By Garry Boulard

Construction could begin next year on what will be the largest wind farm in New Mexico, just 20 miles to the south of the city of Portales.

Despite earlier concerns regarding customer surcharge issues, members of the New Mexico Public Regulation Commission have voted unanimously to approve the construction by the Chicago-based Invenergy LLC of a 522-megawatt facility that will go up on some around 100,000 acres.

Invenergy will be building the unprecedentedly large facility for Xcel Energy of Minneapolis.

Early last year Xcel Energy officials said they wanted to see built both the New Mexico farm, as well as an additional 478-megawatt facility north of Lubbock, Texas.

The New Mexico facility is expected to cost $865 million to build, with the two projects together carrying a combined price tag of $1.6 billion.

The farms will be capable of providing up to 1.2 gigawatts of electricity, enough to provide the power needs of well over 400,000 homes on an annual basis in eastern New Mexico and western Texas.

At the time of the 2017 announcement, Xcel officials said the new wind projects would lower the cost of energy for its customers to the tune of around $2.8 billion annually.

But an Xcel plan for recovering initial lost earning associated with the operation of the farms prompted a Public Regulation Commission hearing office in February to question the financial metrics of the project.

In response, Xcel agreed that it would sell wind power on the wholesale market, obviating the need to pass on a surcharge to customers, a proposal that the Public Regulation Commission members liked.

In a statement, David Hudson, president of Xcel Energy for New Mexico and Texas, said “these wind facilities will power the regional economy with energy from our abundant, fuel-free wind resources and save customers hundreds of millions of dollars in energy costs for decades to come.”

By Garry Boulard

A Request for Proposal is expected to be issued sometime this summer for a project that could go up on the same downtown Albuquerque site where a skyscraper had earlier been proposed.

Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller has announced that he wants to see construction at that site at 4th Street NW and Marquette Ave NW of a different kind of project, with the goal of attracting people to the downtown area.

Last summer the city’s Metropolitan Redevelopment Agency put out a Request for Proposal asking for ideas regarding what was being called the Symphony Tower.

That project, which had the backing of then-Mayor Richard Berry, was envisioned as a mixed-use tower topping out at 34 stories and measuring more than 300,000 square feet.

Approval of a plan for that project, submitted by Albuquerque-based real estate developer Geltmore LLC, was put off last November by the Albuquerque Development Commission in order that incoming Mayor Keller could make a final decision on the matter.

The planned upcoming summer Request for Proposal will also most likely ask for development ideas regarding another city-owned property at the intersection of Silver Avenue SW and 2nd Street SW, also in downtown Albuquerque.
 
 By Garry Boulard