Work could very well begin late this summer on the building of a $80 million amphitheater that will go up in the 9700 block of Gateway North Boulevard, roughly 12 miles to the northeast of downtown El Paso.

That site is the former location for the nearly 10,000-seat Cohen Stadium, which was built by the City in 1990 and leveled almost exactly 30 years later.

The project, which has been long in the planning stage, will see the construction of what is being called the Sunset Amphitheater, a 12,000-seat facility with a vista view of the Franklin Mountains.

The structure is designed to be part of a larger 50-acre entertainment district, and will be developed by the Notes Lives Company, which is based in Colorado Springs. That company is currently completing a similar project in its home city.

The design of the El Paso facility will feature fire pit suites, landscaped hydro-chill grass, and a custom-built owner's club.

In a statement, El Paso Mayor Oscar Leeser described the stadium project as an "iconic venture that will not only attract renowned artists but will also provide an unforgettable experience for music enthusiasts from across the region."

More than six years ago, the City of El Paso revealed a master plan called Reimagining Cohen, which proposed the construction of a restaurant, retail, and residential space at the site after determining that upgrading the existing stadium itself would not be cost effective.
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The Cohen stadium and site were named in honor of Major League baseball players and brothers Andy and Syd Cohen. 

​By Garry Boulard

A proposal by Vermont Democrat Bernie Sanders to mandate 32 hours, instead of the traditional 40, as a legally defined work week appears to have some support in corporate America.

According to a new survey of chief executive officers conducted by the professional services firm KPMG nearly a third of those questioned said they were seriously considering adopting a 32-hour, or four-day, work week.

“We are all working to figure out what is optimal, and we will continue to experiment and pivot,” KPMH chief executive officer Paul Knopp has remarked to the site CNN Business in discussing the survey findings.

In introducing his legislation, Sanders noted that the 40-hour week was established just before World War II with the passing of the Fair Labor Standards Act. But he added: “American workers are now over 400% more productive than they were back then and continued technological advances are likely to increase the gap between worker productivity and worker gains.”

Going to a legally defined 32-hour work week, according to Sanders, would lower the “maximum hours threshold for overtime compensation for non-exempt employees.”

In the process, it would “require overtime pay at time and a half for workdays longer than eight hours, and overtime pay at double a worker’s regular pay for workdays longer than 12 hours.”

Sanders’ proposal has won the support of the AFL-CIO, United Auto Workers, and Service Employees International Union, among other labor groups. The publication New University has suggested that an official 32-hour work week would allow workers to “either reduce their hours entirely or to be properly compensated for the extra overtime they have clocking in.”

But an opinion piece published last week by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy contends that the average American worker today “works five fewer hours per week compared to the 1960s. And real household income is up by more than 30% in the last 40 years.”

Forcing employers to let workers have fewer hours for the same pay, continues the essay, “would lead to decisions that aren’t in workers’ interest. That means job cuts, benefit reductions, small business closures, and more.”

Louisiana Republican Bill Cassidy has similarly criticized Sanders’ proposal, saying that it will “kneecap the American economy with something that purports to be good for the American worker, but indeed will lead to offshoring of jobs seeking a lower-cost labor force.”
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Sanders’ legislation is currently under review in the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.

​By Garry Boulard

One of the first generation of classic high-rises to be built in downtown Tucson is set to go to auction next month.

The Pioneer Building was completed in 1929 when Tucson was still a dusty Arizona place in the desert with a population of less than 30,000. It has around 543,000 residents today and is the second largest city in the state.

Located at 100 N. Stone Avenue, the structure opened as the Pioneer Hotel in late 1929 and was hailed by the Arizona Daily Star as “one of the outstanding hostelries of the entire West.”

The fact that the building was opened just months after the start of the Great Depression was regarded by locals as a hopeful sign that life would go on despite the recent swift economic downturn.

Notable guests who stayed at the Pioneer included Eleanor Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, Will Rogers, and the legendary Notre Dame football coach Knute Rockne.

All was well at the Pioneer, which doubled its ballroom space and added a swimming pool in the early 1960s, until a devastating fire in late 1970 that took the lives of 29 people.

Efforts to repair and renovate the building were launched shortly afterwards before the structure went through a series of owners. The building was also eventually modernized and repurposed as an office building, with a new façade added.

Currently owned by the Tucson-based Holualoa Congress, the 100,000-square-foot structure will be the subject of a two-day auction beginning on May 16, with a starting bid of $1.2 million.

Designated as a Class B structure, the Pioneer Building features an average floor size of around 9,200 square feet.
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The auction listing is being handled by the Tucson offices of Cushman & Wakefield. As an example of the ongoing interest in the structure, the online notice of its auction has thus far received more than 129,000 views.

​By Garry Boulard

The grounds hosting the annual and hugely popular Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta are expected to see a variety of facility upgrades in the months ahead.

The Balloon Fiesta was first held in 1972 and saw the launching of just over a dozen hot air balloons. Today that number is up to more than five hundred.

But as the popularity of the event at the Balloon Fiesta Park has grown with nearly 1 million visitors last year, so has the stress on the site itself.

Last month New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham gave her signature to a capital outlay earlier approved by state lawmakers of around $15.7 million for work at the Fiesta Park.

That work, according to a description of the legislation, may be used for upgrades to the site’s water, sewer, and electrical systems. Additional work will see restrooms improvements.

Some $150,000, meanwhile, will also target improvements to the park’s baseball fields and baseball cages. Plans are also in the works for road, parking lot, and walkway improvements.

City officials have also indicated that they would like to have more space for balloon landings.
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The first Balloon Fiesta event, in April of 1972, was held in the parking lot of the Coronado Center Shopping Mall. After several other location changes, it was permanently moved in 1986 to a site of vast acreage at 4401 Alameda Boulevard NE.

​By Garry Boulard

New home-buying may be taking a hit as the nation’s mortgage rates have now hit their highest level since last November.

According to a seasonally adjusted index published by the Mortgage Bankers Association, the average contract interest rate for a 30-year fixed rate mortgage has hit the 7.2% mark, up from 7.1% last month.

Not surprisingly, the mortgage rate increase has led to a decline of 2.7% in new mortgage applications. The decline, noted Joel Kan, a deputy chief economist with the association, came as “home buyers delayed their purchase decisions due to strained affordability and low supply.”

In a statement, Kan also noted that the adjustable-rate mortgage share of applications has increased to 7.6%, which he said is “consistent with the upward trend in rates, as buyers look to reduce their potential monthly payments.”

Meanwhile, applications for refinancing home loans have just fallen by 6%.

The Mortgage Bankers Association report additionally noted that while the Federal Housing Administration share of total mortgage applications was up to 12.8%, “the Veterans Administration share of total applications decreased to 11.7% from 12.4% the week prior.”

The impact of the mortgage rates increase on home buying remains uncertain. “Despite mortgage rates remaining stubbornly high, most housing market experts expect them to recede over 2024, assuming the Federal Reserve acts on its signaled interest rate cuts,” Forbes is reporting.

But the publication continues: “Whether mortgage rates fade enough to create a meaningful shift in home affordability remains uncertain.”

In a posting on the National Association of Realtors website, Jessica Lautz, deputy chief economist with the group, remarked that the latest rates statistics are revealing a “spring landscape that is taking longer to bloom.”
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Noting a mixed bag of economic trends showing an increase in both pending home sales and personal consumption, but also a sluggish Gross Domestic Product, Lautz added: “The bottom line for spring homebuyers is that mortgage rates may show little dramatic downward movement any time soon.”

By Garry Boulard

Work could begin later this fall on the construction of a comprehensive and new academic building set to go up on the Boulder campus of the University of Colorado.

The project has a reported price tag of $174.5 million and will measure around 79, 200 square feet.

Set to house the school’s applied math and chemistry departments, the structure will also include both specialized quantum research laboratories and office space, as well as a 200-seat auditorium.

Additional features: meeting spaces, student study areas, and a roof terrace.

The school, with a current enrollment of just over 37,000, has taken on a number of significant building projects in the last decade, including the $57 million expansion of the main music education building in 2019, and a $130 million conference center and hotel in 2022.

The new project, which won the approval earlier this month of the University of Colorado’s Board of Regents, will go up off Regent Drive on the south end of the campus.

According to a press released issued by the university, the building’s mechanical system will be designed to use low-temperature hot water “in preparation for the eventual connection to a future district energy loop heated by electricity, in support of the university’s overarching decarbonization plans.”
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If all goes as expected, work on the structure will see completion in either late 2026 or early 2027.

​By Garry Boulard

An innovative educational program operated by the University of Arizona in Yuma is making plans for a facility expansion.

The university's Cooperative Extension program has received $5.5 million to help fund a project that has won the approval of the Yuma County Board of Supervisors.

The cooperative extension program is an offshoot of UA’s agriculture and veterinary sciences curriculum and is tasked with applying technologies for increased agricultural production at the community level.

The mission of the program, dating from its origins more than a century ago, has been, as UA says on its website, to “make science useful.”

The program’s facilities in Yuma are located at 2200 W. 28th Street in a one-story structure that it shares with the Yuma County Public Health Services District. Yuma County has provided some 5,500 square feet in that facility for the program.

According to county documents, Arizona law requires that Yuma must provide “reasonable office space” for the execution of the university’s extension effort.

Those same documents indicate that the new facility will be built off of W. County 15th Street, some 8 miles to the south of downtown Yuma.

Late last year, members of the Yuma County Board of Supervisors voted in favor of spending around $96,000 for a preliminary design of the new facility.
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Although an exact timetable for construction has not yet been announced, it is thought that work on the new Cooperative Extension structure could begin sometime next year.

​By Garry Boulard

Around four million workers will qualify for overtime pay beginning in January once a new rule just released by the Department of Labor is enacted.

The Labor Department’s rule increases the salary threshold for overtime pay from just under the current nearly $44,000 to around $58,600. The Department has further announced that such salary thresholds will be routinely updated every three years, beginning on July 1, 2027.

The new rule, said Julie Su, acting director of the Labor Department, “will restore the promise to people that if you work more than 40 hours a week, you should be paid for that time.”

“Too often, lower-paid salaried workers are doing the same job as their hourly counterparts but are spending more time away from their families for no additional pay,” Su continued in a statement, adding: “That is unacceptable.”

The overtime ruling has been a long time coming. In 2016, then-President Obama asked the Labor Department to increase the salary threshold to $47,476 a year. That action was subsequently subject to litigation on behalf of nearly half of the states and a host of business groups, leading to a preliminary injunction issued by a federal judge in Texas.

In the summer of 2017 the Trump Administration announced that it would not go to bat for the new threshold.

The overtime issue has been particularly criticized by smaller businesses which have contended that an increased threshold would prove economically burdensome. “This will not just increase costs for small businesses, but ultimately the consumers as well,” remarked Anne Reinke, chief executive officer of the Transportation Intermediaries Association.

In the wake of the new DOL rule, Chris Netram, vice president of policy for the National Association of Manufacturers, said the action places new constraints on employers, and “reduces flexibility for the workers who will be reclassified.”

Netram additionally remarked that the DOL action may “force companies to make painful choices that will limit both job creation and growth opportunities available to employees.”
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Liz Shuler, president of the AFL-CIO characterized the new rule as one that is important for working families. The AFL-CIO leader earlier remarked that “employers who do not wish to pay additional overtime will now no longer be able to rely on unpaid overtime, and instead will have to reassess the way they distribute workloads to their employees.”

​By Garry Boulard

​A two-day auction for an 18,000-square-foot flex building located in Grants is scheduled to start on May 28.

Located at 113 Gold Avenue, the one-story structure is listed as a Class B building and sits on a 1.3-acre site in a neighborhood of small retail operations and garages.

The building has recently been the home of a company called United Projects Roofing & Restoration, and before that served as a NAPA Auto & Truck Parts store. It stands out visually due to a series of colorful murals to the front, side, and rear of the structure.

Situated within the boundaries of a designated Opportunity Zone, the building is geared for light manufacturing, and could also be used as a warehouse or general retail department store.

The Grants real estate market in recent years has been somewhat flat, in part reflecting statistics showing that the city, with 9,100 people, has lost population from a high of just over 11,400 in the 1980s.

With the auction listed by realtors Hayden Outdoors Real Estate, whose corporate office is located in Windsor, Colorado, the property has a minimum $150,000 starting bid.
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By way of comparison, a similar sized industrial or commercial structure in Albuquerque, Las Cruces, or Santa Fe might fetch more than $1 million.

​By Garry Boulard

In a move designed to increase the number and variety of building projects located near its main light rail line, the City of Phoenix is receiving some $1.2 million in federal funds to facilitate those projects.

The money is coming through the Federal Transit Administration in the form of a Transit Oriented Development grant and will be used to evaluate possible affordable housing and development projects within walking distance of a Valley Metro Rail station.

In announcing the grant, Mayor Kate Gallego remarked that transit-oriented development has become an “inextricable part of our mission to build a Phoenix that works for everyone.”

The Mayor added that the funding will “help us build a more dynamic city that seamlessly connects residents to work, the grocery store, to schools or their doctor’s office—all without having to rely on a car.”

The funding is also especially expected to be used to assess building project possibilities on “city-owned, vacant, and large development sites.”

Phoenix has a long history with transit-oriented developments, having launched its light rail service in 2008 and shortly thereafter beginning a protracted effort that has seen the development of some 2,200 housing units located along the rail’s corridor.

Three new light rail stations currently being built in the city’s downtown area are expected to be operative in 2025.
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Altogether, the Federal Transit Administration this month has awarded around $17.6 million in grants for transit-oriented development efforts in 16 states.

​By Garry Boulard