More than 1 million square feet of industrial building space may see construction later this year in southeast El Paso in an area of new business and commercial growth.
The private equity firm Stonelake Capital Partners, which is based in both Austin and Dallas, has completed paperwork for the purchase of nearly 70 acres for the project. Those acres are near the intersection of Eastlake Boulevard and Interstate 10, and some 4 miles away from the Zaragoza Bridge, a busy U.S./Mexico port of entry. According to the Austin Business Journal, what is being called the Eastlake Logistics Park will “cater to tenants focused on cross-border logistics between the United States and Mexico.” With work on the Eastlake Logistics Park scheduled to start during the last quarter of this year, the first completed structures will most likely be completed in the early fall of 2022. Founded in 2007, Stonelake has industrial and residential properties not just in Texas, but also Arizona, Florida, Georgia, and Tennessee. The company already owns 25 buildings in El Paso, comprising some 2.6 million square feet. By Garry Boulard
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Plans are underway for the construction of a new Raising Cane’s Chicken Fingers outlet in downtown Phoenix.
The project is expected to be built at 7th Avenue and Thomas Road at the site of the former Duke Photography, a local landmark dating to the early 1950s. As proposed, the new Raising Cane’s restaurant would include an outdoor patio and drive-through service. Concerns have been raised regarding the demolition of the one-story Duke Photography building, which is regarded by some Phoenix residents as a historic structure. A request for rezoning the site to allow for the building of the restaurant has been submitted to the City of Phoenix by the Raising Cane company. Launched in Baton Rouge, Raising Cane currently has more than 750 locations nationally, the majority of which are located in the South. But the company also has a growing presence in Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico. The typical Raising Cane’s outlet measures between 2,500 and 3,500 square feet. The company has been building roughly 60 new restaurants annually and announced plans earlier this year for the construction of 7 new outlets in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. By Garry Boulard Continuing to meet with legislative leaders from both parties, President Biden is said to be open to Republican suggestions to pare down his more than $2.3 trillion infrastructure report.
According to reports, the President is entertaining an alternative proposal put forth by West Virginia Senator Shelly Moore Capito calling for a $568 billion bill that would include just under $300 billion for road and bridge upgrades and construction. The smaller bill also includes roughly $44 billion fir airport infrastructure projects. The timeline for the competing infrastructure proposals is also different with the White House asking for an eight-year spending schedule that would also include funding for affordable housing and electric vehicles, among other priorities. The Capito proposal would have a 5-year timeline. Capito, who is the ranking member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, told reporters after meeting with Biden, adding: “It feels like we’re moving and we’re moving forward.” The President earlier said he is amenable to alternative infrastructure proposals, but said lawmakers had to meet him half way. If those proposals add up to “one-fourth or one-fifth of what I’m asking,” Biden added, “then it’s a no-go for me.” By Garry Boulard A process is underway that could result in the construction of a massive new air shaft at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near the city of Carlsbad.
The project, which would be built to the west of an existing disposal area at the site, has an estimated $197 million price tag and could take up to 4 years to fully build. WIPP officials have said that the shaft is needed to provide ventilation for underground workers at the site. In a public hearing conducted by the New Mexico Environment Department, consultant Robert Kehrman said salty particulates rising from the underground beds at the facility tend to get trapped in the current filtering system. Kehrman is a consultant for the Nuclear Waste Partnership, contractor for the plant. Launched in 1999, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant is licensed to store radioactive waste in storage rooms more than 2,100 feet underground. The facility saw a series of mishaps in the winter of 2014 when a salt haul truck caught on fire and subsequent air monitors recorded unusually high radiation levels. The fire prompted WIPP to suspend operations, not re-opening until early 2017 when it once again began accepting shipments of nuclear waste. Opponents of the project say the construction of a new air shaft could allow the plant to exceed the 2024 closure date for the facility as prescribed in its permit with the Environment Department. In a column for the Carlsbad Current Argus, Dale Janway, the Mayor of Carlsbad, said the city’s residents “have high expectations that this project will be handled safely and hold the Department of Environment to its original promise that WIPP jobs remain in southeastern New Mexico.” According to WIPP statistics, there are roughly 1,000 people employed at the facility. It is not known when the Environment Department will make a final determination on the air shaft project. By Garry Boulard Work may begin later this year in Phoenix on the redevelopment of a former Motorola electronics and semi-conductor manufacturing plant.
The project at 1110 N. 52nd Street belongs to the Chicago-based Baker Development Corporation and could see the construction of to 800,000 square feet of new data center space. The project is being seen as only the latest response to a growing demand in southern Arizona for more data center space. Baker Development has a growing profile in Arizona with two projects in Goodyear and Yuma. The Goodyear project is known as VB/143 and includes two structures for a total of 325,000 square feet. The other project, with up to 520,000 square feet of warehouse space, is called VB/Yuma and has a completion date of later this year. The original Motorola plant on 52nd Street was built in 1956 and eventually included a 5,000-gallon underground storage tank. In 1999, the company was split off to become ON Semiconductor, although Motorola remained responsible for the cleaning up of ground contamination and maintenance of the site, a process that has been ongoing. By Garry Boulard Plans are proceeding for the repurposing of a downtown Santa Fe building that will have a new life as a research facility for the Los Alamos National Lab.
The high-tech startup Descartes Labs moved out of the 28,000 square foot building at the intersection of N. Guadalupe and W. Alameda streets last year. That facility, informally known as the old Firestone Building, will also now be used for teleworking, LANL meetings, and conferences. LANL is additionally moving into two large office buildings previously rented out by the state government at the intersection of St. Michael’s Drive and Pacheco Street. Those structures will be utilized for both lab and office space. It is expected that up to 600 LANL employees will be working in the three facilities. Two years ago, LANL proposed setting up new facilities on the more than 60-acre Midtown Campus that once belonged to the Santa Fe University of Art and Design. That proposal was ultimately declined by the City of Santa Fe. Although some community and anti-nuclear activists have responded negatively to the idea of LANL establishing new space in Santa Fe, Mayor Alan Webber has welcomed the project. Regarding the LANL facilities as a source for economic development, the Mayor told the Albuquerque Journal: “Importantly, we’ll also see more long-term entrepreneurial connections between LANL and the Santa Fe startup community.” In a virtual community meeting two weeks ago, Thom Mason, the lab’s director, noted that LANL will officially be moving into its new Santa Fe offices “over the course of the next year.” LANL’s footprint in Los Alamos currently comprises nearly 900 structures, as well as just over a dozen nuclear facilities, making up nearly 8.3 million square feet of building space. By Garry Boulard A long-range general plan that will include a definition of permissible high-rise construction in Scottsdale will be presented to city voters in November.
The plan is designed to serve as a roadmap for how the city wants to grow and is updated and sent to the voters for their approval every 10 years. Currently, the city puts limits on the construction of buildings ranging in height from 40 feet to 150 feet, depending upon the neighborhood. Downtown and historic sections of the city generally have lower limits in the 40 foot to 48-foot range. According to sources, developers have complained that the limitations are too restrictive, although taller buildings in some parts of the city are allowable if a project includes open space or public art, among other amenities. Two years ago, a 150-foot tall office building project secured the approval of the city council on the condition that the developer agreed to pay more than $2.1 million for certain pedestrian and street improvements. Advocates of height restrictions in Scottsdale say such regulations are particularly important when it comes to projects in the city’s historic Old Town, noting that structures taller than 40 to 48 feet threaten to dwarf the many smaller historic one and two-story buildings in the area. An updated general plan is expected to be reviewed and voted on by the Scottsdale City Council this summer, as a preliminary to the November election. By Garry Boulard Wading into an argument dividing economists and job experts, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has announced a move to do away with the weekly $300 federal unemployment benefits.
The nation’s largest business lobbying group said it is calling upon Congress to terminate the program as soon as possible, rather than letting it end as scheduled in September, contending that the benefits are hampering job growth. In a statement, Neil Bradley, the Chamber’s executive vice-president, pointed to the most recent jobs numbers as evidence that “paying people not to work is dampening what should be a stronger jobs market.” “We need a comprehensive approach to dealing with our workforce issues and the very real threat unfilled positions pose to our economic recovery from the pandemic,” continued Bradley. The Chamber executive added that as it stands now, the $300 benefits have resulted in “approximately one in four recipients taking home more in unemployment than they earned working.” Last month the National Federation of Independent Business said that some 44% of business owners currently have job openings they could not fill. While some economists and public figures have said that the ongoing weekly benefits have become a disincentive for many people to seek new work, others have deemed the benefits essential in a still-pandemic economy. Oregon Senator Ron Wyden, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said “enhanced jobless benefits helped save the economy by ensuring millions of families could pay rent and buy groceries during this crisis.” Wyden added that “cutting off all benefits while millions of workers have not been able to return to work could cause tremendous financial pain and sabotage our economic recovery.” The $300 in weekly benefits was enacted last year, and subsequently extended until September by President Biden earlier this year as part of his $1.9 trillion stimulus package. By Garry Boulard An unusual plan is underway in central Denver to transform a site known as a tank farm into space for new affordable housing.
Located within the boundaries of the city’s Sun Valley neighborhood, what is called the Zuni tank farm was formerly an Xcel Energy plant. If all goes well, the Denver Housing Authority will sometime this summer acquire the 8-acre property near 13th Avenue for the ambitious redevelopment project, which will also include the creation of open green space. The land in question is dominated by several large tanks that in the past were used to store oil. The agency already owns a portion of the site through an earlier purchase. If DHA’s estimated $6.2 million purchase of the land is finalized, the agency will then be tasked with not only removing the tanks, but also generally remediating the site. To that end, the agency is currently in the process of trying to secure a grant for up to $500,000 from the Environmental Protection Agency for the remediation work. The project is one with a decided forward-looking component: construction of the new housing units is not expected to begin until the site is completely remediated by the end of next year. The largely industrial Sun Valley neighborhood, with a population of less than 2,000 people, has for years been a part of the city with higher rates of unemployment and poverty. By Garry Boulard |
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