Work could begin late next year on the construction of an all-inclusive recreation center that will go up on the southwest side of Denver. The Westwood Recreation Center will be located at the intersection of Morrison Road and Walsh Place. The 2.9-acre site was formerly the home of the Rod/Custom Car Wash, which was demolished more than a year ago. The new facility is expected to measure around 40,000 square feet and will house a fitness center and gymnasium, not to mention indoor aquatics space, offices, community meeting rooms, and a full-service kitchen. With an anticipated budget of around $37.5 million, construction of the center will be funded out of the big $937 million Elevate Denver general bond package approved by city voters in the fall of 2017. According to city documents, the center will also feature an indoor swimming pool, locker rooms, and outdoor exercise space. The project has been the subject of several public input meetings. Although work on the center was initially expected to begin this year, it now appears that construction will commence in late 2023 or early 2024, with a general completion date of January 2026. By Garry Boulard
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A plan to build up to 32 townhouses on the west side of Rio Rancho has now secured a conditional use permit from the city’s planning and zoning board. That permit came after a report issued by the city’s planning staff which determined that the project is “not likely to be detrimental to the public welfare, safety, health, morals and convenience of the surrounding area.” The company X2D, which is based in Albuquerque, wants to build the homes on a just over one-acre vacant site in a sparsely populated part of the city south of Tulip Road and to the west of Arizona Street. As planned, each townhome in the project will have two stories and two bedrooms, with an exterior private yard surrounded by fencing. According to city documents, the project will also see the creation of off-street parking space, a six-foot wide concrete sidewalk between the townhomes on the site, and both landscaping and ponding areas. Plans for the project must now win the approval of the Rio Rancho Governing Board. By Garry Boulard A plan to substantially increase the nation’s housing stock in the next 5 years, particularly when it comes to affordable units, has just been released by the Biden Administration. Officially called the Housing Supply Action Plan, the initiative is particularly focused on using new financing mechanisms to build as well as preserve more housing, while also making loans more available for multifamily development projects. According to a White House press release, “Fewer new homes were built in the decade following the Great Recession than in any decade since the 1960s—constraining housing supply and failing to keep pace with demand and household formation.” In response, the President wants to see the construction of more new homes, while “preserving federally-supported and market-rate affordable housing, ensuring that total new units do not merely replace converted or dilapidated units that get demolished.” Other key components of Biden’s plan include the rewarding of jurisdictions that have reformed their zoning and land-use policies; and combining the efforts of both the public sector and private sector to address supply chain challenges and improve building techniques. In a statement, Diane Yentel, chief executive officer of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, lauded the Administration’s “commitment to using federal transportation funds to reduce restrictive local zoning laws, which can inhibit or prohibit the construction of apartments and are often deeply rooted in racial exclusion.” National Association of Home Builders Chairman Jerry Konter similarly praised the Biden proposal but added that it “does not go far enough to resolve the many underlying challenges facing the home building industry, including skyrocketing costs for lumber and other building materials, and the broader supply chain crisis.” In a separate move, the President has urged Congress to pass legislation offering tax credits to both build and rehab homes for lower and middle-income buyers. That legislation has yet to win approval on Capitol Hill. By Garry Boulard A massive Denver industrial site with a nearly 262,000 square foot warehouse is scheduled to go to auction next month. With a starting bid of $7.5 million, the site at 4221 Monaco Street on the northeast side of the city is in a neighborhood populated with similarly large warehouse facilities. The building was for decades the home of the Colorado Container Corporation and later the Packaging Corporation of America. The Denver-based Column Commercial Partners is serving as the auction listing agent for the property. Built in 1964, the main structure is classified as a Class B building, and includes15,000 square feet of office space, as well as a fully enclosed six-bay docking area able to accommodate 40 foot-long trailers. The two-day auction for the property is scheduled to begin on June 20. By Garry Boulard Two busy auto dealerships in Fort Collins are expected to begin construction on expansive new facilities in the coming months. A Nissan dealership located at 5811 S. College Avenue will see its main building demolished in order to make way for the construction of a Kia dealership showroom and maintenance facility. According to plans, the work will then shortly commence on the building of a new Nissan site, just to the north of the S. College site. Both dealerships are owned by businessman Roger Weibel, who has long wanted to have the two businesses in closer proximity to each other. The construction plans have already been presented during at least one public input meeting. By Garry Boulard It was labor legislation that President Herbert Hoover, in the middle of the Great Depression, thought was urgently needed. Signed into law by the President in March of 1931, the Davis-Bacon Act required contractors to pay prevailing wages to construction workers on all federal public work projects. That legislation gained support during a time of economic upheaval when labor unions claimed that workers often lost jobs to other workers who were willing to take on jobs for lower wages. In the decades since its original passage, the Davis-Bacon Act has only been suspended a handful of times: In 1971, President Richard Nixon did away with the act for a month as a means of battling inflation; George W. Bush briefly suspended the legislation for federal workers taking on rebuilding projects in the Gulf states after Hurricane Katrina. Now a report just issued by the Beacon Hill Institute for Policy Research in Medway, Massachusetts, is claiming that the Davis-Bacon Act increases the average cost of a given federal construction project by at least 7.2%. In the report, titled The Federal Davis-Bacon Act: Mismeasuring the Prevailing Wage, the authors say the means used to calculate prevailing wage standards has proven to be arcane, “calculating a wage that is biased toward requiring union-scale wages instead of an average of even true prevailing wage.” Two months ago, the Department of Labor issued a proposed rule updating the Davis-Bacon Act and strengthening its enforcement. The new proposal also calls for protecting employees who may have raised concerns with the Labor Department regarding a contractor’s payment practices or other employment matters. In a statement, the AFL-CIO said that the new rules will “modernize and strengthen prevailing wage laws to protect thousands of workers on federal projects from rampant wage theft.” An opposing viewpoint has been issued by the Associated Builders and Contractors, criticizing the proposed changes to both the Davis-Bacon Act, as well as the original legislation itself. “For decades, small businesses in the construction industry have complained about the regulatory burdens and lack of clarity caused by dysfunctional Davis-Bacon Act regulations,” said the ABC statement, adding that an outright repeal of the legislation would save taxpayers at least $217 billion in the next decade. A public comment period on the proposed changes to the Davis-Bacon Act has just expired. The final determination regarding the proposed Davis Bacon Act changes by the Labor Department is expected to be announced later this year. By Garry Boulard Plans are moving forward for the construction of new studio space that will belong to production and streaming giant Netflix in Albuquerque. Several months ago, the Los Gatos, California-based company said it wanted to increase its current footprint at the Albuquerque Studios with upwards of 60,000 square feet in new production space. A commercial building permit has now been issued by the City of Albuquerque for a project that carries with it an estimated $520,000 price tag and will be done jointly by Dekker Perich Sabatini and the JTM Construction Group. Netflix’s current facilities are located within the Mesa del Sol community at 5650 University Boulevard SE. The company set up operations in Albuquerque in 2020 after purchasing Albuquerque Studios for some $30 million. Soon thereafter the company announced plans to expand its Duke City presence with the construction of an office building, special effects warehouse, post-production facility and at least ten sound stages, among other facilities. Founded in the summer of 1997, Netflix last year saw revenues in excess of $29.7 billion. By Garry Boulard A new four-lane federal highway spanning just over 210 miles and connecting the cities of Amarillo, Texas and Raton, New Mexico appears closer to becoming reality. As long discussed by officials and residents in both states, the highway would connect Interstate 27 as it travels north through western Texas and Interstate 25, one of the most important throughways in New Mexico, that connects El Paso with Santa Fe and beyond. If built, the new highway would replace the current traffic route between Amarillo and Raton that requires the use of the smaller U.S. Route 87 in Texas and U.S. Route 64 in northern New Mexico. The highway will be a part of significantly larger 2,300-mile U.S. Ports to Plains Corridor. In March, President Biden signed into law an appropriations bill recognizing the Ports to Plains route as a part of the Interstate Highway System. Ultimately, the corridor will extend from Mexico to Canada. A timeline for when the project could see construction has not been announced, pending further state and federal studies, as well as cost estimates. By Garry Boulard Upwards of 40 states have invested a total of nearly $32 billion in Coronavirus Virus State Fiscal Recovery Funds, according to a just-released report issued by the National Conference of State Legislatures. Those funds have been used to target any number of water, sewer, broadband, and general infrastructure projects, notes the NCSL report Road to Recovery. The CSFRF funds were folded into the larger $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, which was signed into law in early 2021 by the President and was designed to hasten the country’s recovery from the impact of Covid 19 and the national economic shutdown. As defined by the Treasure Department, states were given wide latitude in how they wanted to use their CSFRF funds. The idea behind the Treasury Department rules was that states should be allowed to spend money on what the agency described as “necessary” projects. The Treasury Department rules have also encouraged the funding of infrastructure projects employing local workers or those “from historically underserved communities.” Project funding to date has included everything from the $3.2 billion spent in California on the construction of a statewide open-access middle mile broadband network; to the $225 million in Alabama for water infrastructure projects; and the $317 million in North Dakota used for state, county, and township road and bridge work. Colorado has seen $182 million going for the building of a variety of transportation-related projects, as well as the purchasing and development of the 58-acre Burnham Yard Rail Property in Denver. Arizona and Colorado are among the states that have allocated CSFRF money on infrastructure projects, while both New Mexico and Texas have not yet made official their allocations, according to the NCSL report. While many of the projects are underway, the NCSL report notes that all of the states, territories, and District of Columbia “must obligate their federal recovery funds by December 2024 and spend them by December 2026.” By Garry Boulard A one-story building housing a Greek Orthodox church in northern Tucson is set to be put up for auction next month. Located on a nearly 6-acre site at 1145 E. Fort Lowell Road, the St. Demetrios Greek Orthodox Church structure was built in 1980 and measures just under 28,000 square feet. The listing also includes a two-story, 19,600 square foot educational building. Additional features in the main building itself include meeting space and a fully functioning kitchen. The auction, scheduled for June 1, will be handled by Fine & Company, which is based in Northbrook, Illinois. Additional properties belonging to the church that will be a part of the auction include a nearby 4,200 square foot commercial building; an 11,200 square foot Quonset hut; a mostly vacant 2.4-acre site; and an 1,800 square foot leased building across East Navajo Road from the church. A fire caused by a candle caused up to $1 million in damages to the building’s sanctuary in 2013. Since then, services have been held in the church hall. By Garry Boulard |
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