Work could begin soon on a new transit center designed to accommodate the extensive Albuquerque Rapid Transit project. Additional construction may see the building of battery charging stations at various points along the ART route on Central Avenue. The overall 8.8-mile ART route runs from Tramway Boulevard in the east to the Atrisco Vista Road in the west. Money for the projects is coming from the Federal Transit Authority, which has just announced that it is awarding the City of Albuquerque some $75 million in grants for the construction of the ART project. The funding will come in two increments, with the first $50 million to be officially awarded by the end of next month, and the remaining $25 million coming sometime in October. That money is specifically being drawn out of the FTA’s Small Starts Program, which is designed to provide funding for light, heavy, and commuter rail, as well as streetcar and bus rapid transit projects across the country. The Small Starts money reimburses the City of Albuquerque for the construction costs it has so far absorbed for the project. That money comes on the heels of a $14 million federal grant awarded to Albuquerque earlier this summer for Central Avenue roadwork connected to the project. Work on the ART project was launched in late 2016 with partial operations beginning a year later. The project has seen the creation of a rapid transit corridor down Central Avenue, featuring stations and bus-only lanes, and creating the first all-electric bus rapid transit system in the country. The FTA announcement won the praise of Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller who said the federal money will lessen the “burden of having to cover the cost of the project with city funds or new tax dollars.” By Garry Boulard
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IHS Markit and the Procurement Executives Group is out with a new study showing that construction costs in July were up again, a trend that has been consistent going back to September of 2016. One of the most notable increases is coming in pipe and tube prices, a trend that is expected to continue for the rest of the year. According to IHS Markit’s Engineering and Construction Cost Index, the industry costs are not confined to just the rising price of equipment and supplies, but also labor. Salaries and wages, which have been on the up side for some 13 months now, rose once again in July. The IHS Markit study also charts a particular increase in wages for welders and electrical engineers. In a statement, John Anton, the director of pricing and purchasing for IHS, said the “pricing environment for materials and equipment is made worse by uncertain policy duration, potential company exceptions, country exemptions, and the combination of tariffs and quotas.” The IHS Index is spirited by data provided regularly from engineering, procurement, and construction companies across the country. By Garry Boulard Semiconductor giant Texas Instruments has announced plans to expand its presence in Tucson with the construction of a new manufacturing plant. The facility will go up on a currently vacant 8.2-acre site at the southwest corner of Craycroft Road and Broadway Boulevard inside the Williams Centre business park. The announcement comes after talks with both City of Tucson and State of Arizona officials, resulting in a series of incentives packages allowing for a reimbursement of impact and permit fees valued at nearly $460,000. In a statement, Arizona Governor Douglas Ducey said the Dallas-based company’s decision to build a new Tucson plant is a “huge win for southern Arizona and just the latest in a series of positive developments for our state’s thriving economy.” Designing chips for such products as portable medical devices, smart phones, and MP3 players, Texas Instruments acquired for $7.6 million the former Burr Brown Research Corporation in Tucson in the fall of 2000, moving into that company’s headquarters at 6730 South Tucson Boulevard. It relocated into facilities once operated by the online service provider AOL at 5411 E. Williams Boulevard a decade ago. The new Texas Instruments building will have four floors and will measure around 125,000 square feet. By Garry Boulard A Denver-based development company emphasizing neighborhood investment is launching a new project with an emphasis on workforce housing. Founded in 1972, Zeppelin Development has become as integral to Denver’s urban landscape as its streets, sidewalks, and traffic lights. “We like to be involved in a variety of projects that kind of compliment each other, all within a single neighborhood,” says Nicolette Smith, Zeppelin’s marketing coordinator. “We pretty much always have ongoing a good mixture of private, mixed-use office buildings, and public space projects,” continues Smith. All of Zeppelin’s projects pay tribute to the company’s essential ethic: a project works best when it is part of a larger community fabric and designed to be an enduring component of that fabric. “You have to be a longterm player,” Mickey Zeppelin, the founder and co-president of Zeppelin Development, commented to a conference sponsored by the non-profit Technology, Entertainment, and Design group in 2015. Many other developers, Zeppelin continued, “build an apartment, they sell it, they leave, and the community deals with the parking problems.” Zeppelin Development’s approach has been precisely the opposite, and it is for that reason, among others, that it has won the praise and respect of both community activists and city officials. The company is perhaps most famous for its all-encompassing development efforts in Denver’s River North district. A neighborhood that was once the home to warehouses, manufacturing facilities, and foundries, River North had fallen on hard times by the early 1990s after Denver’s industrial base moved elsewhere. Zeppelin in his TED conference described the neighborhood as a place “with junk yards [and] car parts; whereas before it had a vibrancy where things were made.” But Zeppelin and his son Kyle saw the neighborhood industrial wasteland as both a challenge and an opportunity, eventually redeveloping a former 20-acre Yellow Cab terminal at 3507 Ringsby Court. It was a project that others may have regarded as quaint, but forlorn: how to transform what had become a site managed by the Environmental Protection Agency and littered with several hundred abandoned cabs into a place where people would want to work and congregate. Gradually, Zeppelin foisted upon Denver a dramatic reimagining of the old Yellow Cab property, initially creating in the process a modern open shared working space, as well as restaurant, coffee shop, and even day care center space. The redeveloped property, simply called TAXI, was completed in 2001. “What was once a gritty piece of real estate on the west bank of the river has become the centerpiece of the growing River North—or RiNo—neighborhood,” the Denver Post noted in the spring of 2016 as Zeppelin Development neared the completion of a sixth structure in the TAXI complex. By then, the site included not just the original office space, but TAXI II, a mixed-use structure housing 44 residential units, and more than 60,000 square feet of office space. The site now features nine buildings, providing office space to more than one hundred residential units and individual businesses. Zeppelin Development’s success has not, of course, been limited to the old Yellow Cab property. The company, which has also spearheaded projects in Denver’s Golden Triangle and Lower Downtown neighborhoods, completed the Zeppelin Station this spring, a four-story, 100,000 square-foot space in River North that includes a food hall and public marketplace on the ground floor, as well as office space on the upper floors. Zeppelin Development has additionally repurposed a former iron foundry, also in River North, into the Source Hotel and Music Hall, which currently houses more than two dozen food and retail vendors, two breweries, and a rooftop pool. A 140,000 square-foot structure called the FLIGHT building was completed by Zeppelin this year and now serves as the home to Boa Technology. “The Boa building is an artists’ and residents’ space,” says Smith, “the two top floors are smaller and have, as office space, everything you need already there, so that a person can walk in and start working, versus having to set up an office the traditional way.” The structure, adds Smith, “also has a green roof on the north and south side of the building, which is a pretty cool additional feature.” Despite such conspicuous building success, both father and son Zeppelin worry about the scale and dimension of a new era of construction in Denver. In 2016, Kyle Zeppelin, the president of the company, told the New York Times that there was a “disconnect between the urban fabric and culture of the neighborhood and what speculators want to do.” Notes the website for Denver’s Golden Triangle Creative District: “The father and son team Mickey and Kyle Zeppelin are committed to promoting social change through intelligently designed projects that address unmet needs in the market and provide a catalyst to surrounding neighborhoods.” To that end, Kyle Zeppelin has voiced his opposition to the expansion and lowering of Interstate 70 in North Denver because of concerns about the project’s impact on the adjacent neighborhood. He also, notably among the city’s developers, expressed support last year for the controversial and ultimately successful green roof ballot initiative, mandating rooftop gardens for most new structures in Denver of at least 25,000 square feet. Meanwhile, in trying to address Denver’s pressing lack of workforce housing, Zeppelin’s newly announced 149-unit apartment project at 2101 W. 31st Street is taking an unconventional approach to the problem. Once again showing the company’s public spirit, Zeppelin is currently working with area employers to buy leases for blocks of the new development. In a bid to, if not combat Denver’s high cost of living, then at least find an innovative way around it, the employers will then charge a lower base rent to their employees. In an interview with the BusinessDen earlier this year, Kyle Zeppelin said the company’s increasing focus today is trying to find a solution to the housing affordability challenge in Denver. He notes that while there continues to be a good deal of development focused on the high end, “affordable projects are somewhat cookie cutter, and it’s not about people and who is going to occupy them.” By Garry Boulard The nearly 30 year-old Cohen Stadium in northeast El Paso is now slated for demolition in order to make way for a sweeping and imaginative entertainment district.
That, anyway, is the essence of a plan called “Reimagining Cohen,” which says that once the 9,700-seat facility is leveled, construction can begin on a new hotel, waterpark, several restaurants, and retail space. What is being called the Cohen Entertainment District will also include athletic fields and open space, a network of walking and bike paths, and streets. City documents say the district will become a “retail and recreation destination that will attract sports aficionados, families, business travelers and outdoor enthusiasts.” Funding for the project, which could have a first phase price tag of $20 million, is expected to come from a variety of sources, including the Quality of Life bond passed by El Paso voters nearly 6 years ago, and Capital Improvement Plan money approved last year by the El Paso City Council. Additional funding is expected to come through public/private partnerships. Designed by EXIGO Architecture of El Paso, the entertainment district has been talked about for more than a year and the subject of a series of community input meetings. By Garry Boulard A possible breakthrough in negotiations between the U.S. and Mexico regarding the renewal of the North American Free Trade Agreement is expected to open the way for larger talks between those two countries and Canada.
For the U.S. construction industry, renewing NAFTA is seen as important due to the large amount of construction equipment passing between this country and Mexico. The industry has been worried that such materials may increase in price if there is a reduction in such imports. At the same time, roughly 30% of construction equipment made in the U.S. is sent to Mexico and Canada. According to U.S. News & World Report, manufacturers in America sold more than $9.1 billion in construction equipment to Canada in 2015 and over $1 billion to Mexico during that same year. The biggest sticking point for U.S. and Mexico negotiators has centered on rules governing automobile manufacturing. The U.S. has been pushing for raising the amount of local content in North American-made vehicles. The U.S. wants to up the content requirement from its current 62.5% to 70%. The talks have been overseen by U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Mexican Economy Secretary Ildefonso Guajardo. Another issue yet to be resolved is a U.S. demand for a clause that would require that the agreement be automatically renewed every five years. It is thought that a NAFTA agreement between the U.S. and Mexico may be only days away, but no final reauthorization of the agreement can go forward without the eventual participation and consent of Canadian trade officials. By Garry Boulard Public comment is still being solicited for a project that could see the eventual construction of more than 5,000 energy-efficient homes inside a larger development that would also include a 40-acre working farm and community gardens.
What is being called Montava is the vision of Fort Collins developer Max Ross, who wants to carve out his unusual project on a roughly 900-site that is currently owned by Anheuser-Busch. The famous brewing company operates one of the largest beer houses of its kind at 2351 Busch Drive, to the direct east of the site Ross hopes to develop. The land surrounding that facility is regarded by Fort Collins officials as not just the last large pierce of undeveloped property in the city, but also a final frontier of sorts. Through his Fort Collins-based development company, HF2M, Inc., Ross has proposed the construction of not just a series of multi and single-family homes, but also retail space, parks, and even schools, creating a virtual community. To be bordered on the north by Richards Lake Road and Mountain Vista Drive on the south, Montava, according to a conceptual review submitted to the city, would be a “true walkable community based on traditional neighborhood forms.” A total price tag for the project has not yet been announced, although it is thought that it could cost as much as $30 million just to acquire the property in question. As currently proposed, Montava could take a full two decades to be totally built out, and would go far in absorbing a Fort Collins boom that has seen just under 50,000 people moving into the city in the last decade or so for a total current population of over 164,000. By Garry Boulard A 42-unit multi-family housing development is set for construction on Third Street NW, about a mile to the north of downtown Albuquerque.
The three-story facility, designed by the Albuquerque-based Mullen Heller Architecture, will include one-bedroom units, as well as a glassed-in central front lobby, offices, maintenance room, laundry rooms on the upper floors, and public gathering space. What is being called the Hopeworks Village is a joint project between the St. Martins Hopeworks of Albuquerque and YES Housing Incorporated. An organization that fosters community development and has spearheaded similar efforts in Belen, Clovis, and Los Alamos, the nonprofit YES Housing usually takes on the community relations and financing aspects of its housing projects. Members of the Albuquerque City Council have now approved up to $2 million to get the Hopeworks Village project built. That money, according to city documents, will be specifically used to purchase land and build a “single-site behavioral health services center with associated supportive and transitional affordable housing for those suffering from behavioral health issues and who are in need of shelter.” Additional funding for the project may be coming from both Bernalillo County as well as State of New Mexico sources. By Garry Boulard Refuting the notion that today’s retailers are increasingly more interested in having an online presence and less interested in opening their own stores, the Casper Sleep company has announced plans to build 200 new locations.
The company, with offices in New York and Los Angeles, was launched in 2014 and saw online orders for its foam, memory foam, and polyurethane mattresses during its first year of operations resulting in more than $100 million in revenue. Now the company, with revenues last year in excess of $600 million, wants to build stores not only for their mattress line, but also for a variety of sleep products including nap pillows, nightstands, bed frames, and even dog beds. Earlier this year, the company opened a store in New York that features multi-level displays, sitting space, and a series of small houses designed to showcase Casper’s mattresses in a more intimate bedroom setting. “We want to create places that are fun and exciting,” remarked Neil Parikh, Casper’s chief operating officer, to the publication Business Insider, adding that the company’s new stores will be “more like Apple stores and less like a traditional mattress store.” Although where and when Casper’s new stores will be built has not yet been announced, the company has said they would like to have all of its new locations up and running by the end of 2021. By Garry Boulard An 8,000-seat special events center, along with fairgrounds and several athletic fields, could see construction in Durango, Colorado if a recently-approved and much-discussed area plan becomes reality. Members of the Durango Planning Commission have voted unanimously in favor of the Durango Mesa Area Plan which will develop a portion of an 1,850-acre site in the Ewing Mesa for recreational and entertainment purposes. The site was purchased several years ago by Marc Katz, owner of the Durango-based Mercury Payment Systems, one of the fastest-growing payment processing companies in the country. At the time of the purchase, Katz said he wanted to turn over the land to both the City of Durango and surrounding La Plata County to be used as a community park and gathering place for concerts and other entertainment events. Of the 1,850 acres purchased by Katz, exactly 200 would be used for the special events center and athletic fields, with the rest being preserved as open space that could be used for horseback riding and hiking. A portion of the funding for what is being called the Durango Mesa Park, which would look out onto the La Plata Mountain range, could be secured through local sales tax revenue. The plan, designed by the Avon, Colorado-based architectural firm of Zehren and Associates, is now on its way to the Durango City Council for review and approval. By Garry Boulard |
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