Although the Albuquerque metro area has a population of nearly 900,000, a question is being raised as to whether or not that is enough people to support two large golf entertainment complexes.
Earlier this month members of the Albuquerque City Council approved an incentives package worth $2.6 million to spur the construction of a Topgolf outlet at the southwest corner of Montano Road NE and I-25, the site of a former water park known as The Beach that closed more than a decade ago. That package was regarded as essential by officials with the Dallas-based company, which plans to build 72 climate-controlled hitting bays, a bar, restaurant, and meeting space. Another outdoor recreation company, Big Shots, based in Chicago, announced plans late last year to build an 80-bay facility near the Balloon Fiesta Park on the I-25 corridor. Big Shots officials said their plans for that site included a multi-story 71,000 square-foot facility that would cost up to $20 million to build. But now, according to reports, that same company is rethinking its Albuquerque plans in the wake of Topgolf’s incentives package. The company has not said when it will make a final decision on whether or not to pursue its Albuquerque plans. The new Topgolf facility is expected to cost up to $40 million to build, with a targeted completion date of spring 2019. By Garry Boulard
0 Comments
An upgrading of dining rooms, remodeled counters, self-order kiosks, updated exteriors and additional parking spaces are among the features that McDonald’s is planning for nearly 8,700 of its restaurants nationally.
Altogether, the Chicago-based McDonald’s Corporation and its extensive franchisee network is expected to spend up to $6 billion modernizing its shops between now and the end of 2020. The campaign will see roughly $111 million spent in Colorado alone on the more than 140 McDonald’s locations in that state. The biggest investment will come with the $448 million the company is expected to spend on location upgrading at some 840 restaurants in Texas. Upwards of $390 million will be spent modernizing 550 restaurants in California; followed by the $320 million that will go for around 360 locations in New York. Arizona will see roughly 200 McDonald’s locations upgraded at a cost of $120 million, while the company will spend $43 million modernizing 60 restaurants in New Mexico. By far the largest fast-food restaurant chain in the U.S., McDonald’s announced earlier this year that it was working with its franchisees to address global climate change issues by installing LED lighting throughout its properties and energy efficient equipment in its kitchens. By Garry Boulard A new survey released by the network CNBC puts Denver near the top of the list as one of the cities internet commerce giant Amazon may end up building its massive $5 billion second headquarters in. The ranking comes as part of CNBC’s “Top States for Business” survey, which gives Colorado overall high marks in the areas of its economy, innovation, technology, and workforce. In that ranking, Texas, Washington, Utah, and Virginia made up the top four slots, with Colorado coming in a solid fifth. The new ranking describes Denver as one of the “strong contenders” for securing the new Amazon facility. Of the twenty cities that Amazon has said makes up the finalists for the competition, down from more than 200 who originally made pitches to win the headquarters, only Denver and Los Angeles were based in the far West. The CNBC ranking puts Atlanta, Austin, Boston, Chicago, Columbus, and Dallas ahead of Denver, but says the Mile-High City “offers many similarities to Amazon’s current home, Seattle.” The report also notes that Denver has a “strong and relatively stable business climate, a great workforce that is chock full of tech talent, and one of America’s top airports.” The listing, giving Denver an overall grade of B+, puts it well ahead of such heavyweights as New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Washington, all of whom were given a grade of B-. Amazon has not said when it will announce where it will build its new facility, although some industry experts have suggested that that announcement could be made before the end of this year. By Garry Boulard The Prescott-based Arizona Eco Development has announced plans to build more than 3,000 single-family houses, as well as a 100-room resort-style lodge in the Granite Dells.
The project would go up on currently vacant land east of U.S. Route 89 and Arizona State Route 89A, and would also include affordable housing units. According to documents filed by Arizona Eco Development, the land where the project would go up is “suitable for higher density development.” Plans for the project have sparked the opposition of a group called Save the Dells, which is pushing for the designation of a 500-acre park in the area. While the City of Prescott requires that at least 25 percent of the land in question must be preserved as open space, Eco Development has said it plans to preserve more than that as part of its development project, and will make that space available to the public. The proposal is currently being reviewed by the City of Prescott. By Garry Boulard Contrary to patterns in earlier times of expansion, construction job growth is playing out evenly across most of the country, with 45 states and the District of Columbia reporting new construction employment in the last year.
An analysis of the most recent Department of Labor statistics, just released by the Associated General Contractors of America, shows that Texas, California, Florida, and Georgia all saw gains of anywhere from just under 5 percent to just over 10.1 percent between July of last year and last month. On the upper end of the job growth numbers, Arizona recorded a 10.0 percent increase in the past year, adding 14,600 new jobs. New Mexico added 1,000 new jobs for an 8.6% rate, while Colorado posted 6,000 new jobs for a 3.7 percent growth rate. Of the top ten construction employment growth states, four were in the West: Alaska, Arizona, California, and Colorado, and four others in the Southern states of Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, and Georgia. In a statement, Ken Simonson, chief economist with the Associated General Contractors, said, “Construction job gains over the past year were more widespread across the country than at any time since the beginning of 2016.” Simonson said the new numbers indicate that “contractors are still optimistic about future construction activity,” but added that future job openings could go unfilled unless more young workers begin to enter the market. By Garry Boulard growing colorado district announces plans to build one new elementary school and expand another8/20/2018 Work could launch early next year on both the construction of a new elementary school and the expansion of an existing elementary school belonging to the Poudre School District in northern Colorado. Both of the projects will be paid for out of a $375 million bond that was narrowly approved by voters nearly two years ago. PSD officials say both the new school and the school expansion project are in response to continued enrollment growth, a growth that in recent years has been seeing 500 new students moving into the district annually. Plans call for the new school, which will be built to accommodate around 600 students, to go up near the intersection of Larimer County Road 30 and Larimer County Road 5 on the southeast side of Fort Collins. The second project will see the construction of two additional classrooms, as well as the expansion of an existing cafeteria and classroom, at the Zach Elementary School at 3715 Kechter Road. Planning for both projects has been delayed by a well-publicized suit filed by community activist Eric Sutherland, who has charged that the PSD failed to provide full disclosure regarding the funding of the 2016 bond and how it would be spent. Although the district has prevailed in each of the court hearings pertaining to Sutherland’s suit, it has been determined that no work on any of the bond-funded projects will be launched until the matter is finally settled. That would mean a ruling from the Colorado Supreme Court, which could come later this year. One of the fastest-growing districts in Colorado, the Poudre School District, which includes Fort Collins, currently has just over 30 elementary schools, 12 middle schools, and nearly a dozen high schools. By Garry Boulard The good news was announced last September: after running the always-busy Boulder County Recycling Center for some 16 years, Eco-Cycle was given a unanimous thumbs-up by members of the Boulder County Commission to continue its work. Before the vote was official, County Commissioner Deb Gardner said that Eco-Cycle’s management of the center had given to the public the “kind of recycling system we want to have,” adding that the company had “run that facility in a way that makes us proud to have a community-based recycling center.” For residents of the City of Boulder and larger Boulder County, the long and diverse record of Eco-Cycle and its ever-growing scope and mission has been a thing of wonder. Founded in 1976, the company, notes author Paul Connett in his book The Zero Waste Solution, “is one of the oldest and largest non-profit recyclers in the United States. “ It is also one of, if not the, most comprehensive recycling efforts in the country. One of the reasons for the company’s success, thinks executive director Suzanne Jones, is that Eco-Cycle’s focus has always been on the entire community. Noting that Eco-Cycle has assiduously built relationships with local governments, area schools, businesses, and neighborhoods, Jones maintains that “Everyone in a community has a role to pay and everyone needs to have access to services so that they can recycle, compost, repair, and reuse their stuff instead of landfilling it.” “Our hands-on approach lends itself to community-wide education and sharing of ideas about the best ways to reduce waste and to shift our collective thinking about how to use the Earth’s limited natural resources more equitably and sustainably.” Every year the company, managing a modern steel facility on the east side of the city of Boulder that processes more than 45,000 tons of recyclable materials, also runs an ancillary Center for Hard to Recycle Materials that processes up to 2 million pounds of material annually. “We are not a waste management or for-profit company,” says Harlin Savage, director of communications for Eco-Cycle. “What we are about instead is to build zero waste communities here and everywhere else.” With a staff of more than 60 people, Eco-Cycle also has an extensive education outreach program designed to teach upcoming generations about the value and importance of recycling. “We use traditional business activities such as operating our recycling center,” continues Savage, “and we also haul recycling, composting, and trash from commercial operations and businesses locally.” Savage continues: “We then take the money we make over and above the cost of operations and use that to support our schools program.” “Recycling just paper and aluminum cans is a thing of the past,” noted reporter Boonsri Dickinson in a profile of Eco-Cycle for the Boulder Daily Camera. “The more profitable materials such as white paper, cardboard, and aluminum help pay for the costs of recycling the hard-to-recycle materials,” said Dickinson. “All those plastic bags go into plastic lumber for decks and piers, for example.” The existence of the Center for Hard to Recycle Materials, otherwise known as CHaRM, has intensified Eco-Cycle’s work by taking in even such previously recycle-resistant materials as bikes and bike parts as well as political yard signs made of corrugated plastic. Eco-Cycle started out with the work of a Peter Grogan, a University of Colorado student, who launched the area’s first curbside recycling service. Grogan had the idea that if someone in a given neighborhood was recycling, that person could maybe talk to his or her neighbors about the value of doing so, thus continually expanding Eco-Cycle’s reach. “Eventually, he was driving around in a repurposed yellow school bus,” says Savage, “the seats were taken out and he and volunteers went around town picking up recyclables like newspapers and aluminum.” “From there, the idea just really caught on,” Savage adds. In an industry where demand can sometimes determine success or failure, notes Sam Lounsberry in the Longmont Times Call, “the technology and business model employed by the Boulder Recycling Center operated by Eco-Cycle has kept the mixes of material it produces desirable amidst a market fallout for recycled products made in many other parts of the globe.” One of the reasons the company has endured the market ups and downs for recyclable materials is the condition of those materials: “We want our recyclables to be as clean as possible,” says Savage. Because the company emphasizes the value of maintaining what it calls a “clean waste stream,” its residual numbers, the percentage of materials that can’t be re-used, is admirably low. “The standard industry average is around 25 to 40 percent,” reports Savage, “ours is 10 percent or less.” Meanwhile, Eco-Cycle’s potential for increasing capacity continues to grow. Late last year, two new plastic optical sorting units were installed in the Boulder County Recycling Center, technology now allowing the facility to recover and process a big 95 percent of the mixed plastics it receives, 90 percent of the aluminum, and 98 percent of other targeted materials. By Garry Boulard Construction could begin later this year, or sometime in 2019, on a long-planned hotel and restaurant project in Shiprock, New Mexico. The structure will most likely go up in an area of one-story commercial structures to the north of U.S. Highway 64 and West of U.S. Highway 491. In a statement, Navajo Nation President Russell Begaye said the new hotel and restaurant will “help revitalize the economy in one of the largest chapters on the Navajo Nation. Shiprock is an important community in the Four Corners area, with traffic coming through from all directions.” Because that traffic oftentimes sees tourists and truck drivers heading to such area landmarks as the Mesa Verde National Park and the Grand Canyon National Park, the thinking is: why wouldn’t they stop at a new and modern hotel along the way? The construction project will be a joint effort between the National Gaming Enterprise and the Navajo Division of Economic Development, with the NNGE serving the role as project supervisor. The $8.3 million project will be paid for out of the Navajo Nation’s Permanent Trust Fund, with some $2.8 million going for the initial infrastructure construction. By Garry Boulard An adobe building in downtown Tempe that was the birthplace of legendary and long-serving U.S. Senator Carl Hayden nearly 150 years ago may be on the verge of seeing its first significant restoration.
The larger property surrounding the Hayden House near the intersection of Mill Avenue and Rio Salado Parkway has been purchased for the planned construction of two mixed-use high-rises. One of those structures will be a 15-story hotel, while the other is planned as a 15-story Class A office building. City of Tempe officials have long been worried that if the work starts first on the new buildings, the Hayden House’s structure could be adversely impacted by the nearby construction. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the Hayden House, beginning in 1956, also served as Monti’s La Casa Vieja Steakhouse, a popular restaurant that closed in the fall of 2014. The developers of the new towers are the Douglas Wilson Companies and Hensel Phelps Development. It is not known when work on the Hayden House restoration will begin. By Garry Boulard Members of the U.S. Senate are currently looking over legislation that would put the management and oversight of the famous Route 66 under the purview of the National Park Service.
By so doing, argues proponents of the legislation, establishments and sites along the 2,500-mile route connecting Chicago to Los Angles would be eligible for federal grants funding preservation and rehabilitation efforts. House Bill 801 was approved unanimously on a voice vote in the House of Representatives in June. The measure has been in no small way helped by the support of the influential Washington-based Trust for Historic Preservation, which earlier this year included Route 66 on its eleven most endangered historic places in the nation. That group also sponsored a well-publicized tour of the route this summer, designed to point out the many architectural wonders along its roadside. With construction starting in the 1920s, Route 66 saw the building of hundreds of roadside diners and motors courts, many featuring a distinctive pre-World War II iconic modern design. The advent of the national highway system, beginning in the late 1950s, greatly contributed to the decline of Route 66, which is now plagued not only with sections of roads and bridges in a state of disrepair, but also a large number of abandoned roadside commercial structures. If the National Park Service ends up overseeing Route 66, it will also allow the NPS to apply financial and technical expertise to issues challenging the roadway. In a website message promoting the NPS’ management of Route 66, the Trust for Historic Preservation says the move will bring about “greater public interest and investment to communities along the iconic highway and encourage their economic revitalization.” It is not yet known when the Senate will take up the legislation. By Garry Boulard |
Get stories like these right to your inbox.
|