New construction job gains recorded in July were overwhelmingly related to the housing sector, says a new analysis published by the Associated General Contractors of America. Altogether, some 20,000 new construction jobs were recorded in July, while at the same time the nonresidential and infrastructure building sectors saw a loss of 4,000 jobs. In a statement, Ken Simonson, chief economist for the AGC, said that while it was gratifying to see residential building employment increasing, other areas of the industry present a troubling picture. “It is likely that many nonresidential jobs are in jeopardy following the completion of emergency projects and ones begun before the pandemic,” he said. Simonson added: “Projects that had been scheduled to start this summer or later are being canceled by both public agencies and private owners, while few new facilities are breaking ground.” July’s 20,000 gain in construction jobs follows a much more impressive increase of 163,000 jobs in June, and an even larger 446,000 jobs the month before. In a posting for the National Association of Home Builders, Robert Dietz, the groups’ chief economist, noted that “the job openings rate is likely to experience choppiness in the months ahead given the divergent paths within the construction industry.” Continued Dietz: “Home building and remodeling are relative bright spots for the overall economy, while nonresidential construction will experience a period of weakness.” By Garry Boulard
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The City of Roswell has issued a Request for Proposals for a professional consulting service to develop a city-wide signage plan. In a place that, until the onset of Covid-19, was seeing up to 250,000 visitors a year and earning some $1 million in lodgers’ tax revenue in the process, the need to provide directions for travelers has always been great. What is being described as a Wayfinding Strategy is looking for consultants to help guide people to Roswell’s educational and healthcare facilities, government buildings, lakes, museums, parks, and other points of interest. The selected consulting service will additionally be tasked with establishing “universal and cohesive design standards for wayfinding and locational signage reflective of the City’s identity.” While the new signage will have a focus on Roswell’s downtown and historic railroad district, says the RFP, “the entire City should be evaluated and included.” The new signage will additionally provide information on traffic pattern changes, new destinations, and increasing pedestrian and bicycle traffic. The RFP has a submission deadline of August 18. One of the largest Roswell tourist events is the annual UFO Festival. Although it was cancelled this year due to the Covid-19 outbreak, city officials say plans are already in the works for the event to be held next year. That two-day festival, according to city statistics, brings in around 15,000 visitors who spend more than $1 million in local restaurants, hotels and motels, and stores. By Garry Boulard A currently vacant downtown Albuquerque block in a neighborhood of newer residential and retail development may see new life as home to a mixed-use project. The office of Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller, working with the city’s Metropolitan Redevelopment Agency, has issued a Request for Proposals asking for redevelopment ideas for the property officially located at 101 Silver Avenue SW. In announcing the RFP, Keller noted that although Covid-19 “dealt a deathblow to our momentum downtown,” the city is “stepping up in a variety of ways to help our state’s only urban center recover that momentum and come back from this ordeal better than ever.” Should the lot between 1st Street SW and 2nd Street SW finally be fully developed, said Keller, it will “add a vital thread to downtown’s urban fabric.” With an idea to seeing a mixture of residential and retail development on the block, the city, which owns the site, is amenable to offering the property through a long-term lease or actually selling it. More than two years ago a bid to build an estimated $24 million mixed-use project on the site never gained traction. The RFP has a submission deadline of November 5. By Garry Boulard In an unusual move, President Trump has issued three executive memorandums and one executive order designed to extend federal Covid-19 relief. The move came as Congressional leaders were unable to agree on new stimulus legislation that would have included one more $1,200 check for most individual taxpayers. The unilateral executive actions call for financing additional jobless benefits by $300 a week through the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Disaster Relief Fund. The benefits would increase to $400 a week if matched by a state. A second action calls for a payroll tax holiday for Americans earning less than $104,000 a year, to take effect on September 1 and expire on the final day of this year. The two other presidential actions call for temporary student loan repayment relief and assistance to renters and homeowners. The White House was careful to point out that the President’s payroll tax order is not an attempt to do away with that tax, as only Congress has the authority to cancel a tax, but only a means to defer it for the rest of the year. The president’s deferral tax memorandum orders Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to “use his authority to defer certain payroll tax obligations with respect to the American workers most in need.” “This modest, targeted action, will put money directly in the pockets of American workers,” the order continues, “and generate additional incentives for work and employment right when the money is needed most.” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said that the chances of passing relief legislation remains possible, noting that House Democrats have reduced the size of an earlier proposed $3 trillion package to $2 trillion. “Right now, we need to come to agreement,” said the Speaker, noting that she was open to continuing talks on the matter. By Garry Boulard A video sports competition, in a booming industry that saw more than $1.1 billion in worldwide revenue last year, will soon be coming to El Paso in the unique form of a drive-in theater. The Horizon Property Group has announced plans to build an e-sports venue at the site of the Outlet Shoppes, located at 7051 S. Desert Boulevard in northwest El Paso. Horizon Property is the owner of the Outlet Shoppes mall. The Greenwood, Indiana-based company is planning to build similar e-sports drive-ins on the property of three other malls it owns in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania; Laredo, Texas; and Louisville, Kentucky. The unusual venues will be built in conjunction with the sports analytics company, Harena Data of Franklin, Indiana. E-sports is a sports competition involving multi-player games. Traditionally played in the confines of large rooms through a series of computers, Horizon Property’s concept will see those same games being played from the safety of users sitting in their cars, marrying the latest computer technology with a 1950s movie-going experience. In an interview with the Hollywood Reporter, James Harris, Horizon Property’s managing director, said the e-sports drive-in will also support other retailers doing business in the company’s malls. The drive-ins, said Harris, are a “new and updated, albeit retro, component of our centers that give shoppers added reasons to visit their local retailers.” Because the drive-ins will only naturally see customers playing in their cars and at a distance from each other, noted Harris, “this exciting attraction will have safety as a priority.” Work on what is being called the USA Drive-In in El Paso is expected to begin this fall. Drive-in theaters came into favor during the exact same years as America’s embrace of the automobile, with more than 4,000 such theaters in operation by the end of the 1950s. That number gradually declined through the decades to the roughly five hundred that are still up and running today. By Garry Boulard In a city that has a long history with steel milling, the Evraz North American company has announced plans to spend nearly $500 million building a modern rail-rolling facility. Members of Evraz’s board of directors have now voted to select Pueblo, Colorado as the home to their new mill, a facility that will go up next to an existing company mill at 2100 South Freeway Road. The announcement follows on the heels of months of talks between Evraz and both Colorado and local officials in an effort to get the new mill built in Pueblo. “Pueblo workers have been making the world’s best steel for nearly 140 years,” Colorado Governor Jared Polis said in a statement, “and with this addition, Pueblo’s next generation of steel workers can count on good-paying jobs well into the future.” In trying to secure the new mill, the Pueblo City Council had earlier approved a roughly $15 million incentive package for Evraz. The steel mill industry has played an enormous role in the history of Pueblo dating to the early 1880s, manufacturing spikes, iron and steel bars and plates, and rails, at what was initially called the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company plant. Evraz, which is was founded in Moscow but is now based in London, acquired ownership of the Pueblo mill in 2007. By Garry Boulard More than 1.8 million new jobs were created last month, leading to the lowest unemployment rate since March. These are the latest figures released by the Department of Labor, which additionally notes that the nation’s total unemployment rate had fallen to 10.2 percent, down from nearly 15 percent in April. The latest figures were hailed in a press release from the Council of Economic Advisers which said “The United States recovery has now added 9.3 million new jobs in the past 3 months, beating market expectations by a combined 12 million.” Despite the good numbers, the latest Labor Department report also shows that the country has roughly 13 million fewer jobs than it did earlier this year, when the unemployment rate had reached an historic low of 3.5 percent. Regionally, the latest figures put the states of the West in the middle to high range in terms of joblessness, with New Mexico showing am 8.2 percent unemployment rate. Arizona came in at 10.4 percent, while Colorado recorded a 10.5 percent jobless rate. The state with the lowest unemployment rate was Kentucky at 4.3 percent, while Massachusetts saw the highest rate, at 17.4 percent. Overall, of the ten states with the highest unemployment rates, ranging from 12.5 percent to 17.4 percent, seven were in the East and Midwest. The new national numbers reveal certain areas of weakness, notes the publication Forbes, observing that the 10.2 percent unemployment rate is still “worse than the nadir during the Great Recession,” while “the job growth rate has significantly slowed and, without fiscal stimulus, could fall even further.” The greatest job growth came in the healthcare, hospitality, government, and retail sectors. Although the construction industry gained 20,000 new jobs, this was well below the combined May and June totals of some 619,000. By Garry Boulard El Paso voters in November could be called upon to pass a $242 million bond to pay for a series of long-planned facility upgrades and improvements. The bond question for the El Paso Independent School District, which first has to be approved by the district’s school board, comes after a much larger $668 million bond was passed by voters four years ago. If approved, the new bond will fund an upgrade of athletic facilities across the district, as well as a system-wide conversion in the district’s schools to refrigerated air. According to estimates, the refrigerated air project would take up $145 million of the $242 million bond. The earlier bond, in 2016, not only paid for similar facility upgrades, but also the building of new schools. Despite the fact that district voters in the past have obviously been supportive of EPISD bond proposals, some concern has been expressed regarding the prospects for a big bond in the current economic environment. As it is, the $242 million proposed bond is smaller than an earlier version this year that also looked at upgrading projects at schools that may eventually be subject to consolidation. Founded in 1882, the EPISD is the largest school district in El Paso with just over eighty elementary, middle, and high schools. The new bond, if passed, would also fund the installation of LED lighting in all of the district’s schools. Additional projects will see field house renovations at six high schools, not to mention the installation of synthetic turf at all of the district’s twelve high schools. By Garry Boulard A new residential development that will also see the eventual construction of some commercial space has secured zoning approval in the growing town of Marana, Arizona, just over 90 miles southeast of Phoenix. According to town documents, what is being called the Alexander Apartments will go up on a currently vacant 10.7-acre site at the southwest corner of N. Thornydale Road and W. Aerie Drive. Those documents say that the development will see a mix of uses “integrated with existing multi-modal transportation options near the site.” Plans currently call for the construction of 211 residential units ranging in size from one, two, and three bedrooms, as well as a fitness center, business center, courtyards, and dog park. As developed by the Tucson-based Sears Financial Corporation, with the site designed by the landscape architectural firm of the Planning Center, also based in Tucson, the project will see the residential construction taking place primarily on the western side of the property. Two acres on the east side of the site, according to documents, “have the future phasing potential of additional units and/or commercial development.” An exact date for when construction is scheduled to begin on the project has not yet been announced, although it was earlier reported that work was expected to launch sometime early next year. The rental market in Marana has been particularly strong in the last several years, fed in part by a boom seeing the town more than triple in size in the last decade to its current 49,000, making it the fourth-fastest growing place in the state. By Garry Boulard While the Covid-19 economic shutdown has negatively impacted many segments of the national construction industry, hotel construction remains a bright spot. According to a new report issued by Portsmouth, New Hampshire-based Lodging Econometrics, the total hotel pipeline as of the end of June stood at just under 5,600 projects. “Contrary to what is being experienced with hotel operations, the pipeline remains robust as interest rates are at all-time lows,” says the report. The new projects represent nearly 688,000 rooms, a number that is down by only 1 percent over projects that were under construction exactly a year ago. That’s not to say that there haven’t been some projects either delayed or outright cancelled due to the Covid economy. But even taking into consideration those factors, says Lodging Econometrics, there are currently just under 2,400 hotels scheduled to start construction between now and the summer of 2021. That equals out to a total of 276,000 new rooms. In addition, there are more than 1,400 hotels comprising a net total of 176,087 rooms, currently in the early planning stage. But the Lodging Econometrics report offers a cautionary note: “With franchise development staff largely working from home, non-essential travel halted, and with the ongoing pandemic, the ability to get a new development deal signed has slowed.” This means that there has been a 53 percent drop in the number of newly announced building projects compared with the spring of last year. But even so, adds the report, more and more hotels have “begun to move up renovation plans,” adding to a total of more than 1,400 recorded renovation projects in the first half of this year. By Garry Boulard |
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