Work could begin next spring on a new four-story apartment complex set to go up on the growing west side of Colorado Springs.

That area of the city has become increasingly popular, primarily because it is only 5 miles to the west of downtown Colorado Springs.

The development company Goodwin Knight wants to build what will be 54 efficiency and one-bedroom apartment units, ranging in size from 376 square feet to 665 square feet, at the northeast corner of Colorado Avenue and South Chestnut Street.

The site in question is currently a parking lot.

The Colorado Springs-based Goodwin Knight group spearheaded the construction two years ago of the 22 Spruce Apartments, an infill project complex with 48 apartment units, also in Colorado Springs.

The project will be going up in a part of the city emphasizing village-like walkable space and populated with one-story retail and restaurant offerings.

By Garry Boulard

Enjoying an annual job growth rate of 6.6 percent, the Texas construction industry is being seen as one of the major reasons for the Lone Star’s strong employment numbers.
According to the most recent Department of Labor statistics, construction jobs in Texas so far this year have seen a 6.6 percent increase, accounting for 48,400 new jobs.
 
Those numbers are now leading the nation, ahead of much larger California, which has so far in 2019 seen a 4.3 percent increase in construction work, representing 37,100 new jobs.
Only two other states this year have seen additions of more than 10,000 construction jobs: Florida with 21,300 and Arizona at 17,400.
Texas also recorded the most new construction jobs nationally in July, with an increase of 6,300.
A separate report just issued by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas is additionally predicting that more than 330,000 new jobs will have been created in Texas by the end of this year.
In metro El Paso, according to the most recent report issued by the Texas Workforce Commission, the construction, logging, and mining industries combined accounted for 18,300 jobs as of last month—a 14.4 percent increase over July of 2018.
The combined unemployment rate for all industries in El Paso as of last month stood at 4.1 percent, down from 4.5 percent a year ago.

By Garry Boulard

A more than 50 year-old hotel in downtown Albuquerque, originally opened in the summer of 1965, will soon be getting an upgrade and a new look.

Formerly known as The Hotel Blue, the structure at Central Avenue and 8th Street will undergo an estimated $22 million renovation, turning the six-floor building into a luxury boutique property.

The project will see the creation of 136 rooms, a renovated swimming pool and patio area, meeting space, and both coffee shop and bar.

The project belongs to a group called Arrive Albuquerque, which is part of the Los Angeles-based Arrive Hotels & Restaurants chain.

Funding to upgrade the 75,000 square foot building will partly be coming through the issuance of city Industrial Revenue Bonds.

Originally branded as the Downtowner, the Central Avenue hotel was part of the Memphis-based Downtowner Corporation hotel chain whose heyday lasted roughly from the late 1950s to the early 1970s.

Downtowner hotels were usually located in a city’s urban core, but fell out of favor in the 1970s and 80s when most of the national chain hotels and motels were built just off of major interstate exchanges.

After several changes in ownership, the Albuquerque Downtowner was renamed in 2001 as The Hotel Blue.

In a statement, Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller hailed the plans for the hotel’s renovation, noting in part: “This project will help us meet a need for hotel rooms to boost the use of the Convention Center.”

By Garry Boulard

The Covenant Health System has announced that it wants to build a new 105,000 square-foot hospital in Hobbs, New Mexico.
The project is expected to cost $75 million to complete and will have 32 patient beds, as well as an emergency room, operating room, intensive care unit, and labor and delivery center.
The new facility will additionally include a community center that will be used for conducting health education classes.
In a statement, Richard Parks, Covenant Health chief executive officer, noted that residents in Hobbs currently travel to the hospital’s Lubbock, Texas facility for assistance, a 110-mile journey one-way.
“In order to build a healthy community, the community has to have access to care,” said Parks. “We understand the burden placed on patients who need or choose to travel hours back and forth to Lubbock for their care.”
Covenant Health’s new Hobbs hospital is partly a response to the explosive population growth of Lea County, which has gone from 55,000 to 70,000 in the last two decades, while the city of Hobbs has seen a jump of more than 10,000 during that same time period for a total of 38,200 today.
Covenant Health was founded in 1998 as a result of a merger between the Lubbock Methodist Hospital System and the St. Mary of the Plains Hospital.
Upon the announcement of the new hospital, the Economic Development Corporation of Lea County hailed the project as one that will prove “instrumental in the continued growth and vitality of the Hobbs community.”

By Garry Boulard

Sales of both new and existing houses were up in all markets across the country in July, according to a website that tracks residential real estate trends.

But what is now good for home sellers may prove challenging for the rest of the year as the amount of available properties once again begins to shrink.

Crunching the numbers from its monthly housing trend report, the website Realtor.com says that the latest upsurge in home sales has put the brake on some 10 months of national inventory growth.

The sales upturn, writes George Ratiu, senior economist with Realtor.com, reveals a tension in the market between “buyers eager to take advantage of lower mortgage rates and potential sellers concerned about slowing price growth.”

This means that while the supply of homes priced below the $200,000 mark last month declined by almost 10 percent, the supply of homes at or above $750,000 was up by 6.6 percent.

Overall, according to the latest numbers from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, the number of new homes sold monthly has increased by around 30,000 from last year at this time, with the South and West by far seeing the greatest number of sales.

In a new report from the London-based group Capital Economics, it was noted that builders are trying to respond to the demand for new homes, with building permits for single-family homes seeing a 3.1 percent increase in June.

By Garry Boulard

News that the Arizona Coyotes have a new majority owner has raised questions once again regarding the stadium that the hockey team will ultimately call home.

For months, speculation has been rampant that the Coyotes, who currently play in Glendale’s Gila River Arena, may want to build a new stadium elsewhere.

The team has often expressed dissatisfaction with the stadium, which is located at 9400 W. Maryland Avenue, noting that fans have never been enthusiastic about driving to a facility that is roughly 14 miles away from downtown Phoenix.

Now, Alex Meruelo, the Coyotes’ new owner, has said that while he is committed to keeping the team in Arizona, he is not as enthusiastic about staying in the Gila River Arena.

If the Glendale arena isn’t in the team’s best interest, “then the logical option for the Coyotes would be to pursue a new arena in Phoenix or East Valley,” notes the publication Arena Digest.

For now, Glendale officials have vowed to do all they can to forestall that move, with the goal of trying to work with Muruelo to keep the Coyotes in the Gila River Arena.

Built in 2003 at a cost of $220 million, the Gila River Arena has a seating capacity of just over 17,000, although the average attendance for Coyotes games has been less than 14,000.

Meruelo, the billionaire founder of the construction and development firm, the Meruelo Group, recently characterized the Coyotes’ continued playing at the Glendale arena as a “difficult situation.”

Where Meruelo might want to see a new stadium built has not been revealed, nor has the funding for such a project been disclosed.

According to the website Statista, recent hockey stadiums in the U.S. have cost anywhere from $348 million, for the Consol Energy Center in Pittsburgh, to more than $1 billion for the Barclays Center in New York.

By Garry Boulard

A project that could ultimately cost $27 million in terms of total capital investment will see the development of an innovative facility in Santa Fe for the storage of fresh foods.

Members of the Santa Fe City Council’s finance committee have voted to approve $18 million in industrial revenue bonds for the facility, which will belong to a new company called New Mexico Fresh Foods, LLC.

According to city documents, the company will re-convert a portion of an existing 42,000 square foot structure at 1549 Sixth Street in midtown Santa Fe in order to create a “custom designed water reclamation system” that will “recycle 90 percent of process water for continuous use.”

Food scraps will be composted at the site through a closed anaerobic digester that captures methane gas to be converted to electricity.

The facility is being billed as “close-looped, zero waste, and solar powered,” and is expected to process well over 100 million pounds of fresh food products over the next ten years, generating in the process roughly $2.5 billion of new revenue for area and regional food producers.

The resolution, passed by the finance committee, declares the city’s intention to fully back the “acquisition, construction, renovation, installation, and equipping,” of the new facility.

A public hearing on the bond is scheduled for September 25.

By Garry Boulard

What is currently an $8 billion smart building market globally is expected to increase to more than $42 billion in the next six years.
So says a report by the Dallas-based Adroit Market Research, a business analytics and consulting firm, which says that the “major factor driving smart building market growth is the growing energy usage concerns.”
The report, Global Smart Building Market, also notes that “since the number of commercial complexes that consume major amounts of power and other types of energy has doubled, the requirement for automation systems has boosted and is expected to grow in the coming years.”
In the U.S., the smart building movement has been additionally facilitated by cities such as Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, which have established energy benchmarks for structures in their ordinances.
Those ordinances, in turn, are requiring the owners and developers of thousands of commercial buildings to track and report their energy consumption.
Although Europe currently dominates the smart building market, industry analysts are predicting a double-digit increase in U.S. smart building development and construction in the next decade.

By Garry Boulard

Even though it took the Treasury Department longer than expected to release all of the regulations applying to its innovative Opportunity Zones program, results are already being seen throughout Colorado.
According to sources, more than $1 billion in investments has so far been committed in just metro Denver itself.
Those investments include the construction of the $155 million, 10-story apartment building called North Wynkoop; and the $50 million, 380,000 square foot headquarters for the Karcher North America company.
Approved as part of the 2017 federal Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, the Opportunity Zones program is designed to foster more investment and development in low-income neighborhoods.
By investing in such areas, the Opportunity Zones programs offer a series of tax incentives, including a deferral of capital gains taxes.
So far, the program is seeing the building of any number of commercial, industrial, and residential projects.
“This will hopefully incentivize private investment,” Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson recently remarked of the Opportunity Zones effort, adding that it could spur the development of grocery stores in neighborhoods lacking such offerings.
In Colorado, which now has 130 designated Opportunity Zones, the program is being additionally spurred by the state’s Office of Economic Development and International Trade.
Earlier this year, Governor Jared Polis, noting the work that went into documenting the information needed for the creation of the Opportunity Zones, remarked: “It’s vital that we continue to build on this momentum and collaborate with communities and investors to make these opportunities a reality to create good jobs.”
There are now more than 9,000 individual Opportunity Zones nationally.
The Treasury Department is predicting that those zones will see more than $100 billion in investment and construction in the months to come.

By Garry Boulard

The habitually growing Meow Wolf has announced plans to add on to its busy manufacturing facility in Santa Fe.
The company, which is based in the city, wants to build a new four-story, 75,000 square foot addition to the plant it operates at 2600 Camino Entrada on the southwest side of Santa Fe.
That current plant measures 52,000 square feet and was purchased two years ago by Meow Wolf. Before that, the building served as a manufacturing plant for the Caterpillar equipment company.
If approved, the new expansion would more than double the footprint of Meow Wolf’s manufacturing space.
The announcement of Meow Wolf’s facility expansion comes on the heels of the company’s current construction of a new 90,000 square foot location in Denver.
Additional Meow Wolf sites are planned for Las Vegas, Phoenix, and Washington.
The company has not yet submitted its plans for the plant expansion to the City of Santa Fe, but is expected to shortly.
Launched in 2008, Meow Wolf offers a series of interactive and immersive art exhibitions that have won the company worldwide acclaim.
Three years ago, a Los Angeles Times reporter provided a taste of what a Meow Wolf visit is like: “Step into the living room and you discover the fireplace is a portal leading to a cavern of glowing crystals. Climb through the refrigerator and you end up in a futuristic travel agency staffed by a holographic extraterrestrial.”

By Garry Boulard