The Intel Corporation, long a major player in the economic life of New Mexico, is set to upgrade two of its massive facilities in Sandoval County. The move comes as the Santa Clara, California company has reached an agreement resulting in some $8.5 billion in new funding out of Washington through the CHIPS and Science Act. According to a release issued by the New Mexico Economic Development Department, Intel "expects its investments in the United States to exceed $100 billion, as it expands capacity and capabilities in Arizona, New Mexico, Ohio, and Oregon." It is additionally thought that the company's expansion efforts will bring a dividend of around 20,000 construction jobs and 10,000 permanent manufacturing jobs. More specifically for New Mexico, Intel plans to modernize two of its fabrications and semiconductor production facilities into advanced packaging facilities. The end result of the changeover will see the creation of the largest advanced packaging facility in the country. Founded in 1968, Intel completed its first $70 million plant in Rio Rancho in 1981. It has to date invested more than $16 billion in its New Mexico operations. By Garry Boulard
0 Comments
The nation's construction industry saw a gain of 39,000 jobs last month, one of its strongest performance in recent months, according to just released figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The numbers were up in nearly all categories, with residential construction seeing an increase of 14,400 over the month before; and specialty trade and heavy and civil engineering posting a significant gain of 24,600 jobs compared with February. The nonresidential specialty trade sector saw an increase of 16,300 jobs; while residential building was up by 5,500 new jobs. In a statement, Anirban Basu, chief economist with the Associated Builders and Contractors, characterized the latest jobs report as a "blockbuster," adding that the new figures indicate that a recession "is not arriving anytime soon." Basu additionally noted that the 39,000 new jobs were "roughly twice the monthly growth observed over the past year." Ken Simonson, chief economist with the Associated General Contractors of America, remarked: "All types of construction firms were hiring in March." But the AGC analyst also observed that the record number of job openings posted in February "indicates contractors would have hired even more workers if they were available to keep pace with demand." Overall, the country experienced a gain of 303,000 new jobs in March across all industries, a figure that the New York Times characterized as evidence that "robust hiring and rising wages can continue to coexist while inflation eases." The largest gains were seen in the education and health sectors, with 88,000 new jobs; followed by government employment, seeing an increase of 71,000; and the always-growing leisure and hospitality sector with 49,000 additional jobs. A narrative from BLS noted: "Employment showed little or no change in other major industries, including mining, quarrying, and oil and gas extraction." The transportation, warehousing, and financial activities sectors were also generally flat. In looking at the new job landscape, the Wall Street Journal noted that the figures were up from 270,000 jobs in February, and much higher than expectations of 200,000. By Garry Boulard A plan is moving forward to repurpose and revitalize one of the most historically visible structures in Colorado Springs. Located at 101 S. Union Boulevard, the Union Printers Home is a building representing the way things used to be, a long time ago. Opened in 1892, the structure housed a retirement and care facility for newspaper typography workers. Those workers very often suffered from a form of black lung disease from being exposed daily to the carbon-based ink that was then used in printing newspapers. Situated near downtown Colorado Springs, the building, on a roughly 300-acre campus, measures around 100,000 square feet, and is treasured by preservationists for its Richardsonian Romanesque design. The home was eventually opened to others who were not members of the International Typographical Union. Exactly ten years ago a private nursing home group purchased the facility and structure, before it was finally closed in 2020. Now an effort led by the Union Printers Home Partners and the design firm Sasaki, which has offices in Denver, has revealed plans calling for turning the Union Printers Home campus into a mixed-use site with retail and residential space, a hotel, food hall, and plaza with water features. The main structure, otherwise known as "The Castle," will be preserved and upgraded. It is thought that it could ultimately cost as much as $1 billion to upgrade, repurpose, and build on the extensive campus, with actual work beginning on the project in either late 2025 or early 2026. By Garry Boulard Additional state funding has been secured for a project seeing the building of a multi-million center designed to replant trees throughout New Mexico. Late last year it was announced that the New Mexico Reforestation Center will be established in the city of Mora, roughly 50 miles to the southeast of Taos. The project will operate at the site of the long-time John T. Harrington Forestry Research Center just to the south of New Mexico State Road 518 and will see the construction of a series of greenhouses designed to nurture more than 1.2 million seedlings. Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham has signed off on a $10 million capital outlay earlier approved by state lawmakers to fund some of the initial construction work at the site. With a long-range mission of studying and growing trees, the Reforestation Center also has a multi-phase building plan with construction taking place over a three-year period, ending in 2025. According to information provided by the Reforestation Center, the current seedling production capacity in New Mexico is at around 300,000 seedlings a year, a number regarded as far below what the state needs, especially given that in the last two decades wildfires have decimated up to 5.4 million acres and hundreds of thousands of trees. As planned, the Reforestation Center will produce up to 5 million seedlings annually for planting in burned-out areas of the state. It is thought that it will ultimately cost as much as $99 million to complete the Reforestation Center, with around $43 million needed to for the final two phases of the project. The Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service earlier announced that it was committing $10 million to the project. It has been noted that the forests of the state supply anywhere from 50% to 70% of all water used by municipalities and farms in New Mexico. In a statement issued late last year, Rachael Foe, reforestation coordinator for the state’s Forestry Division, remarked: “What reforestation really means is that in two or three decades our children will reap the benefits of decisions we made today.” Continued Foe: “We are purposefully investing not just in the forests themselves, but in the water sources and wildlife habitat they provide.” By Garry Boulard One of the largest big-box retail stores in the world is in the throes of a plan that will see it building at least two dozen new locations in the U.S. before the end of this year. Based in Seattle, the Costco Wholesale Corporation is a membership-only operation with nearly 900 locations domestically, as well as in Europe and Asia, among other destinations. The company, seeing more than $242 billion in revenue last year, has been steadily expanding its footprint in the last decade or so, adding at least 300 new locations since 2011. Now Costco is planning to build new warehouse stores in a variety of domestic locations, with the most recent spots in Loomis, California; North Port, Florida; Mount Juliet, Tennessee; Riverbank, California; and Richmond, Texas showing a decided Sunbelt emphasis. The company, in fact, has long been heavily invested in the West, with 137 locations in California, 20 in Arizona, and 16 in Colorado. Texas represents Costco’s second largest market with 38 stores. Costco outlets typically range in size from 80,000 square feet to 231,000 square feet. A plan to build what the company billed as its largest store in history at 241,000 square feet in Fresno, California, has recently been reduced to 219,000 square feet. Even so, the Fresno store will include 32 gas pumps as well as a 48,000-square-foot drive-through car wash. The number of new Costco stores expected to be built and open for business by the end of this year marginally surpasses the 23 it completed in 2023. Last month in a quarterly earnings call with analysts, Costco Chief Financial Officer Richard Galanti remarked that location growth is expected to be steady for the foreseeable future. “I’m confident we’re going to open 25-plus for the next couple of years,” he said, “then go up to 28 and up from there.” According to reports, the company is also in the planning process for new warehouse stores in Buckeye, Arizona, and Littleton, Colorado. By Garry Boulard Plans have been announced for the creation on a modern medical complex that will go up within an existing health care center just to the north of downtown Flagstaff. The project belongs to the big Northern Arizona Healthcare system and will house a 27,600-square-foot outpatient surgery center. The new facility will also include an ambulatory center, half a dozen operating rooms, and two pain procedure rooms. Up to 14,800 square feet of the complex will be given over to a neurology and foot orthopedic center, with another 4,700 square feet comprising a hyperbaric and foot wound center. The project is essentially a facility repurposing, with NAH remodeling a portion of the 22-year-old, two-story Summit Center at 1485 N. Turquoise Drive. The project comes just five months after Flagstaff voters overwhelmingly rejected a city council-approved rezoning of a site allowing NAH to build an $800 million hospital complex. That earlier proposal called for building near the Fort Tuthill County Park, some 6 miles to the southwest of downtown Flagstaff. Opponents of the planned characterized the Flagstaff City Council's rezoning decision as rushed and lacking in transparency. The vote essentially disapproved of the council's actions. In the wake of that ballot, NAH officials, who had been working on the complex proposal for at least two years, promised to be back with a different idea for a different kind of facility. In a public statement, NAH chief executive officer Dave Cheney remarked: "We have heard our community’s concerns about keeping some healthcare services in a central location within Flagstaff." The project is currently in the design stage with hopes that actual construction can begin later this year. A rough completion date has been announced for January of 2026. By Garry Boulard A two-day auction for a modern medical office space in Glendale is scheduled to begin on April 16. The Arrowhead Professional Medical Plaza is located at 16222 N. 59th Avenue and encompasses four buildings ranging in size from 5,000 to 20,000 square feet on a 4.3-acre site. The overall dimension of the entire plaza is around 40,000 square feet. Designated as a Class B structure, the two-story plaza was built in 2008 and includes a medical clinic, physical therapy, lab, and office space, with a portion of the complex having formerly served as a pharmacy. The property is a part of a thriving commercial medical office market in Glendale that earlier this year saw the nearly 100,000-square-foot Thunderbird Medical Pavilion at 5757 Thunderbird Road going for $13.5 million. Recent listings for other medical office properties in Glendale include the Copperwood Medical Plaza at 8811 N 51st Street with an advertised price of just under $2.6 million; and a stand-alone office in the Brookside Office Park at 11851 N 51St Avenue, listed for around $3.1 million. The auction for the Arrowhead Professional Medical Plaza, which is located some 10 miles to the north of downtown Glendale, has a starting bid price of $2 million. The auction listing is being handled by the Phoenix offices of realtor Kidder Matthews. By Garry Boulard Passage of the historic 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act has spurred construction projects, and plans for such projects, throughout the West. But the growth in such work, contends the executive director of the Western Governors’ Association, is placing increased demands on state offices overseeing such projects to the point of their needing more staff—and as soon as possible. “The importance of highly qualified staff that oversees the process and evaluation of permit applications should not be overlooked,” Jack Waldorf has remarked to members of the House Committee on Appropriations. “Recent infrastructure investments have increased workloads for local agency field offices and created new demand for technical assistance from local communities and states,” Waldorf stated. Addressing his remarks specifically to the Appropriations Committee’s Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies, Waldorf suggested that federal support should be increased for “agencies overseeing critical infrastructure projects to increase their capacity to conduct environmental reviews and permitting activities in a timely manner.” The former head of federal relations for the University of Colorado system, Waldorf was named to lead the Western Governors Association in 2023. The association is made up of the chief executives of 19 states, along with the territories of American Samoa, Northern Mariana, and Guam, banding together on growth, energy, and agricultural issues of particular importance to the region. And of those issues, noted Waldorf, nothing is more important than water. “In most of the West,” he remarked, “water is a scarce resource that must be managed with sensitivity to social, environmental, and economic values and needs.” While the governors of the Western states are in “the best position to manage and protect their water resources,” said Waldorf, they still need help from Washington. “Without undermining states’ authority over water resources management, Congress should ensure adequate funding is available for new water projects, as well as improvements to aging water, wastewater, and hydropower facilities.” Ongoing infrastructure investments remain “essential to our nation’s continued economic prosperity, electricity generation capacity, and environmental protection,” continued Waldorf. To that end, Congress should continue to use monies sent to the historic federal Reclamation Fund “for their intended purpose,” which Waldorf identified as “the conservation, development, and use of resources to meet Western water-related needs.” And among those needs, Waldorf made sure to add, are Bureau of Reclamation “rural water projects and facilities that are part of Congressionally authorized Indian water rights settlements.” By Garry Boulard A library designed to serve the needs of growing Jefferson County in the suburbs to the southeast of Denver is currently in the planning stage. To be designed by the Snowmass Village-based F&M Architects, the one-story library is expected to cost nearly $30 million to build. What is being described as a "destination library" will go up in the northwest corner of the county in the city of Arvada off of Candelas Parkway near West 92nd Drive on a nearly 10-acre currently vacant site. Arvada is now the seventh most populous city in the Centennial State, growing from around 89,000 in the early 1990s to well over 125,000 today. Public input is expected to be solicited later this year for what will most likely be a 30,000-square-foot facility. Reports indicate that an additional 150,000 square feet of library space may be built at a later date. According to the Denver Business Journal additional features of the project may include tiered outside seating, as well as a "trail system, outdoor reading nooks, and a covered event space." If all goes as planned, work on the new library, which would be a part of the Jefferson County Public Library system, could begin sometime next year, with an anticipated 2026 completion date. Reflecting the growth of Arvada and the surrounding area, the Jefferson County library system is today the third largest such system in the state with eleven individual libraries. By Garry Boulard The Arizona State Republican Party has announced that it is putting on the market a nine-story, 134,000-square-foot building in Phoenix it purchased just last year. Located at 3033 N. Central Avenue, the modernistic structure was unveiled in early 1960 as the Mayer Central Building and underwent some renovation work in 2005. The GOP purchased the structure last summer for just under $2 million, moving from its existing headquarters in Scottsdale. Party leaders at the time said the N. Central Avenue structure was in a more convenient location, some 9 miles to the northeast of the Arizona State Capitol. Designated as a Class B structure, the building sits on a nearly 3-acre site in a part of the city lined with modern high-rise office properties. It is being listed with the Phoenix offices of Cushman & Wakefield. At the time of the purchase last year, Jeff DeWitt, then-chairman of the Arizona Republican Party, said the actual office space in the N. Central Avenue building would comprise around 12,000 square feet, with a portion of that space to be rented out to potential tenants. The building is governed by an association made up of other tenants. But the roughly $11,300 monthly fee required by the association ended up being one of the reasons why the Arizona GOP has since decided to sell the property. Through the years the building has served as the home of the Arizona Department of By Garry Boulard |
Get stories like these right to your inbox.
|