Construction activity still strong, despite downturn.

To paraphrase Sam Clemens' oft-heard jest, "the reports of the death of construction in New York City have been greatly exaggerated." Construction companies are currently busy completing a variety of private projects and the city's infrastructure continues to provide a seemingly never ending source of work. In other words, despite New York's past and present economic woes, construction never really stopped. Whenever there was a slowdown in the private arena, as occurred during the "downfall" of the early '90's, the slack was taken up by the public sector.

This, notes my colleague and longtime PWC member, Rudolph J. ("Rudy") Rinaldi, MA, chief operating officer, TSIG Consulting, + DCmc, is a fact that is peculiar to the Big Apple. There will always be a need for school construction and renovation as well as expansion and repairs to bridges, tunnels, airports and highways. We will see a boom in the housing sector once plans to build much needed and long overdue affordable residences are set in motion. Environmental work for the DEP is ongoing and increasing since its funding does not come from New York City.

At PWC's networking events, participants learn that there's still a lot of work in and around New York. Established construction companies need to find out where the markets are "hot" and be poised and ready to move easily from one sector to another. Furthermore, corporate loss was, in some cases, construction's gain. Downsizing leads to reconfiguration of offices which has fostered amazing growth in interior construction and facilities management All in all, Rinaldi predicts, "Just as the stock market will turn around, so will construction."

Real estate development likewise will prosper. One trend we can expect to see is a proliferation of "green buildings." The Hugh L. Carey Battery Park City Authority (BPCA), headed by president and CEO, 'Tim Carey, deserves credit for introducing the idea, which was initially feared too expensive to implement. The 92-acre mixed use development is now two-thirds complete, consisting of 6,000 residential units and 8.5 million SF of commercial space. The integration of energy efficiency, enhanced indoor environment quality and "green" power sources has proven to create a sustainable design for highrise buildings. There will be a final phase for the BPCA and three new green buildings are currently under discussion. (Also of note, the BPCA has received PWC's kudos for contracting out over $148 million to W/MBE firms to date.)

Joint ventures will grow and multiply. MaryAnne Gilmartin, senior vice president of Forest City Ratner Companies, told us at a recent forum that the new headquarters for The New York limes, a 1.6 million-SF structure located at the site of its namesake, Times Square, is slated to begin construction by the end of the year. The extraordinary design of Renzo Piano will be a joint venture between several developers including the Times, Forest City Ratner Companies, and ING.

Mixed-use developments, though initially challenging to those who develop them, will increase in the city. Once the red tape and technical hurdles are resolved and solved, they prove highly successful. The Related Companies' grand entry, the new AOL Time Warner Center (AOLTW Center) at Columbus Circle is a case in point Slated to debut in the fall of this year, the mammoth 23 million-SF project with a total cost of over 2 billion will comprise luxury condominiums, the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, the Performing Arts Jazz at Lincoln Center, high-end retail, and AOLTW's headquarters plus CNN's New York broadcasting studios. David Worsley, vice president of The Related Companies, predicts a successful premiere. (NB: PWC has saluted the project for granting WI MBE firms roughly 19% of its contracts totalling $100 million.)

The housing market is still strong and will eventually slip into affordable housing as noted above. In fact; two trends we can expect to see more of come from the opposite ends of the spectrum: luxury housing and affordable housing. Izak Senbahar, president of the Alexico Group, noted at a recent PWC forum that low mortgage rates and the fact that everyone still "wants to own a piece of the rock" continue to bring buyers to Manhattan.

A comeback for construction? Perhaps, but many of us never noticed it was gone.