Mayor applauds city's builders.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg told New York Building Congress members last week that his administration will not shirk its responsibilities to keep New York City a vital economic center that keeps renewing itself.

Bloomberg was the keynote speaker at the city's newest hotspot, the Mandarin Oriental Hotel Ballroom at the Time Warner Center, where the NYBC held its Construction Industry Luncheon Forum.

"This building is just fantastic." said Bloomberg of the center that opened this week. "David Childs really deserves an enormous amount of credit for doing something right here in the heart of Manhattan."

Bloomberg touched on several construction projects currently underway in the city, giving credit to the construction and design industry for its contributions to the Manhattan's growth.

"The developers willingness to run risks and the architects willingness to think outside the box really is a measure of how much confidence people have in the future of New York City," he said.

From the Nets stadium in Brooklyn and revitalization of downtown Brooklyn to Lower Manhattan's redevelopment, Bloomberg said the city is coming back.

"Everybody is looking at New York and saying 'Wow'," Bloomberg said. "That's a city that is really going up."

He also said the city's financial future seems to be in a recovery with a proposed budget without a deficit and Moody's recent upgrade of the city's credit rating, which could help its bond rating.

"The city's financially in better shape then it's been. We've had two of the worst back to back fiscal years the city has ever seen," he said.

"Our credit rating is a fair, independent measure of just how responsible we are and how we are doing.

"Our objective is to wind up with a credit rating better than the state," he said laughingly. "I don't know that that is possible, but I told George [Pataki] that's what I want to do."

He emphasized the need for the state to fund the city's proposed $13.5 billion five-year capital plan to upgrade the City's school system and the need for more housing.

Redevelopment in Lower Manhattan and throughout the city is cementing together the city's people as well as helping with the economic recovery, after the events of Sept. 11, 2001.

"We are never going to bring back the 2,800 people who died at the World Trade Center, but as a memorial to them, we are going to build for the future and make a better life for their children and everybody else," he said.

The NYBC also conducted its business, with Marilyn Jordan Taylor officially handing over her two-year reign as chairman to Frank Sciame, CEO/president of F. J. Sciame Construction Company Inc.

Sciame is a former Building Congress vice-chairman and previous chair of the membership committee.