The number of young workers in the construction industry has declined by roughly 30 percent in the last decade, according to a report issued by the industry site BuildZoom.com.
That 30 percent drop works out to 1.5 million workers, a drop that is challenging both policy makers and construction industry officials across the country. Says BuildZoom: “Although construction employment rates have recovered to pre-bust levels circa 2005, the size of the construction workforce has diminished since then, both nationally and in most states.” The reasons for the decline appear to be many: BuildZoom notes that there are less immigrant workers available for employment in the industry today. But the downward trend may also be due to something more systemic: many high schools during the Great Recession discontinued their vocational training programs in favor of science, technology, engineering and mathematics instruction. That trend, according to reporter Laura Kusisto in the Wall Street Journal, may be fueled by “parents’ desire for their children to get a college degree, the allure of technology jobs, and the high cost of living in areas where jobs are most plentiful.” The San Francisco-based BuildZoom additionally notes that the average length of time to fill a construction job opening is more than 35 days in many of the East Coast states, but less than two weeks in the South. Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico construction jobs postings are usually filled on an average of 20 days or so. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were more than 10.3 million people working in the construction industry nationally heading into 2017, up from 9.0 million in 2009. By Garry Boulard
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![]() Officials with Colorado College have announced a partnership with the City of Colorado Springs that it is hoped will result in the construction of a new $39 million sports arena. That arena will be used primarily by the school’s Tiger Hockey team, but will also be built to accommodate other sporting events. Set for construction in downtown Colorado Springs, the Edward J. Robson Arena will go up on the campus of Colorado College, between E. Cache La Poudre Street and E. Dale Street. The school’s hockey team, which has been a sports mainstay in Colorado Springs since the late 1930s, is currently playing at the Broadmoor World Arena, some 6 miles to the southeast of the planned site. The new facility, according to Colorado College officials, will have a 3,000-seat capacity, with flexible floor space, and will feature in-house television production services. “This is a game-changer, both for Colorado College and downtown Colorado Springs,” said Ken Ralph, the director of athletics at Colorado College, in a statement. “This is one of those rare circumstances where it is a win for all involved.” If all goes as planned, around $30 million of the project will be paid for by the college, with the remaining $9 million coming from bonds through the state’s Regional Tourism Act. The RTA was established nearly a decade ago to establish a system of funding for regional tourism projects in Colorado. Applicant projects have to first be approved by the Colorado Economic Development Commission. That body is expected to vote on funding the new Colorado College arena in September. If all goes as hoped, work could begin on the arena later this year, with a spring 2020 completion date. Founded in 1874, the four-year private Colorado College has a current enrollment of around 2,000. By Garry Boulard ![]() The project is both fascinating and inspiring: a new hangar is about to be built at the Colorado Springs Airport that will house an extensive collection of World War II aircraft. The facility’s construction, which has been long on the wish list of officials with the National Museum of World War II Aviation, has taken a significant step forward this summer with site grading undertaken by the Colorado Springs-based T-Bone Construction, Inc. “We’re really in the design phase right now,” says Michael Thibault, the owner and president of T-Bone. “We have a footprint and elevation and are doing dirt work to bring the site up to grade.” The new 41,000 square foot hangar will be called the Kaija Raven Aeronautical Pavilion, named in honor of a donor, and is designed to increase the museum’s display space by around 50 percent. That space matters a lot to a museum that opened in 2013 and today has a collection of around 3,000 artifacts, including more than two dozen World War II airplanes. Located at 755 Aviation Way, the museum is at the northwest corner of the Colorado Springs Airport and was just last year recognized by Congress as a “national caliber” institution. That T-Bone won the bid to do the new $6 million hangar probably surprised no one in the Colorado Springs region. The company, launched in 1987, has for decades made itself known as one of the most resilient and diversified general contractors around, doing building and renovation work on gas stations, restaurants, museums, and schools, and delivering projects both on time and in a cost-effective manner. “We do a fair amount of convenience stores, we build truck repair facilities, we have built several hangars in different parts of Colorado, and some retail centers,” says Thibault. “I really don’t think that we have any particular niche,” continues Thibault, “we just have a client base.” Located in a modern two-story headquarters at 1310 Ford Street in Colorado Springs, T-Bone, notes Construction Today magazine, “owns excavation equipment, operates its own trucking division, and has its own crews that can complete the electrical and cabinetry components of its projects.” The magazine added that the company also staffs in-house architects to design a structure and a “general contracting team [that] can see it built to completion.” “We’ve worked all over,” says Thubault, who notes that his company has through the years taken on projects throughout Colorado as well as in New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, and Utah. “We’ve worked all over,” says Thubault, who notes that his company has through the years taken on projects throughout Colorado as well as in New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, and Utah. “We’re trying to stay a little bit closer to home, now that the economy is so much better than it was in 2008 and 2009,” says Thibault, “But prior to that we did a little bit of traveling.” Tribault “kept pitching for the business,” noted Equipment World magazine in 2013 of T-Bone’s endurance during the Great Recession, “expanding his client base out of state and taking on more of the earthmoving on his projects, and when the jobs started trickling back in, the company was well positioned to grow.” The company, which launched its own specialized fuel service and construction division last year, has also long been community conscious. It was extensively involved in cleanup efforts after the devastating 2012 Waldo Canyon Fire, the Manitou Springs flooding of 2013, and the Black Forest Fire, also in 2013, that destroyed more than 500 homes in the Colorado Springs area. Of the many different projects T-Bone is today tackling, Thibault admits he is particularly excited about the new hangar for the aviation museum which is being funded by a combination of grants from the Anschutz Foundation, the El Pomar Foundation, the Gates Foundation, and the Slattery Family Foundation. That latter foundation is headed up by Jim Slattery, an aviation expert and respected collector who has donated sixteen aircraft to the museum. “We are not the architect on this one,” explains Thibault, “but we are doing a kind of design assist, trying to make their dollars stretch as far as they can, and giving the architects advice on what we think is a less expensive way to go, while also maintaining a level of quality.” T-Bone’s work on the new hangar will most likely start in September. Like all of the company’s projects, it’s expected to be delivered on time, most likely by this coming March. By Garry Boulard The restoration of an historic hotel in downtown Las Cruces has been officially declared as one of the coming top priorities for the city.
Located at 180 W. Amador, the hotel traces its roots to the 1860s and was for decades a popular hospitality site until transformed into a bank in the 1970s. A decade later, the two-story structure was used by Dona Ana County for offices, but was finally closed in 2006 after the county moved its offices elsewhere. In the last decade, the City of Las Cruces has been trying to determine a new use for the property. A study conducted by the Santa Fe-based Kells & Craig Architects determined that the space could best be re-used for community events, housing offices, restaurant, and a bar. While the City of Las Cruces has put aside around $1 million for the building’s restoration, an earlier report indicated it would take as much as $11 million to fully bring the building back to life. Although Mayor Ken Miyagishima and the Las Cruces City Council, sitting as the members of the city’s Tax Increment Development District, have now voted to list the hotel’s restoration as one of the city’s top four priority projects, an exact timeline for that project has yet to be decided upon. By Garry Boulard A tariff increase on softwood lumber from Canada is being blamed for a June decline of 9.1 percent in single-family construction, according to the National Association of Home Builders.
Overall, single-family construction in June dropped to 858,000 units, while multi-family units, including condominiums and apartments, fell by 19.8 percent for a total of 315,000. “We have been warning the administration for months that the ongoing increases in lumber prices stemming from both the tariffs and profiteering this year are having a strong impact on builders’ ability to meet growing consumer demand,” Randy Noel, NAHB chairman, said in a statement. The June numbers show that the decline in single and multi-family housing construction was nationwide, with the largest drop at 40 percent recorded in the Northeast; followed by the Midwest with a 35 percent decline. The decline was less significant in the South, with a 9 percent decline, and the West, where the drop-off was around 3 percent. Canadian lumber imports have consistently made up the largest supplier of softwood to the U.S., accounting for 28 percent of all lumber imports annually. The NAHB earlier reported that the 20 percent tariff on Canadian lumber is adding $3,000 to the average price of multi-family units in the U.S. By Garry Boulard ![]() The Colorado Springs Switchbacks soccer team may soon have a new and large home for their matches. Plans have been announced in Colorado Springs for the construction of 10,000-seat stadium for the game that will go up on the southwest side of the city’s downtown area. That property is known as the City Gate and is a former industrial site that city officials have for the last decade been trying to find a new use for. Bordered by Cimarron, Moreno, Sierra Madre, and Sahwatch streets, the 16-acre property was identified in a 2007 document as a prime location for future commercial and residential growth. The new stadium, which is also expected to be used for music concerts and other events, will cost at least $20 million to build. The Switchbacks play in the United Soccer League, which wants all of their member teams to have their own stadiums. Upon the announcement of the new facility, former World Cup player and Switchbacks Head Coach Steve Trittschuh said in a statement that the “downtown stadium will help us compete at a higher level and represent the city well.” Construction could begin later this year on the new stadium, which will be paid for through a combination of Switchbacks and state funding, among other sources, with a targeted completion date of spring 2020. Up to now, the Switchbacks have been playing at the 5,000-seat Weidner Field, built in 1985 and roughly 10 miles to the southwest of the new City Gate site. By Garry Boulard Some $20 million in certificates of obligation have been approved in El Paso to fund the coming construction of the ambitious new Children’s Museum.
That debt funding, approved by members of the El Paso City Council, represents what is expected to be the final expansion of what is now a nearly $60 million project set to be built in downtown El Paso. The museum was originally envisioned as a more modest affair, with initial funding to the tune of $19.5 million coming from the Quality of Life bonds approved by El Paso voters in 2012. The facility itself, now expected to measure around 80,000 square feet, was first seen as a 35,000 square foot structure. What happened between the first discussions centered on the new museum and today was a series of public input meetings and online surveys indicating that would-be visitors to the facility wanted more than just a place for children to walk through. A master plan revealed late last year called instead for wind tunnels, a variety of learning centers, a 40-foot climbing wall, and dozens of interactive exhibits and displays. Public responses also indicated a desire for themed exhibits relating to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. The $20 million in certificates of obligation will be joined with another $20 million pledged by the non-profit EPC Museum. The project is slated to go up at the now-vacant former site of a Greyhound Bus Lines facility at 201 W. Main Drive. By Garry Boulard Over 2,700 scientists based in the U.S., Mexico, and other countries have given their endorsement to a study warning of the dangers to animals and plants posed by President Trump’s proposed border wall.
The study, entitled “Nature Divided, Scientists United” appears in the journal BioScience, which is published by the American Institute of Biological Sciences, and calls the area in which the wall is planned for construction some of the “continent’s most biologically diverse regions.” Segments of the wall that have already been built, contends the study, are reducing the “connectivity of plant and animal habitats and are compromising more than a century of binational investment in conservation.” The study contends that many animals, such as the Mexican Gray Wolf and Peninsular Desert Big Horn Sheep, will, because of the wall, be separated from their natural habitats. Those separations will also impact the animals’ ability to reproduce. Altogether, the study says, up to 1,500 plants and animals along the border could be endangered. Nearly 1,000 scientists in the U.S. and more than 600 from Mexico have endorsed the conclusions of the study, which additionally calls upon the Department of Homeland Security to work with conservation agencies on both sides of the border in an effort to research the potentially damaging environmental consequences of the project. Trump has indicated the he wants to see some kind of wall construction covering roughly 900 miles of the 2,000-mile long border between the U.S. and Mexico. Around 14 miles of the border wall is currently under construction in San Diego. Another two miles is being built in Calexico, California; with a third portion of the wall stretching across 20 miles going up in Santa Teresa, New Mexico. By Garry Boulard ![]() A plan to transform a declining neighborhood in Phoenix is taking a big step forward with a $30 million grant from the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The grant, one of the largest in this year’s Choice Neighborhoods Initiative program, will target Phoenix’s Edison-Eastlake Community. The HUD-funded program will see the demolition of three aging public housing complexes located one mile to the east of downtown Phoenix. Those complexes will be replaced by nearly 1,200 new rental units housed in different-sized structures. According to a project description published by HUD, 150 units will be built off-site “in communities that offer similar or better educational, employment, and transit opportunities.” The funding for the Phoenix project is one of five national Choice Neighborhoods Initiative grants announced by HUD, totaling more than $144 million. In announcing the grants, HUD Secretary Ben Carson said the funding represents a major investment designed to “revitalize entire neighborhoods and create more opportunities for those who live there.” The Choice Neighborhoods Initiative is specifically focused on replacing distressed public and assisted living housing facilities across the country. Work on the expansive Edison-Eastland community project is expected to begin next year. By Garry Boulard |
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