While the construction industry faces challenges from COVID-19 that seemed unthinkable just six months ago, there’s enough new project activity underway or on the drawing board to offer even the most down-in the-dumps pessimists some reason to cheer.
Dozens of big-dollar projects are either underway or in the planning stages right now. We selected 50 of them for the Table on page 22 to give you a taste of the different project work that offers strong electrical sales potential.
Our research revealed more than $3.2 billion in the construction of hospitals, medical buildings, and medical education facilities. One of the larger medical projects that recently broke ground is the $800-million New Valley Hospital project in Paramus, N.J. Other big health care construction projects being considered or in the planning stages include a $221-million upgrade to hospital facilities on the University of Cincinnati campus; a $500-million Good Samaritan Hospital renovation in West Islip, N.Y.; the $420-million Asante Rogue Medical Center in Medford, Ore.; and the $250-million Anschutz Medical Campus in Aurora, Colo.
While airport construction remains an active category of infrastructure work, several cities, including Tampa and Orlando, Fla., have shut down or are considering the cancellation of hundreds of millions of dollars in airport construction work due to a lack of passenger traffic. A post at www.tampabay.com said that because air travel through Tampa’s main airport is down 95% since COVID-19 hit, $906 million in construction projects may be delayed or canceled over the next five years.
Despite these delays, plenty of airport construction is still underway or planned. Along with the ongoing construction of a billion-dollar rental car facility at LAX Airport in Los Angeles and the $340-million addition planned for Seattle’s Sea-Tac Airport’s C1 Building, work on the $950-million Portland International Airport renovation started in April — and a smaller $80-million project at Long Beach International Airport in Long Beach, Calif., is also underway. When it starts, it appears the expansion of San Diego International Airport will be huge. A post on www.Airport-Technology.com said the project will be worth $3 billion. Another large potential project is the construction of a new Terminal C at Norman Y. Mineta San Jose International Airport in California.
The trend toward massive downtown redevelopment projects continues. Downtown San Jose, Calif., will be transformed by the addition of hundreds of thousands of square feet of new office space being built by Silicon Valley tech firms, and downtown Dallas as well as the suburb of Frisco, Texas, are seeing billions in new projects breaking ground, underway, or on the books.
Even with this construction activity, metrics measuring the health of the construction market were bearish in April. According to a recent report from Dodge Data & Analytics, on a year-to-date basis through four months of 2020, total construction starts were 8% lower than the same period in 2019.
“The April starts data is definitely sobering, but also very much expected,” said Richard Branch, the company’s chief economist, in a recent press release. “The near shuttering of the economy during April had a significant negative effect on the construction industry, leading to delays in both ongoing projects as well as those about to break ground.
“Even though parts of the country are beginning to reopen, and some areas that had paused construction are now restarting, it will be a very long road back to normalcy for the construction industry.”
