Through the first eight months of the year, according to the Burbank, CA-based Construction Industry Research Board, office construction is 64% higher than 1999. The Bay Area counties of Santa Clara and San Francisco should take most of the credit, according to the report. Construction as a whole was up 11% statewide, according to the report, totaling slightly more than $41 billion during the first eight months of this year.
"Office building is one part of it, and that's what's really driving the increase," CIRB director Ben Bartolotto tells GlobeSt. "The Bay Area is going strong."
Bartolotto says that several large office projects in Santa Clara and San Francisco counties--as well as up-and-coming Alameda County, which forms part of Silicon Valley's eastern edge--made the Bay Area the biggest construction boomer. Projects during the eight-month period totaled more than $75 million in the cities of Santa Clara and San Jose, more than $50 million in San Mateo County, and almost $33 million in the cities of Milpitas and Mountain View, according to the board.
But despite construction-happy times of late, Bartolotto says he does not expect the boom to continue unchecked. With the economy incrementally beginning to cool, he says, commercial construction will likely drop off. "We project nonresidential building as a whole ... to slow quite a bit from what it has been in the last few years," he says.
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