Report Predicts Rosy Construction Outlook

NEW YORK CITY-”It’s really a good news kind of story,” said New York Building Congress president Richard T. Anderson during a breakfast presentation that detailed the coalition’s construction forecast for the city through 2007. “This decade is a new era for design, construction and real estate. Construction spending has roughly doubled over the last 10 years.”

The residential front is currently experiencing a “building boom,” Anderson said. “The strong sector has been residential with more than 25,000 units added in 2004.” He said they have not seen numbers like that since 1972 and expects that trend to continue with the rezoning of a number of manufacturing sites to residential.

Anderson noted that the outlook doesn’t just examine numbers, but looks at issues, as well. Those issues include public policy and supply and demand. Another big question mark for the coming years, he pointed out, is the MTA building program. Infrastructure spending has expanded 4%. He stressed the need for infrastructure funding to come from dedicated sources of revenue.