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Construction Hits the Books

BOSTON-The revamp projects that Commodore Builders is working on in the metro area speaks to the frugal mentality in today's market.

By Ryan Clark | Updated on July 09, 2009

BOSTON-The issues facing many colleges and universities parallel those in the financial market, as much of the money for these private institutions comes in the forms of tuition, loans and investment. With less money to go around, colleges are seeing the need to cut costs and much of that can be curtailed by reducing renovation or rebuilding costs or postponing newer projects for a few years. Speaking to that, Newton, MA-based Commodore Builders is taking on 11 projects at nine different campuses, many of them renovations.

“Although there are some new projects out of the ground that are finishing up, most of the schools that we’re working with, they don’t have plans right now on the books for new projects,” Tom Comeau, COO of Commodore, tells GlobeSt.com. “Whereas they might have been [previously] thinking about a new building, [the schools] think, ‘let’s renovate this space instead’.” The projects range roughly from a half-million dollar to $3 million.

With campus work, different concerns fall into the fold and it changes the way the schools bring in contractors. “Probably half to three-quarters of these were projects where we were selected through some interview process to work with the schools,” Comeau explains, “or that we just have a relationship with [the schools] and they called us up to do the work.” The rest, he explains, were through a standard bidding process.

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