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Construction Spikes in May After Dismal Q1

NEW YORK CITY-May's $2.04 billion in new starts nearly equals the January-April total, but the NYBC says one month doesn't make a trend.

By Paul Bubny | Updated on July 17, 2009

NEW YORK CITY-Call it a good-news, bad-news scenario for New York City’s construction industry. The New York Building Congress said Thursday that new starts in May, the most recent month for which McGraw-Hill Construction/F.W. Dodge data are available, just about equaled the tallies for the first four months of 2009. The bad news, according to the NYBC, is that the January-April tally of $2.05 billion was off more than 80% from the first four months of 2008, when the total value of initiated projects reached $10.3 billion.

For ’09, construction starts totaled $815 million in January, $371 million in February, $320 million in March and $539 million in April before spiking to $2.04 billion in May. In contrast, monthly starts last year ranged from $712 million to $4.98 billion, and usually topped $1 billion. The Dodge data encompass all project starts, including new construction as well as alterations and renovations to existing structures, and reflect the value of each initiated project through the entire period of construction, according to the NYBC.

“The May numbers offer the first sign of encouragement for the construction industry in 2009,” says NYBC president Richard T. Anderson in a release. “Of course, monthly fluctuations naturally occur, so we will be closely monitoring the numbers in the coming months to determine if May represented the first spark of renewal or a short-lived aberration.”

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