CHICAGO—Retail builders have spent many of the post-recession years just getting by on smaller projects such as luxury-oriented retail, which retained much of its demand, but 2014 may have something better in store. Englewood Construction, for example, a Lemont, IL-based general contractor, forecasts that more large-scale projects, as well as more fine dining and hospitality construction, will kick off in the coming year.
Englewood currently does about $40 million to $50 million of construction per year. They specialize in the construction of American Girl Place outlets such as the 53,000-square-foot location in Water Tower Place, fast food restaurants, hotels, shopping centers and many other types of retail. Englewood officials say they have hired several new employees in response to the new demand. And earlier this year, they told GlobeSt.com that the firm had recently tripled the size of their estimating staff.
“While small-scale projects and commercial construction renovation jobs sustained the industry in recent years, big projects are coming back as the economy continues to improve,” says William Di Santo, president of Englewood. “Next year, we will see a number of large, ground-up commercial construction projects that were once sidelined coming back into the fray.”
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Brian J. Rogal
Brian J. Rogal is a Chicago-based freelance writer with years of experience as an investigative reporter and editor, most notably at The Chicago Reporter, where he concentrated on housing issues. He also has written extensively on alternative energy and the payments card industry for national trade publications.
