Category : Construction & Design

If Tuesday’s groundbreaking ceremony for the first residential tower at Atlantic Yards was a long time coming, it was a long time that Bruce Ratner has spent making friends. Among the event’s long list of speakers was not only Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz and Building and Construction Trades Council of Greater New York President Gary LaBarbera, but activist and former ACORN head Bertha Lewis. “How did I meet Bertha?” Ratner asked, by way of introduction. “She protested me for two weeks.”

Modular construction is to building what the Model-T Ford was to cars, according to supporters: faster, cheaper and more efficient. Developer Forest City Ratner, Skanska USA and New York’s construction union have reached an agreement to use pre-fabricated construction techniques to build a 32-story residential tower at Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn. But near-term enthusiasm for modular building may be driven by the building of a 220-story tower in China which the developer says it will complete in a matter of months. “If that building in China can be finished in six months, every real estate developer in the world is going to start drooling,” according to former buildings commissioner Patricia Lancaster.

LAGUARDIA AIRPORT The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey has issued a Request for Qualifications from private entities interested in working with the … Continued

The number of stalled construction sites in New York City is nudging north, cementing worries the global recession is far from over. An average of 691 sites were identified as stalled during the month of November, up from 592 in February. The number of stalled sites peaked at 709 in November of 2010. “While it’s hard to pinpoint exactly what happened, it is worth noting that the upturn in stalled sites roughly coincided with a period of rather steep declines in the stock market, as well as a growing uncertainty about the state of the world economy,” said New York Building Congress president Richard T. Anderson.