Market Report: Upstate New York
...mixed-use project, with retail, commercial office and residential components. Spokesman Mark Davidson says the company plans to start construction this winter, with completion scheduled for 2011. Ehrenkrantz Eckstut & Kuhn Architects of New York completed the master plan.
DASNY is overseeing construction of two Albany Public Library projects. Sano-Rubin is building the new Arbor Hill Branch and the John J. Bach Branch. Both cost approximately $5 million and are scheduled for completion in mid-2010. The projects were funded through a $29.1-million referendum approved in 2007.
Private projects The Pike Co. of Rochester should wrap up work late this year on a $32-million emergency department addition at Mercy Hospital of Buffalo.
Structure Tone is working on a waterfront enhancement project, with a small bridge and shore protection, to Stony Island in Lake Ontario, N.Y., for ConocoPhillips. Completion is expected in November.
The Pioneer Cos. of Syracuse is seeking LEED gold on Washington Station, a $25-million, 126,000-sq-ft, six-story office building, with retail planned for the first floor. The developer and contractor will move its offices into the new building, and it has leased three floors to the engineering firm O’Brien and Gere, which will relocate from neighboring DeWitt, N.Y.
“This is the first new, class A office building built in Syracuse since our last one in 1993,” says Jed Schneider, vice president of development for the Pioneer Cos. Occupancy is planned for August 2010.
Cianbro Construction of Pittsfield, Maine, began construction in March 2007 on the Destiny USA project, a $540-million, 1.3-million-sq-ft expansion of the Carousel Center mall in Syracuse. Work was put on hold May 5 when Citigroup stopped funding the project, but Destiny officials sued Citigroup, and a State Supreme Court ruling in Destiny’s favor on July 20 ordered the bank to start funding the project.
However, Citigroup has appealed. Neither David M. Aitken, a member of the Destiny executive team and spokesman for the project, nor anyone from Cianbro returnedrequests for additional information.
A number of other private projects are about to come online in Syracuse, according to city spokesperson Sheri Dozier. They include the $15.5-million Deys Building redevelopment, a mixed-use project by developers Robert Doucette and Richard DeVito set to break ground later this year; a $21.6-million, mixed-use project in the 300 block of South Solina, set to begin in 2010; and a $140-million expansion of St. Joseph’s Hospital Health Center, also scheduled for a 2010 start.
While construction activity seems more bountiful in upstate than in some parts of the country, Zogg reports members are still working off back logs and expect they are in for some challenging times.
“Members are managing,” Zogg says. “Business is not as good as it has been, but they are holding their own.”
