With this year’s legislative session in full-swing in Albany, special interest groups have resumed their attacks on laws designed to keep workers safe on construction sites. Construction and insurance trade groups, seeking to shed accountability and pad their pockets, have argued that labor protections like the Scaffold Safety Law are somehow undermining worker safety. However, a […]
Construction activity declined in 2018 for the first time in nearly a decade, officials announced Tuesday. The drop could signal the end of a historic run that transformed the skyline and altered entire neighborhoods—even as the city struggled with an increasingly acute housing shortage. Contractors and developers filed for nearly 166,000 permits last year, according to […]
Dive Brief: A prevailing wage deal between New York City officials and Service Employees International Union, Local 32BJ (32BJ SEIU) guarantees member workers’ employment at affordable housing projects in 15 rezoned neighborhoods, Crain’s New York Business reported. Within each rezoned area, most projects with more than 30 units and that receive some sort of public subsidy must […]
The days of developers using mechanical voids to boost their buildings’ heights may soon be coming to an end. The Department of City Planning has proposed an amendment to New York’s zoning code that would make those voids—ostensibly used to store mechanical equipment, but often occupying space that’s much larger than necessary—count toward a building’s overall allowable […]
More than 18 months ago, the Manhattan district attorney’s office opened yet another investigation into fraud in the city’s $62 billion construction industry, this one involving Bloomberg L.P., the financial information and media company owned by former Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who is considering running for president in 2020. As investigators peeled back the complex layers of contracts, […]
It has been four months since the introduction of President Donald Trump’s tariffs and the start of a trade war with China. While the president agreed at the G20 Summit to halt new trade tariffs for 90 days to allow for negotiations, levies on steel, aluminum, ceramics and many other building supplies continue to have […]
There is still an abundance of capital chasing real estate deals in New York City, but despite the eagerness of lenders to give construction loans, the realities of building in New York in 2019 mean not many projects will make economic sense. Tishman Speyer scored one of the biggest finance transactions of 2018 when it nabbed […]
