“Health care will be ripe to open up in the next 12 to 18 months,” Pinto says. “I think the market for the next several years will be some government work, municipal, higher ed, some K-12, some hospitality work in regard to repositioning of properties and interior renovations.”
Smaller Private Projects In Atlanta, a glut of vacant office space has led to deals for companies looking to make a move or downsize, leading to tenant build-out work. Sexton says the Griffin Projects Solutions group, formed to handle smaller projects, has stayed busy while other work tapered off.
Pinto says the moving to newer space will not decrease inventory, but it is providing some construction jobs.
“There’s been an upswing in interiors because of the available office space, the good lease rates and good tenant allowances,” adds Butler. “It’s mostly people relocating from one spot to another.”
Turner is completing a half-dozen interior jobs in Atlanta, ranging in cost from $1 million to $7 million. Clients include Novellis, Moxie, JW Thompson and Servcorp.
Benning Construction is converting a former Macy’s department store space into a Korean grocery.
“We are doing a lot of work renovating spaces and upgrading,” Benning says.
The Coca-Cola Co. has announced a renovation at its corporate headquarters in Atlanta. Work will begin in 2011 and last from four to five years. Architects are Gensler of Atlanta and Ideo of San Francisco.
Turner’s Butler says his firm has a fair amount of data center work and is building a 160,000-sq-ft pharmaceutical manufacturing facility for Dendreon Corp. in Union City.
Industrial Projects Industrial projects are on the upswing in Georgia.
“The industrial market might be the one of the brighter lights in the state of Georgia,” BE&K’s Beasley says. “The state has been fairly aggressive in attracting business here.”
KBR of Birmingham, Ala., is providing engineering and construction management on the $62-million CARBO Ceramics plant in Toomsboro, Ga., scheduled for completion by the end of 2011.
Batson-Cook Co. of West Point, Ga., and partner H.J. High Construction of Orlando completed the first phase of the $40-million, 175,000-sq-ft Mitsubishi Power Systems America’s Savannah Machinery Works project, a power-generation rotor manufacturing and assembly facility with office space in Savannah. The second, 80,000-sq-ft phase will wrap up in April.
Gov. Sonny Perdue announced in August that First Quality Baby Products will spend $200 million to modernize and expand its manufacturing plant in Macon.
The largest industrial project – and biggest contract overall – in Georgia is Southern Company’s Alvin W. Vogtle Electric Generating Plant, the new nuclear plant that the Atlanta-based power company is building in Burke, Ga.
AP1000 Consortium, a partnership between the Shaw Group of Baton Rouge, La., and Westinghouse Electric Co. of Pittsburgh, continues work on an engineering, procurement and construction project to build two Westinghouse AP1000 nuclear power units at the site.
The project, currently under construction, is the first nuclear development since the Three Mile Island incident in 1979, according to Westinghouse. The U.S. Dept. of Energy is providing $8.3 billion in conditional loan guarantees to build and operate the reactors.
Public Projects “There is definitely a market in public work for the companies that can show they have the expertise, diversity and most competitive numbers,” Raney says.
R.J. Griffin is building a 16,000-sq-ft Student Enrichment Center for Savannah Technical College.
Bovis serves as the lead firm on the Hartsfield-Jackson Construction Management team, serving as the owner’s agent on the $1.4-billion Maynard H. Jackson Jr. International Terminal project at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport in Atlanta.
