Texas &amp; Louisiana City Scoop: Construction Starts in Houston

Texas & Louisiana City Scoop: Construction Starts in Houston

Construction starts across greater Houston area projected to climb 14% this year

All three major sectors expected to show a gain in spending, with a 26% jump seen in non-residential activity.

City Grill

Preston Hodges
Vice President, Houston Division
McCarthy Building Cos.

“The biggest thing that we and our competitors are looking at currently is all the health care and research work that’s about to pop in the Texas Medical Center,” Hodges says. “There’s going to be over $3 billion worth of work that starts in the next 12 to 18 months.”

In May, the Texas Medical Center released the master plan for the 37-acre, 1.5-million-sq-ft TMC3 translational research campus. Officials expect the project will be valued at $1.5 billion or more. Groundbreaking is expected in early 2020, and completion is scheduled for 2022.

McCarthy is already seeing speed to market being a huge focus with clients, as “there are clients that are worried about getting the right contracting team on board. So it’s pushing them to procure projects maybe quicker than they normally would, just to make sure they get the right team on the project,” Hodges says. “We and our competition are going to have manpower issues both on the salary side and the craftworker side of things. We’re going to have to turn down work just because of a manpower issue.”