Related Links: Link to Golden State Capital Website As India’s real estate sector suffers from a liquidity crunch and continues to undergo growth pains as it moves towards maturity, San Francisco-based private equity firm Golden State Capital (GSC) is viewing Foreign Direct Investments into the arena of office assets.With construction costs rising in India, the firm is confident on the long-term potential. GSC is looking at a Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) “of above $500 million … [with] assets built and leased in the last two to four years in a very competitive environment, besides stabilized assets with blue-chip tenants,”
Photo by Tudor Van Hampton for ENR Patrick Allin, Textura chief executive and co-founder, met with upbeat investors on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on June 7 to watch the company trade its first shares on the open market. Related Links: Textura Wows Wall Street With Cloud Collaboration A short-seller known for hitting companies hard in published reports has accused construction software maker Textura Corp. of misrepresenting its financial prospects and the background of its chief executive and co-founder, Patrick Allin.Textura's shares (NYSE: TXTR) fell 17% in trading on the day the report appeared, Dec. 26th, and
Related Links: Walsh Chosen as Preferred Bidder for Ohio River Bridge Responding to the demands of potential lenders and concessionaires, sureties may play an important role in expanding public-private partnerships in the U.S. by providing a new type of completion and payment bond, according to speakers at the International Risk Management Institute’s construction conference in San Diego held Nov. 17-21.The new bonds would allow P3 project lenders or developers to make a claim for cash while the majority of the guarantee would be fulfilled in the traditional manner, with the surety investigating the claim and controlling the method of completion.P3
Image courtesy of the Atlanta Braves The proposed $672-million project, to be located near the intersection of interstates 75 and 285, will include the ballpark (pictured in blue), as well as related development and parking space (in red). Related Links: Falcons Firm Up Stadium Design, Construction Teams Minnesota Stadium Amenities Likely Getting Trimmed to Meet $975M Cost Estimate The Atlanta Braves shocked baseball fans and local contractors alike Nov. 11 when the team announced a pending deal to build a new, $672-million ballpark in Cobb County, Ga., near the Interstate 75/I-285 interchange. That same day, Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed added
Photo By Tudor Van Hampton for ENR Minutes after Chicago Infrastructure Trust green-lighted its first project, a reporter interviews Steve Beitler, CEO, while Claire Tramm, energy program director, looks on. Related Links: Whatever Happened to Chicago's Plan to Privatize Building Improvements? Gettin' Chicago Movin': Mayor Rahm Emanuel's New Infrastructure Trust After more than a year of deliberating over various public-private investment schemes, the newly-minted Chicago Infrastructure Trust has unanimously passed a roughly $30-million project to retrofit 75 city buildings using a novel financial instrument that pays for the work through the job's long-term energy savings."It's pretty clever," said Claire Tramm,
The off-year election on Nov. 5 was light on capital expenditure measures across the U.S., but voters in Texas OK'd $2 billion in water-project funding. In Maine, $100 million in transportation-project bonds gained approval; the American Road & Transportation Builders Association says the measure will leverage $154 million in other government funds.Houstonians, however, kiboshed a $217-million plan to transform the derelict Astrodome into a convention center, and Coloradans said no to a nearly $1-billion tax hike, partly for school construction. The election also swept a former Laborers' union executive into Boston City Hall and moved an attorney with open-shop construction
Related Links: Weak Pipeline Capacity Adds to Shale Gas Growing Pains: B&V DOE Approves Fourth LNG Export Facility Most of the new oil and natural-gas pipelines that get financed and built over the next few years will be short-haul projects that address regional constraints, not the much longer projects that helped drive the sector in the past, says Peter Abt, Black & Veatch managing director in charge of the firm's oil and gas strategy practice.Abt, who oversaw B&V's "2013 Strategic Direction in the North American Natural Gas Industry" report, also believes that only a few of the more than 20
Burdened by a sluggish economic recovery, cash-strapped public and private owners are shifting greater risk onto contractors through onerous deal terms with non-traditional project responsibilities.Contractors, as a result, must be alert to new risks, resist them whenever possible and keep costs low to stay profitable.That was the consensus of presenters during the AGC/CFMA Construction Financial Management Conference, which took place Oct. 23-25 in Las Vegas.The financial consequences of the risk-shifting are hitting subcontractors first since “they are furthest from the cash flow,” says Teresa Martin, vice president of Lockton Cos. LLC, Kansas City. The subs borrow more as costs rise
After a sluggish 2013, the construction industry could see a gradual uptick in total construction starts in 2014, according the McGraw-Hill Construction’s 2014 Dodge Construction Outlook. McGraw-Hill Construction forecasts that total construction starts could rise by 9% next year to $555 billion, led by a solid housing market and improved opportunities in commercial building. Non-building sectors, especially electrical utilities, could be drag on starts in the coming years.“It’s another step along the road to recovery, but on the painful to frustrating side at times,” says Robert Murray, vice president of economic affairs at McGraw Hill Construction.McGraw-Hill Construction announced its forecast
Courtesy suttonma.org Groundbreaking at the Sutton, Mass., school project in July, 2011. Attorney Wendy M. Mead has had many contractors as clients, so she understands some of the pitfalls of construction. But it wasn’t until she volunteered to manage a big school renovation and expansion project that she found out how difficult that part of construction could be. As chairwoman of the Sutton, Mass. School Building Committee, she’s learned tough lessons while dealing with a $59.9-million combined middle school-high school renovation and expansion (the cost is roughly split between the town and the state).Sutton’s Board of Selectmen voted recently to terminate