Lower Manhattan, the City’s fastest growing residential neighborhood, is facing a shortage of classroom space. To alleviate the shortfall, the City and the Battery Park City Authority (BPCA) funded construction of a $77 million school at 55 Battery Park Place between 1st and 2nd Place. Designed by New York-based Dattner Architects, the 8-story, 125,000-sq-ft P.S./I.S. 276 will serve 950 Pr-K-8 in 40 classrooms including 10 classrooms for special education students. Construction of the school, one of the first built under the School Construction Authority’s Green School Guide, started in August 2008. Completion is slated for August 2010. Fitting the program

When completed in 2014, the brand-new, $1.4 billion Fulton Street Transit Center will transform Lower Manhattan’s commuter rail traffic by creating a veritable “Grand Central Station” for the island’s southern tip. The Metropolitan Transit Authority’s plan for the hub is to unify the four Fulton Street subway stations into a single complex connected by a concourse level. An iconic four-story glass structure, the Fulton Street Transit Center, will anchor the hub as its main access point. A new underground concourse beneath Dey Street will link the Transit Center to additional stations, the R line at Cortlandt Street and through it

Construction management educators listen to industry feedback, so they can better prepare students to assume positions of responsibility, and many firms offer guidance through internships and participation on advisory boards. Photo Courtesy Of Central Connecticut State University Central Connecticut State University students tour a job site. “Construction management programs are doing a good job,” says Rodney Pope, vice president and employment manager for Turner Construction Co. in New York. “The colleges in the area that offer these programs are trying to focus on what skills the students need to enter the construction industry.” Eric Brown, senior vice president of operations

These are trying times for specialty contractors. Given the limited opportunities for new work, the struggle to get paid for completed jobs and the reluctance within the lending community to extend credit to construction firms, the region’s subcontractors are fighting on all fronts to survive. Many contractors are cautiously optimistic that the economic environment could improve in 2012, but conditions could get worse before they get better. Public projects such as road, transit and infrastructure jobs have provided the most work for specialty firms over the last year. Related Links: TSC Overall Ranking in the Tri-State Area TSC Rankings broken

The headlines about the redevelopment of the World Trade Center site usually include “arbitration,” “notice of dispute,” and “finally started” — with only the occasional mention of any good news. For the people involved with the construction of all the towers and public spaces at the 16-acre site, many of whom have been at it for close to a decade now, this can be particularly frustrating. Because they have been working, regardless of the squabbling between the 19 stakeholders — Silverstein Properties, Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, ConEd, Verizon, and a host of notoriously slow city agencies

In the wasteland of the New York region’s slumping construction market, K-12 public schools were the oasis sustaining contractors, designers, and others as work dried up elsewhere. “Thank God for the schools,” says Tom Rogér, vice president for Gilbane Building. “It maintained some level of consistent activity through the recession.” The plodding finance process for school construction had set up several years’ worth of projects as the recession deepened. “Last year, there was still a significant amount of new construction going on, because those were projects approved three years ago,” Rogér adds. But the downturn’s ripples have begun lapping against

WARD The World Trade Center has you in the news more than anything else, so let�s start there. Where are we on those projects? CW: If you look at One World Trade, we�re in good shape. The steel is now rising. It�s about 26 stories above grade. We�re at the point, now, where we�re hoping to start getting a floor done every week and a half. So by September we should be at 50 stories and by September of next year we should be literally be topping out. We�re doing the excavation and preliminary foundation at the transit hub, too.

Tunnels have long snaked through the bedrock beneath New York, carrying people and water, but now the underground labyrinth is growing, with multiple projects under way. div id="articleExtrasA" div id="articleExtrasB" div id="articleExtras" �Some of this work has been in the planning stages for ages but there has been a major push to modernize New York City�s infrastructure over the last decade,� says Gary A. Almeraris, vice president of Skanska USA Civil Northeast of Whitestone, N.Y. He reports the city and transportation authorities have championed the activity, and monies from the federal government, bond initiatives and local dollars have fueled the

Few projects last more than 40 years, but the New York City Department of Environmental Protection�s $6 billion, 60-mi City Water Tunnel No. 3, the largest project in the city�s history, has spanned more than four decades, with one segment open, another under way and several more elements in the works as the department aims for a 2020 completion. �Manhattan has been served by City Water Tunnel No. 1, constructed in 1917, and in order to take that tunnel down to do repairs and replace aging piping, we needed another tunnel,� says Kathryn Mallon, deputy commissioner of the DEP�s bureau