Jim Kollaer's blog

Houston is having a major growth spurt in Class A buildings, and Hines is moving forward on its latest entry in that market with a major office building that will be located at 609 Main Street or Block 69.

Ralph Bivins, editor at Realty News Report, says that the building schedule and size are being increased in order to meet the growing demand for Class A space in the Central Business District (CBD) market.

Currently, Class A space in the Houston CBD market is approaching 93% occupied, and that has helped Hines move forward at an accelerated pace, despite the fact that they have not yet announced any major tenants for the building they are projected to break ground on in the first quarter of 2014.  The building will be ready for occupancy by 2016.

Even though the initial plans for the Pickard Chilton-designed build showed 41 floors and 815,000 square feet, the latest rendering shows a larger building of 50-plus floors indicating that it might approach 1 million square feet.

The site is located on the Main street rail line and near the Chase Bank Tower   [node:read-more:link]

(Photo: Business Wire)

Chevron announced an expansion to its facilities in downtown Houston in a recent press release. The announcement said, “The 50-story, 1.7 million-square-foot building will be located at 1600 Louisiana Street at Pease. Together with Chevron’s existing properties at 1500 Louisiana and 1400 Smith, the buildings will comprise an urban campus with indoor and outdoor common areas, enhanced dining facilities, a fitness center, training and conference facilities, and additional parking.”

According to the company press release, Houston is headquarters to nine of its business and those businesses currently employ 9,000 employees and contractors in the Houston region.

The building, designed by HOK, will be located next to two other high-rise office buildings to create an urban campus. According to Bereket Haregot, president of Chevron’s Business and Real Estate Services division, “The new building and expanded urban campus will provide a first-rate work environment for our employees and help us remain the employer of choice.” [node:read-more:link]

Google's self-driving car

We interrupt this construction blog to bring you some news about disruptive technologies that will impact your business and lives sooner rather than later.

I know that this is a construction-focused blog, but we think that we should at the very least talk about the technology happenings that may impact the industry. Besides, if nothing else, it will give you some great “woo woo” conversation points over cocktails at your next networking event.

We have talked about the tallest buildings in the world and we thought that we would talk a little about two subjects, the 3D printer and the new McKinsey report on Disruptive Technologies, that are headed your way.

Central Courtyard of the Masdar Institute Campus

I am both a curious man and an architect. As such, I am always looking for new ideas and concepts anywhere they might appear. Masdar City caught my eye for a couple of reasons. First, it is in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, where the firm I worked for in the 70's designed a number of projects. Second, like the new tallest building in the world under construction in China, it incorporates some really innovative “new old design concepts” – this time to address the desert climate.

According to Masdar City's website, “One of the most sustainable communities on the planet, Masdar City is an emerging clean tech cluster that offers a creative and entrepreneurial atmosphere where businesses can thrive and innovation can flourish, in part because the city itself serves as a model of what green urban development can be. This is especially the case because Masdar City is   [node:read-more:link]

I know that you have heard that one before. The last time was for the Burj Khalifa, the world’s current tallest building in Dubai, at 830 meters or 2722 feet high. It took the contractors five years and $1.5 billion to build.

We thought that was amazing until we heard about the newest one scheduled to begin construction this month in Changsha, China.  The project, labeled Sky City, will be exactly that and the statistics will make your head spin.

According to Treehugger, the tower will be 838 meters or 2,749 feet 4.5 inches tall. That is slightly over half a mile in the air, but wait, that's not all:

“The numbers continue to stagger. In one building, there will be accommodation for 4450 families in apartments ranging from 645 SF to 5,000 SF, 250 hotel rooms, 100,000 SF of school, hospital and office space, totalling over eleven million square feet.” [node:read-more:link]

No, that is not in reference to the rise in births after the storms on the East Coast, it refers to the shortages in skilled labor that are beginning to be a real concern for the general contractors and subcontractors in the region as the economy rebounds and the energy industry grabs the workers it needs for the shale plays in West Texas.

According to a recent article in the Houston Business Journal (HBJ), three major factors are in play right now, and even though they appear positive on the surface, they could also create problems for the construction workforce in the Houston region and the rest of the country.

First, during the recession, the construction industry unemployment passed 20 percent across the U.S. as construction of all sorts was cut back or shut down in response to the economy. As the recession continued and many workers could not find work, they moved to new jobs, retired, or even went back to Mexico in hopes of finding a way to support their families there. [node:read-more:link]

The LA Times reported that Labor Commissioner Julie Su has made a big difference in the identification of “unscrupulous businesses” who are cheating their workers out of their wages and that she “doesn’t back down from fights when she thinks that employers are cheating their workers.”

Two years into her job as California’s top Labor Commissioner and “enforcer," she is making good on her promise to get “a just day’s pay for a hard day’s work a reality in every workplace in California.”

She is submitting a report to Governor Brown today that documents her approach and the results she has achieved. According to the Times article, she has focused her efforts on those business sectors where new immigrants and first generation Americans work. Those businesses include construction, farming, food service, janitorial, car wash facilities and restaurants where those workers clean tables and wash the dishes for minimum wages. [node:read-more:link]

I was the keynote speaker for the American Subcontractors Association (ASA) Houston Chapter last week. As I try to do on those occasions, I asked a couple of questions of the crowd in my preliminaries. As expected, the results were most revealing.

First, I asked whether their level of business was greater now than at this time last year. Almost 70% of the audience raised their hands that indeed their business was better. That response fell in line with the Greater Houston Partnership’s latest economic figure for the Houston MSA nonresidential construction permits year over year, up 48.9%. This is one of the highest in the country. [node:read-more:link]

This month, the Houston Chapter of the Associated General Contractors (AGC) celebrated its 90th anniversary. It was founded in 1923 when Houston was a town of barely 60,000 folks.  Over 200 members, elected officials, former chapter leaders, and friends attended the celebration. The evening was capped by comments from former and current chapter leaders and the Mayor of Houston. It was a fitting celebration of the long and storied history of the AGC Chapter in Houston and the skyline they have created.   [node:read-more:link]

Last Friday morning, the final pieces of the spire atop New York City’s One World Trade Center were bolted in place. This made it the tallest structure in the Western Hemisphere and the third tallest in the world. The building was built over the course of seven years and replaces the original tower destroyed by terrorists on September 11, 2001.

At 1,776 feet tall with the addition of the last pieces of the spire, the tower pays tribute to the year the United States declared its freedom.

According to CNN, “Last week, construction director Steven Plate told CNN affiliate WABC that the spire will be a ‘beacon that'll be seen for miles around [node:read-more:link]