Bre Pettis, owner of Bantam Tools, on why he chose Peekskill for the site of his high tech manufacturing company. Rockland/Westchester Journal News

PEEKSKILL -A proposed new apartment building closeto the train station would include 59 affordable and workforce unitswith average rents of $1,200 for studios, $1,500 for one-bedroom units and $1,800 for two-bedrooms.

The rest of the 78-unit building, eyed for 653-657 Central Ave.,near the Hudson River, would be market-rate: One- and two-bedroom apartments renting for $2,000 and $2,400 on average, according to city documents.

The building is one of a pairproposed by Yonkers-based Cottage International Development Group.The two-building development, called the Magnolia Heights Apartments,would be bordered by South Street and Central Avenue and sit between Washington Street and Route 9.

A developer proposes a conceptual idea for a combined 167 units in two buildings in Peekskill, along with some retail and a sculpture garden and walkway open to the public, on Central Avenue and South Street.(Photo: Renderings/Warshauer Mellusi Architects)

TRANSFORMATION: Peekskill experiences growing pains as change comes quickly

PEEKSKILL: Go inside Bantam Tools' high-tech manufacturing facility

VIDEO: They moved from Queens. Here's why they picked Peekskill

Affordable housing is geared to people with household incomes at variouspercentages of Westchester County's median income. For instance, according to city documents,a four-person household with $62,900 income would be at 50%of the area's median income and quality for affordable units. Aone-person household would qualify, at 50%of the median, with a $44,050 income.

Households of various sizes that are at 60%of the area's median income could also qualify for affordable units.

But Common Council members differedat their May 18 meeting on what the mix of apartments should be. One or two members suggested havingmoremarket-rate units. So the breakdown of units could change.

"I would caution in saying that we need more market-rates I actually think it's a good layout; I think it's just a matter of how they are being allocated," Council member Vanessa Agudelo said.

The council would need to approve a contract to selllandalong Central Avenue to the developer in order to move forward.

"Weare committed to the entire project South Street andCentral Avenue," Thomas Conneally, principal of Cottage International Development Group, told the council. "Wejust want to get a head start so we get the architect and the engineers workingonthis phase so that we can then simultaneouslywork on phase two."

Phase two would be the other apartment building,at 582 South St.At a presentation to city officials earlier this year, the proposal wasfor 89 units a mix of workforce and market-rate apartmentswith a few-thousand square feet of ground-level retail space. Potential rents were not available.

City officials wouldrezone aparcel on South Street to allow construction of thatbuilding. The developer has proposed creatinga publicstairway tolinkSouth Street with Central Avenue and evoke a former historic stairway in the area that was known as the 100 steps. There would also be a sculpture gardenat a midpoint of the stairway.

The developer has said therewould be aspace in the South Street building focused onthe area's history, along with an elevator to the sculpture garden.

In documents filed with the city, the developer said the housing would providemodern,energy-efficient homes with accessibilityto Manhattan. There would be parking below the buildings.

The development is among the latest proposed for this northern Westchester city thats witnessed a housing and dining-scene boom over the past several years.

Michael McKinney covers northern Westchester.Follow him on Twitter @mikemckwrite.Visitoffers.lohud.comto sign up for a subscription.

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Proposed apartments in Peekskill would include affordable units close to the train - Lohud

Two months later, Walsh is opening up the construction industry again, with far more rules in place.

Like anything else, there will be a learning curve, said Jeff Gouveia, general manager for the Northeast at Boston-based construction giant Suffolk. But people are taking this very, very seriously, trying to figure out how to do their job and be productive, while also making sure theyre safe.

Projects that want to restart have to file detailed safety plans with the city Bostons Inspectional Services Department has received more than 2,000 so far and sign an affidavit pledging compliance. Approved outdoor work digging foundations, erecting steel framing was allowed starting Monday, with full construction beginning next week. Wednesday morning, major projects all over downtown Boston had at least modest crews on site.

Some of the citys largest general contractors, along with the subcontractors and labor unions they employ, have spent much of the last two months devising safer ways to perform the thousands of small jobs that go into a big building.

Suffolk has crafted unique plans complete with training videos for each of its projects in Boston, and plans to use sensors to warn workers when they stand too close, among other new technology. Consigli Construction Co. has been stocking up on personal protective equipment, buying hand sanitizer from local distilleries and masks from a factory in Maine. Commodore Builders plans to stagger shifts, having some people start earlier, or work later, to reduce crowding at peak times.

As workers trickle back onto job sites, theyll get detailed training and new rules. Temperature-taking will be common, and hand-washing stations everywhere. When possible, workers on some jobs will be limited to one for every 500 square feet. When they must work in close quarters, theyll wear extra masks and goggles. Elevators that might lift 20 or 30 people up a high rise to start a shift might now hold 10, standing back to back so theyll face toward the open air.

The rules are not only designed to keep workers safe, contractors say, but also to give them confidence to come back. As COVID-19 cases flared on job sites in the early days of the pandemic in March, many workers decided to stay home rather than risk getting sick, and a few unions and subcontractors walked off jobs entirely.

You have people with their own health concerns, or a family member theyre concerned about, and thats going to take a dent out of the workforce, said Commodore CEO Joe Albanese. How do we make sure the workplace becomes so safe that people really feel like the risk is minimal?

The sort of rules being put in place, at least on larger unionized jobs, should help, said Bert Durand, spokesman for the North Atlantic States Regional Council of Carpenters. His union the largest single construction union in Massachusetts pulled all its 10,000 workers off job sites for two weeks in April over safety concerns. He said the progress on safety since is encouraging.

Weve gotten really positive reaction so far from our members and contractors, Durand said. These are the sort of protocols we were hoping to see.

They will, though, likely cost more, both in money and time a precious commodity to a developer with a big construction loan. Several builders said its hard to estimate yet just how much the new protocols will slow down projects, and but said they hoped technology, as well as more use of off-site fabrication, could help make up for lost time.

Their ability to do that, of course, depends somewhat on the stage of a construction project.

The HYM Investment Group is building two neighboring towers atop the Government Center Garage downtown. The first a 45-story apartment building was supposed to open its first units this month. Now, after the shutdown, theyre looking at a September date, said managing partner Tom OBrien. Next door, HYM broke ground in June on One Congress, a 600-foot office tower half leased to State Street Corp. The financial services giant expects to move in in January 2023, and OBrien said he was confident he can still hit that deadline, but scheduling the work and sourcing glass and other materials that may be harder to find now just got a lot more complicated.

Its early on and you have some time to catch up, OBrien said. But on a job like that, every day matters.

And for some projects that havent yet started, the added complexity not to mention the broader economic woes and even doubts about the future of dense downtowns like Bostons could be the difference between moving forward with work and putting a halt to it altogether.

No Boston developers have yet scrapped projects they have planned at least not publicly and contractors say theyre still bidding on future jobs. But several builders acknowledged that some slices of the development market hotels, office towers are moving slower than they were two months ago.

There are definitely still opportunities out there, said Jeff Navin, vice president of project management at Consigli. "But with some of the newer stuff, people are sitting a little longer before making decisions.

Still, for those who have projects partly done, theres little choice but to push forward, as safely as possible.

Jordan Warshaw and his partners spent years working to plan and finance the $314 million Raffles Back Bay Boston Hotel and Residences, a 33-story condo and hotel tower on Stuart Street. They broke ground in September, and were set to start digging the foundation when construction shut down in March. This week, workers were back, with a temperature-taking tent and even a special generator to boil hot water for hand washing, all tucked within the tight confines of the site.

Work is a couple of months behind schedule now, but Warshaw said he was confident Suffolk could have things up to speed by the time full interior construction gets underway, and it will still hit its target opening date of mid-2022.

Warshaws been a developer long enough to expect the unexpected, and ride it out. This, he said, is just one of those times.

Things happen in construction, he said. You never like surprises. But you expect them. That said, I dont know that theres ever been a surprise quite like this.

Tim Logan can be reached at timothy.logan@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter at @bytimlogan.

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Construction is starting back up in Boston, and its going to be more complicated - The Boston Globe

Dive Brief:

A digital twin is a virtual replica of a structure that incorporates not only the building's physical elements but also external data such as changes in climate or tenant and visitor traffic in order to better understand how the building will function during its entire lifecycle.

Because we have software that can model in insane detail every bit and piece of a building, you can now have a digital copy of that building, said Clifton Harness, CEO of TestFit, which produces building configuratorsoftware. This enables ... the owner of the building or a user in the building to do some things with that model you wouldnt be able to do otherwise.

This includes converting properties for another use, which the industry has seen happen during the COVID-19 pandemic. For example, Harness said, if we had a digital twin of all the hotels that the Army Corps of Engineers are trying to convert into hospitals right now, it would make that process quite a bit easier from a planning standpoint.

At this point, he said, the technology might only be practical for users that have massive amounts of square feet to manage.

Currently, he said, very few buildings are getting a digital twin because the level of detail that has to go into the modeling is so high that no architect gets paid enough to do that kind of thing.

Also, oftentimes the model doesnt exactly match the as-built version of the project, he added.

In addition, when project teams are modeling in BIM, Harness said, many dont model the entire building, depending on the type of structure. For example, he said, when building multifamily projects, teams might model only one type of apartment layout even though that layout repeats throughout the structure.

The time and financial commitment to incorporating digital twins can also be significant as there is not just one piece of software or one product that contractors can use to launch such an initiative. Typically, digital twin programs incorporate 3D simulation, artificial intelligence, cloud computing and other technologies. The cost of training and education related to digital twins can also add up.

Nevertheless, a number of construction companies and others in the industry are excited about the technologys prospects.

Daryl Patterson and Bill Ruh of Lendlease Group recently told ConstructConnect that digital twin technology has an advantage over BIM in that it can "allow designers to virtually create, test, analyze data, build and monitor a product, thus closing the feedback loop between design and operations," creating "a bridge between the physical and digital world."

In construction, this means that a project team can reap the benefits of a construction test run before one shovel hits the dirt, saving time on the schedule and weeding out any inefficiencies in the building process, they said.

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Digital twins to play a bigger role in post-pandemic construction - Construction Dive

Posted on May 21, 2020 at 12:52 pm by West Sider

By Rene Roden

The public got a first look at a major development project planned for 96th Street and Broadway at a Community Board 7 meeting held on the Zoom video conferencing platform on Wednesday.

Kenneth Lowenstein, speaking on behalf of Extell Development, and Jennifer Cheuck, architect at Stephen B Jacobs group, presented the developers plans for 2551 Broadway, the old site of Gristedes supermarket. Extell Development bought the site in 2017 and then demolished it, filing construction permits for a new building in January.

The buildings application surprised the committee members by only including one affordable unit in a building planned to take up approximately 276,578 square feet.

The site as it looked after demolition.

Lowenstein explained that the building is in R10-A zoning and is completely is an as of right building, meaning that the application does not require the community boards approval to move forward.

The building is under the voluntary inclusionary housing program, which means that, according to zoning rules, the building receives an extra 3.5 square feet of allotted space for every 1 square foot of affordable housing included in the building.

Lowenstein mentioned that the 2551 building is using the bonus space generated by 40 Riverside Boulevard building, which he said did not use all the bonus square footage allotted from its affordable housing units.

Included in the voluntary inclusionary program, the normal building height cap of 210 feet for as of right zoning in the district is increased to 235 feet. Given the steeply graded hill of West 96th Street leading up to Broadway, committee member Ira Mitchneck raised the question of how the height of the building would be measured. Architect Jennifer Cheuck did not give an answer as to the exact height of the building as measured both from Broadway and from 96th Street lobby but said that the 235 feet height is measured from the base plane, which is an average between the highest and the lowest point of the buildings foundation.

The affordable housing unit in the building is a 794 square feet one-bedroom unit, with the same fixtures as the other market-rate units. It will be an ownership unit sold through the HPD lottery. In the voluntary inclusionary housing program, the units remain affordable housing in perpetuity.

The Community Board met via Zoom.

As for the buildings facade, Cheuck said, it will be brick piers with large windows throughout the facade. Its not an all-glass building, it will have a brick facade with a lot of articulation and frames, to be a part of the Upper West Side neighborhood.

The ground floor will have a little over 9,000 square feet of retail space. Lowenstein said the owners wanted it to be a family-oriented, neighborhood-centered building, and hoped the retail establishments would reflect that. No mention of a parking garage was made.

Cheuck said that the firm did a preliminary study and they found no environmental issues. Traffic studies were not done, Lowenstein said.

When pressed on the plentiful construction in that five-block area, Cheuck said they were unaware of construction permits being filed for the neighboring site, 266 West 96th street.

Land Use Committee co-chair Seema Reddy asked about the construction timeline. Lowenstein said that he hoped that they would be allowed to start construction in the fall, and estimated construction would run three years. Cheuck clarified that construction was estimated to take about two years, and they were seeking a foundation permit to start construction as soon as the city is open this summer.

The committee urged the representatives for the new 2551 Broadway building to cooperate with the community, particularly to coordinate construction and traffic flows at the intersection to promote neighborhood safety. Ira Mitchneck asked where the staging area for the trucks for construction would be located and expressed his concern for construction staging taking up precious street space on Broadway.

Broadway and 96th Street and West End between 96th and 97th are consistently shown to be the most dangerous streets for pedestrians in our district, CB7 President Diller added. Diller ended the meeting by calling upon the 2551 Broadway representatives to join with us and Penny Ryan, our expert district manager, to form that construction advisory group.

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Proposed 22-Story Building at 96th and Broadway Will Have One Affordable Unit, Developer Says - westsiderag.com

A rendering of the project at 2717 Van Buren Street

A French developer advanced plans to build a 78-unit cluster of rental apartments and townhouses on city-owned land west of downtown Hollywood near city hall.

Hollywood commissioners, in a unanimous vote Wednesday, directed city staff to negotiate a land-sale and development agreement with Prestigia Real Estate FJM Inc. The entity is part of family-owned Prestigia Immobilier International Group, founded in 1989 and based in Reims, France.

Prestigia offered to pay $1.2 million to acquire a 1.89-acre parking lot at 2717 Van Buren Street from the city of Hollywood. A local appraiser hired by the company estimated in October 2019 that the property is worth $960,000.

Our proposal is higher than our appraisal because we really want to develop this project and settle down in Hollywood to become a major actor in the continued renaissance of the city, Jihad Salahdine, COO of Prestigia Real Estate FJM, told commissioners during the meeting.

Prestigia submitted the only proposal in response to the citys request for proposals to acquire and redevelop the underused parking lot that is about two blocks southwest of city hall.

The planned development would have two four-story apartment buildings with a total of 63 units and two three-story townhouse buildings with a total of 15 units. The development also would include 111 parking places and a pool, according to a 108-page development proposal that Prestigia submitted to the city.

Monthly apartment rents would range from $1,195 for 57 one-bedroom, one-bathroom units to $1,570 for six two-bedroom, two-bathroom units. Monthly rents for the 15 townhouses would be about $2,300.

Prestigia is currently developing another South Florida project called Prestigia Pompano, designed as a mixed-use property with 51 residential units. The company, which is waiting for a permit to start construction, paid $800,000 for the development site at 30 Northeast 5th Street in Pompano Beach in a multi-parcel deal recorded Jan. 28, according to property records.

The Prestigia development in Hollywood, designed by locally based Kaller Architecture, would create an urban-village environment with lush landscaping, Raelin Storey, the citys communications, marketing and economic development director, told commissioners. This would be a new housing type for the immediate neighborhood, with high-end exterior and interior finishes, she said.

Prestigia expects to spend $16.8 million to develop the four-building residential complex, which would have about 85,000 square feet of interior space. Financing would include $4.9 million of equity and an $11.3 million mortgage, according to Prestigias proposal.

The company expects to obtain long-term mortgage financing from Socit Gnrale, and a construction loan from Miami-based International Finance Bank. Fort Lauderdale-based Moss Construction would be the general contractor, and Miami-based Lloyd Jones would be the property manager.

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French developer plans to build a cluster of rentals in Hollywood - The Real Deal

There's nothing particularly surprising about the fact a developer wants to build a four-storey, 30-unit apartment building in a residential Ottawaneighbourhood.

Nor isit shocking that the community opposes at least parts of the plan, whichwould see a 12-metre high complex built on Grenon Avenue, just east of the Bayshore Shopping Centre.The project would first require rezoning to allow more intensification on the property, and then an exception to that new zoning so it can be builtcloser to the lot line than usually permitted.

"This application is an effort on the part of the group of investors to exploit a unique and small land parcel in question to its maximum, without having to observe the rules of rezoning and construction," said Lisa Zanyk, a resident living next door,atthe city's planning committee last Thursday.

She's not wrong. The community was being asked not only to accept intensification which delegates said they did not object to but also to accept exceptions to the rules of that intensification.

But without an exemption, argue the developers, a housing complex wouldn't be feasible as it would only be six metres wide at one end.

It's a familiar quandary for the planning committee: should they uphold the agreed-upon rules, or grant an exceptionto fulfil the broader goal of intensification? But this particular conversation took on broader meaning, as it occurred just days after 20 hours of discussion on how Ottawa should grow over the next two decades a debate on the urban boundary that continues Tuesday for the third day.

And, oddly, it's an example that could be used by both sides.

This month, council will decide how to house the additional 400,000 residents forecasted to be living in Ottawa by 2046.

The city recommends adding 1,650 hectares to the suburbs of the 91,000 new homes that will be needed, the city wants almost half to be apartments, but also envisions 23,000 homes in what are now rural areas. Thousands of other homes also need to be squeezed into existing neighbourhoods, ones just like Grenon Avenue.

There appears to be intense interest in this debate, as councillors heard from 100 public delegations last week.

A number of environmental activists, community associations and other non-profits made appeals to hold the line on the urban boundary, positing that many residents are in favour of intensification if it's done well andin conjunction with the community.

Many in the home-building business, meanwhile, called for even more land be made available. One of their key arguments? There's too much community opposition to theintensification that would be needed by not expanding the boundary.

Developers could point to the Grenon Avenue project as a case in point.

In this project, the property owners a firm called Building Investments Inc. reduced the number of proposed units from 34 to 30, and moved all planned surface parking underground.

Staff supportthe proposal in its current form, and capped the maximum height at 12 metres. (Zoning for four-storey apartments actually allows heights ofabout 14 metres.)

There's a three-storey townhome complex next to the site, and a highrise just down the street, so proponents say afour-storey complex should be considered reasonable infill.

But the factsome community members opposed it will surely be used by those who argueintensification is too controversial and hence the urban boundary should be expanded.

Those who want little or even no expansion, however, can also use the Grenon example to bolster their argument. And many councillors on the planning committee did just that.

"If not here, where does this go?" asked InnesCoun. Laura Dudas.

Councillors conceded that the complex,which would be built onlargely open land, would be a significant change for the street's residents. Next-door-neighbours, for example, will be subjected to a long, tall wall once it'sbuilt an unpleasant prospect.

But planning committee members spoke in favour of intensification, despite the challenges.

"The residents of Kitchissippi are keen to see that they're not the only ward in which intensification is going to happen," said Coun. Jeff Leiper, whose own wardhas recently experienced a big jump in density relative to other areas of the city.

"They want it to happen everywhere around the city. We know that this pressure is going to be coming to the wards beyond just the downtown."

Rideau-GoulbournCoun. Scott Moffatt, however,saidthese sorts of imperfect proposals must be considered if the city is "to achieve our intensification targets."

"There's difficulty when we implement this type of stuff, and that's what we're going tosee," Moffatt said. "We've seen it already and we're going to see more of it as we as we move forward with our official plan."

It's a topic that will surely be discussed in more detail Tuesday, when councillors pepper staff with questions about urban growth, debate motions for everything from protected farmland to demands for more information, and vote on once-in-a-decade policy.

As for the Grenon Avenue project: the planning committee unanimously approved it.

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How one apartment complex has become a microcosm of the urban boundary debate - CBC.ca

The developer behind a luxury project on Dubai's World Islands said its first homeowners will move in this year and that a desire for isolation could deliver more interest in the coming months.

Kleindienst Group said owners who bought into the Heart of Europe project would begin occupying villas on the man-made islands towards the end of 2020.

The project's 10 'palaces' featuring and private beaches have all been sold to mostly GCC buyers, though hundreds of smaller villas and flats remain under construction.

Chairman Josef Kleindienst said actual sales have dropped off due to the coronavirus pandemic, but there has been a rise interested parties.

We sold enough to fund what we are building. And it is important for us to build only what can be sold

Josef Kleindienst

Our sales dropped more than 50 per cent since corona started, he told The National during a tour of the sprawling island development.

New investors are not buying when they cannot visit."

But he said boats will begin taking investors over to the islands, 4km off the Dubai coast, from June 15.

Development on the World Islands has repeatedly stalled in the years following its construction in 2003 and handover to developers in 2008.

But significant progress on this latest project has been made in the past two years. Today, multistorey apartment and hotel buildings rise up from the low-lying islands.

Half a dozen floating 'seahorse villas' are lined up in a row and beachfront properties near completion.

Mr Kleindienst, an Austrian former police official turned businessman, said he would prove critics wrong.

I guarantee you by the end of 2020, people will have moved into our villas, floating villas and hotels, he said.

If anything, the lockdown that was put in place because of coronavirus has only increased productivity here.

"Nobody was allowed on or off the islands, so we were able to get people to work longer hours and pay them overtime.

Among the flagship properties is a Dh100 million beach palace on 'Sweden Island', now sold, with a price tag that rivals high-end Emirates Hills villas and Downtown penthouses.

Along with wealthy buyers, the project also relies on tourism spend to ensure it is a success.

Mr Kleindienst said the remote location would be attractive to people looking for a holiday, while maintaining social distancing.

Towards the end of the year, when the project is open, there are two possibilities, he said.

Either a solution will have been found for the virus or we will be able to test everyone coming here.

Everyone who is tested, and found not to have Covid-19, will be free to travel to the island and enjoy a holiday.

Portofino and Cote DAzure, the two hotels, together have almost 1,500 rooms, about the same as Atlantis on The Palm.

The global hotel industry is forecast to face significant challenges in the years ahead, but Mr Kleindienst insisted enough of the project has been sold to fund the rest of the work.

This week there were 1,200 workers on site pushed ahead with the hotels and apartments.

Our master plan allows us to build 4,000 bedrooms. We have 2,000 under construction today," he said.

"We sold enough to fund what we are building.

It is important for us to build only what can be sold.

The first of the floating villas sold for Dh5 million, about the same as an upmarket villa in a wealthy Dubai neighbourhood, while the last one to be sold went for Dh20m, he said.

The project has had some setbacks along the way.

It was reported in 2018 that one of the floating villas had sunk near the Burj Al Arab.

Mr Kleindienst said it was an events platform that had fallen into the sea, not one of the prestigious floating villas, as reported by some media, but that it was enough to make buyers think twice about investing.

We lost agreed sales because of that, he said.

We are seeing island destinations doing well globally in lockdown and it does have a USP to be successful. It was not something that was going to pop up overnight

John Stevens

Despite the anticipated economic impact of the pandemic, there were 1,824 property sales in Dubai in April, worth Dh3.62 billion, according to Property Finder. Seventy per cent were off-plan projects that are still to be built.

John Stevens, long-standing property consultant in Dubai, said the Heart of Europe project could arrive on the market at the right time.

"Hotels that were offering packages during the quarantine period in Dubai did amazingly well," said Mr Stevens, managing director of property management firm Asteco, which is not involved in the islands project.

"Some had occupancy levels as high as 70 per cent and there seems to be a move to find nice locations to sit it all out.

"The question is how long will it continue for though?"

He also said private villas on a neighbouring island off Dubai were fully booked out during the lockdown period, which required a permit to leave home and which ended on Friday, April 24.

"This is a huge development with expensive costs, it was never going to be easy to get it off the ground," he said.

"We are seeing island destinations doing well globally in lockdown and it does have a USP to be successful.

"It was not something that was going to pop up overnight."

The World Islands were in the headlines in 2018 when actress Lindsay Lohan announced plans to build her own themed resort there.

The American star of Mean Girls told her followers on Instagram she was planning to build "Lindsayland" in Dubai.

The post received more than 2,000 likes before being deleted soon after.

Updated: May 21, 2020 05:33 PM

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Dubai's World Islands developer insists outbreak will not kill off Heart of Europe project - The National

Construction of the 31-floor Kompassi residential tower in Helsinki Kalasatama, Finland has begun. This is after developer SRV Group signed a contract agreement with Kojamo for the construction to begin.

The rental apartment building project which is part of US $213.4m cooperation agreement with Kojamo, was recorded in SRVs order backlog in the second quarter of 2020.

The apartments, altogether 291 units, are mainly studios and two-room apartments. The construction will start immediately and the project will be completed in 2022.

Also Read: 270-unit high-rise apartment to be developed in Dallas, US

According to SRV Group Plc President and CEO, Saku Sipola, Kompassi is a good example of a project, where there are strong customers and which do not significantly tie up SRVs capital. When implemented as planned Kompassi will release approximately EUR 22 million from the companys balance sheet during year 2020. I am delighted to see that with our recovery programme our customers trust us and we have been able to start several new projects this year, he said.

Kim Jolkkonen, Senior Vice President, Housing at SRV said that with the companys long-term cooperation with Kojamo, they respond to housing demand in growth centres. Kompassi, which construction now begins, will have excellent location in the vicinity of good transport connections, said the VP.

SRV Group Plc and Kojamo Plc signed a cooperation agreement on 2nd March 2020 on construction of rental apartments valued at US $213.4m in Helsinki and Espoo. The contract includes a total of six residential development projects, with a total of 676 residential units. The contract includes Kompassi, which will rise 120 meters high.

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Construction of 31-floor Kompassi residential tower in Helsinki, Finland begins - Construction Review

Construction of a new Target on 82nd Street in Elmhurst was still going on during the coronavirus epidemic, April 22, 2020. Photo: Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY

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The list of essential construction projects and permitted work has ballooned sixfold since Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced a virtual construction shutdown last month, Department of Buildings data shows.

Some 4,936 job sites are now allowed to be worked on, up from about 800 on April 3, according to the Buildings Department.

Among them: hotels in Manhattan and Brooklyn, a new Queens Target, and, as the Columbia Spectator first reported, the future home of Columbia Universitys business school.

The greenlighted projects also include renovation work on rental buildings under an exception for a sole worker, raising concerns for tenants.

Under a revision of its original shutdown guidance, the state has expanded essential building work beyond primarily infrastructure projects, hospitals and affordable housing.

As long as ground already has been broken, construction now can also proceed on any type of business thats allowed to continue in-person operations during the states coronavirus-driven pause.

That broader list includes hotels, restaurants, convenience stores, banks, appliance stores and storage facilities, among other businesses. Public and private school construction is also permitted.

One worker on a Manhattan hotel project fumed, saying his bosses were treating the pandemic like a joke.

To make the hotel essential, they might as well open every job, because that hotel is far from essential, he said. That hotel is deemed essential while we are deemed expendable.

The citys rules for essential business construction appear somewhat narrower than the states.

Work on essential businesses can proceed only if it pertains to alterations of existing buildings and has been permitted by the department prior to April 15, 2020, the city guidance says.

DOB notes that the vast majority of the 35,000 sites that were ordered shuttered in March are still closed. But some local residents say theyve been shocked to see work going forward on a wide-ranging set of long-term projects while the pandemic still claims hundreds of lives per day.

The far-from-complete Target site in Elmhurst, also slated to contain a Starbucks and a Chipotle, will eventually house some type of ambulatory diagnostic treatment or healthcare facilities above the 23,000-square-foot big box store, city filings show. So the Department of Buildings is allowing construction to continue.

Patricia Chou, a member of the grassroots community group Queens Neighborhoods United, which has long opposed the development, said that while a medical office may be in the offing, the core of the planned facility is still a shopping center.

Our primary concerns are that they are endangering workers at the site and exploiting loopholes to complete this project, she said.

A rendering of the planned Target in Elmhurst Photo: Courtesy of Target

The construction work takes up space on 82nd Street and Baxter Street, which are routes to the emergency department entrance of coronavirus-slammed Elmhurst Hospital, Chou noted.

Renovations also go on at residential buildings, under the exception that allows one-person jobs.

One resident at an Upper East Side rental building said his landlords continued remodeling work on apartments puts his family and other tenants, many of them elderly, at risk for a less-than-pressing reason.

Unless its a hot water issue or a heating plumbing issue, this is not the time to have any extraneous people in the building, said the resident, who didnt want his name published for fear of retaliation by his landlord.

Delivery people may not enter the buildings elevators, but construction workers do. Meanwhile, the buildings doorman is currently fighting for his life on a ventilator, the tenant said.

Every time I take an elevator down to the basement and I run across a construction worker, thats a potential interaction that I do not need to be having, he said.

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See the original post:
Construction Exceptions Keep Many NYC Building Sites Open - THE CITY

YIT Corporation Investor News April 23, 2020, at 08:00 a.m.

YIT started residential apartment building projects in Finland, the CEE countries and Russia in January-March

YIT started several apartment building projects in January-March. The company took a cautious approach towards starting projects for consumers due to the uncertainty caused by the coronavirus pandemic. Instead, lots of projects were started for investors.

In Finland, the projects started will comprise more than 590 apartments in total with a total value of over EUR 110 million.

Furthermore, the company announced on April 8, 2020, that it had agreed to build more than 210 apartments for OP funds.

In the CEE countries, the company started the construction of over 160 apartments with a total value of over EUR 23 million.

In Russia, YIT started the construction of four locations, comprising more than 900 apartments with a total value of approximately EUR 48 million.

The projects are located at central locations in growth centres and will mainly be completed in the spring and summer 2021. The start-ups of the apartments are booked in the order backlog of the first quarter of the year.

YIT CORPORATION

Tommi Jrvenp

Vice President, Investor Relations

YIT is the largest Finnish and significant North European construction company. We develop and build apartments and living services, business premises and entire areas. We are also specialised in demanding infrastructure construction. Together with our customers, our nearly 8,000 professionals are creating more functional, attractive and sustainable cities and environments. We operate in 10 countries: Finland, Russia, Sweden, Norway, the Baltic countries, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Poland. Our revenue in 2019 was approximately EUR 3.4 billion. YIT Corporation's share is listed on Nasdaq Helsinki Oy. http://www.yitgroup.com

Read more from the original source:
YIT : started residential apartment building projects in Finland, the CEE countries and Russia in JanuaryMarch - Marketscreener.com