by Calculated Risk on 11/07/2009 07:40:00 PM
Saturday, November 07, 2009
Nevada Construction Crane: "Endangered species"
Brian Wargo writes at the Las Vegas Sun: Construction nears standstill
The state bird of Nevada, the construction crane, is on the endangered species list.As these remaining projects are completed thousands of construction workers will leave Las Vegas - impacting the local housing market and the Las Vegas economy.
... there are nine commercial projects of consequence under construction off from the Strip in Southern Nevada. Once most of those projects wind down early next year, there’s not much in the pipeline and development will essentially cease ... the long-range outlook ... is that there won’t be another major casino project built on the Strip for another decade. ...
“Once CityCenter is done, that is going to be it for a while,” [Steve Holloway, executive director of Associated General Contractors of Las Vegas] said. “It is going to be ugly. ... I think Southern Nevada is going to remain in this recession two to five more years.”In many bubble areas, people thought high levels of construction activity and real estate related employment were the norm. I pointed out the obvious in 2005: "the areas most at risk have had the greatest increase in real estate related jobs". As usual, Vegas took the building boom to excess ...