As we are finishing the master planning process for a new off-campus center for Sac State in Placer County, our master planning Architect, Sasaki, brought out some analog and digital mock-ups of the planned campus. The site is 300 acres bordered by Roseville to the south and Rocklin and Lincoln to the east. The pictures represent the campus at full buildout, which would accommodate 15,000 students in the rapidly-growing south Placer County region.

I'm glad I finally was able to tour this project. After a year of checking in on the tower crane for this project, MarketOne Construction project manager Jason Ford gave me a tour. The project is an adaptive reuse of the historic Eastern Star building that will become a 128-room Hyatt House hotel across the street from Sutter's Fort. The pictures below show the juxtaposition of new construction into the brick shell of the original building. Alas, this project removed its tower crane last week so Sacramento is down to six on the skyline.

The first two pictures are how the project looked on November 5, 2020 with the historic brick façade supported by falsework as the basement was being excavated. The remaining five pix were taken on July 28, 2021 and show great progress. 

regional This is the third installment of the tower crane road trip, with Sacramento and San Diego being the first two. If these three cities are the ships Columbus sailed to the new world, Boise is definitely the Niña, but the growth is nonetheless astounding. Idaho's population has grown over 17% since 2010 (over 270,000 people), with about of 100,000 of those people moving to Boise. So it should be no surprise that the three tower cranes in Boise are busy on multi-family projects in the downtown core. These pictures are a bit old (March 5), so these cranes may have already been removed. 

6th and Front Streets. Not sure who the general contractor is, but the owner's representative is Paradigm.

5th and Grove Streets. Andersen Construction is the general contractor.

The cranes for the 5th and Grove and 6th and Front projects shown together.

South 4th and West Broad Streets. The general contractor is ESI.

Bonus crawler crane on East Myrtle Street between South Avenue A and South Avenue B.

One last picture. The reason for our Boise visit was to check out Boise State University. Mission accomplished...my daughter Ella will be attending this Fall as a (wait for it)...construction management student! We are very excited for her.

Building on my previous post about running/walking from tower crane to tower crane when visiting cities, it is with bittersweet emotion that I post pictures from San Diego. My wife and I have been visiting San Diego fairly often to visit our daughter Grace while she was a student at San Diego State University. Over the past four years, most of the action seemed to be taking place in La Jolla, with major biotech projects going up one after another, along with a major four tower crane project at UC San Diego. I never visited those projects, but the pictures below are an ode to the work happening in downtown and in Mission Valley. These pictures are a little more than a month old (May 24).  Six tower cranes and a bonus crawler, La Jolla excluded.

Swinerton project on Front Street. Given the surroundings, this will likely be a high rise multi-family building.

​Holland Construction on behalf of Holland Group. Given Holland Group's property portfolio, this will likely also be multi-family. The Federal courthouse is in the background.

Major renovation/addition in the Gaslamp District that will be an AC Marriott. The Briad Group is the developer.

The next two projects are in the Banker's Hill neighborhood just west of Balboa Park. They look very much like multi-family projects, which would make sense given the surroundings. I cannot tell who the general contractors are.

Moving into Mission Valley, the project below is also being performed by Holland. This who area is changing with the construction of the new Aztec Stadium, which I could not get close enough to get a picture of the crawler crane on that project.

The next three pictures are bonus pictures.

Crawler crane at the Horton Plaza renovation project being run by Turner Construction.

While neither taco nor tower crane, if you are in Newport Beach, head to Bear Flag Fish Co. You will not regret it.

Lastly, congratulations Grace. Now I get to visit you in San Francisco and dragging you project sites. #prouddad

This is the first of three posts on tower cranes. To answer the question in the title of why do I count tower cranes, there are three answers, with the first being the shortest and simplest: I'm a nerd. If you are in the construction industry and anything like me (or Bob Kjome), you think tower cranes are cool. They tend to show up on big projects in dense (read: complicated) urban environments. My daughters and wife ridicule me mercilessly for watching tower cranes #sorrynotsorry.

Second (which really builds on the previous point or being a geek): when I visit cities and stay in a hotel downtown, I will usually walk or run from tower crane to tower crane as a way to get exercise and see cities from the perspective of where the biggest changes are occurring. The tower cranes give me waypoint markers so I don't get lost. Since tower cranes are typically building projects in established, up-and-coming, or gentrifying neighborhoods, running between tower cranes helps me from wandering into rough neighborhoods. I am directionally challenged.

Third: most importantly, tower cranes are a sign of strong economic development. If you drive into a city with a lot of tower cranes on the skyline, it is a pretty good bet that there is a high rate of economic growth in that area. When San Francisco pulled out of the 2009 housing crash, there were dozens of tower cranes building high rise condos and office buildings. Same goes for Seattle. What do San Francisco and Seattle have in common? Both are home to many tech companies that have fared very well since 2009 and have accelerated their growth throughout the year of COVID-19. The mother of all growth stories has been Toronto, which has had over 200 tower cranes up for several years. Construction consulting firm Rider Levett Bucknall tracks tower crane counts and summarizes insights as to how the counts correlate with construction industry economic health. However, RLB does not track many mid and smaller markets. That's a gap I try to fill. With that being said...

What's up Sacramento?

Last quarter, Sacramento had five tower cranes plus two large crawler cranes. We lost the tower crane at DesCor's Mansion Inn project at H Street between 15th and 16th Streets but gained three tower cranes in the Railyards, so we now have seven tower cranes on our skyline with one crawler at the Richards Boulevard site. Details are below, moving from the west (West Sacramento, technically) to the east.

​CalSTRS second tower at 3rd and E Streets in West Sacramento, DPR Construction.

​Sacramento Commons, 5th and O Streets, Deacon Construction.

Two new kids on the block. Sacramento County Courthouse, the block bordered by G and H Streets and 5th and 6th Streets, Clark Construction.

The other new kid on the block: Condo project in the Railyards, Brown Construction.

The bonus crawler crane ​at the DGS Richards Blvd./N. 7th Street complex, Hensel Phelps.

Apartments at  the intersection of 16th Street and F Street, Sunseri Construction.

Hyatt House, K and 28th Streets in Midtown. MarketOne Builders.

Coming next: San Diego and Boise.

I don't want to get too romantic, but beautiful sunrises over construction sites always lift my spirits. The Tschannen Eye Institute building (being built by McCarthy Building Companies) and an associated parking structure (being build by Clark Pacific) are really coming along.

In addition to touring the WELL Expansion, we walked the Hornet Commons student housing project with Sacramento City Councilmember Jeff Harris. Opening this fall, Hornet Commons is a $150 million student housing project supplying 1,100 beds directly adjacent to Sac State.

Last week we toured the WELL Expansion project with Sacramento City Councilmember Jeff Harris. After the first two exterior pix, the next five pix are of new individual use showers and locker renovations. The last pic shows the expanded weight room (moving into the space formerly occupied by Peak Adventures).

Since November, four tower cranes were removed from our skyline (two each at the Frederic @601 Capitol Mall and the DGS Swing Space @O Street between 10th and 11th Streets but we gained a new one, so we currently have five. Very soon, we will gain two more (see below) and there are two big crawler cranes off of Richards Boulevard.
This month we will work east to west:

Hyatt House, K and 28th Streets in Midtown. MarketOne Builders took this project over (from Tricorp Construction).

This crane just landed last week at  the intersection of 16th Street and F Street. It's a multi-family project and it is unclear who the general contractor is.

​Mansion Inn, H Street between 15th and 16th Streets. DesCor Builders is the general contractor for this project.

​Sacramento Commons, 5th and O Streets, Deacon Construction.

Coming soon! Two tower cranes at the new Sacramento County Courthouse, the block bordered by G and H Streets and 5th and 6th Streets, Clark Construction. A reliable source tells me the cranes will be erected on the weekends of April 10-11 and April 17-18.

CalSTRS second tower at 3rd and E Streets in West Sacramento, DPR Construction.

Bonus cranes: two large crawlers at the DGS Richards Blvd./N. 7th Street complex, Hensel Phelps.

A few pix showing the interior and exterior updates of the WELL Expansion from last week. The full lifecycle of construction is included, from demo to punchlist. For those familiar with the WELL, the demo is of the existing cabana locker room. The "new" locker room is a part of the westward expansion of the building. The exterior work expanding the building is done and the construction effort is mostly interior build-out. A lot of framing, rough MEP and drywall.