The New York City construction industry lost 74,000 jobs and $9.8 billion in activity last year during shutdowns triggered by the coronavirus pandemic, according to a new study by an industry group — which is urging lawmakers to take action to get hard hats back to work.
The COVID-19 safety restrictions that closed job sites resulted in a loss of $5.5 billion in wages and 8.3 percent in commercial real estate, mortgage recording and transfer taxes to the city, the analysis conducted for the Building Trades Employers Association said.
The building and construction trade industry represents 20 percent of the city’s economy, 10 percent of jobs and 5 percent of wages, the report said.
The city is not expected to regain all the jobs lost during the pandemic until 2025.
“We’re at a critical point in our history. New York City is in danger,” said Lou Coletti, president and CEO of the Building Trade Employers Association.
“The city shot itself in the foot with Amazon. We’re strangling ourselves,” he added, referring to the proposed Amazon campus along the Queens waterfront that was scuttled by anti-development politics.
Coletti is urging Gov. Andrew Cuomo, the state legislature, Mayor de Blasio and the City Council to take actions to rev up construction.
Tops on his list is persuading lawmakers to back Cuomo’s controversial Penn Station redevelopment project.
Cuomo’s plan would redevelop the area around Penn Station, with 10 new office towers, as well as giving the dowdy rail station a makeover.
Amid neighborhood opposition, lawmakers in the state budget had limited the use of $1.3 billion in bonds for the “Empire State Complex” to expanding the station and upgrading its tracks — and excluded financing for the above-ground tower development.
The contractors’ group lawmakers to allow the Penn project to skip the city’s lengthy Uniformed Land Use Review Procedure, which it fears could kill the development.
“We’re not opposed to a public process. What we’re concerned about is opposition that stops the project,” Coletti said.
He argued that knee-jerk opposition to development post-pandemic could be the “death knell to the city.”
The group is also calling on Albany to pass legislation to help lower building insurance costs and allow design-build procurement — the hiring of architects and engineers and a general contractor at the same time — to speed up completion of projects.
