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www.rockproducts.com ROCK products • May 2015 • 95 ECONOMICS breaking for Cornell University's first academic building on Roosevelt Island in New York, as part of the Cornell NYC Tech campus development. Large public school buildings that reached the construction start stage in March included a $68 million K-12 facility in Brooklyn, N.Y.; a $66 million high school replacement in Feder- al Way, Wash.; and a $50 million high school renovation in Chicago. For the smaller institutional categories, weak- er activity was reported by public buildings (courthouses and detention facilities), down 5 percent, while the remaining institutional structure types posted increases for March – transpor- tation terminals, up 33 percent; amuse- ment-related work, up 52 percent; and religious buildings, up 71 percent from a depressed February. Groundbreaking for a $78 million church in Leawood, Kan., helped to lift the religious build- ing amount for March. Nonbuilding Construction Nonbuilding construction, at $198.5 bil- lion (annual rate), dropped 22 percent in March. A steep plunge for the electric utility and gas plant category, down 73 percent, was entirely responsible for the latest month's nonbuilding decline. In February, the electric utility and gas plant category had included the $8.4 billion Sempra LNG export terminal in Louisiana and the $1.2 billion Stateline Solar Farm in California. While there were several large electric utility and gas plant projects entered as March starts, including a $500 million upgrade to a gas-fired power plant in Texas, they were considerably smaller in scale than those entered as February starts. By contrast, the public works catego- ries showed across-the-board gains in March. Highway and bridge construc- tion surged 30 percent, led by the start of the $2.3 billion I-4 upgrade in Cen- tral Florida. For the first three months of 2015, the top five states ranked by the dollar amount of new highway and bridge construction were – Florida, Texas, New York, California and Illinois. The miscellaneous public works cat- egory, which includes site work and pipelines, soared 86 percent in March, For the first three months of 2015, total construction starts on an unad- justed basis were up 28 percent from the same period a year ago. The 28 percent jump during the first three months of 2015 for total con- struction starts on an unadjusted basis compared to last year reflected growth for all three major construction sectors. • Nonresidential building year-to-date increased 10 percent, with commer- cial building, up 6 percent; manufac- turing building, up 10 percent; and institutional building, up 12 percent. • Nonbuilding construction year-to- date soared 74 percent, with electric utilities and gas plants, up 464 per- cent and public works up 13 percent. • Residential building year-to-date advanced 12 percent, with single family housing, up 11 percent; and multifamily housing up, 17 percent. Through the first three months of 2015, the top five metropolitan mar- kets ranked by the dollar volume of multifamily projects were as follows – New York, Miami, Boston, Washing- ton, D.C. and Houston. The New York metropolitan area during this time comprised 23 percent of the U.S. mul- tifamily construction dollar amount. By comparison, the next four metropolitan areas combined comprised 20 percent of the U.S. multifamily construction dollar amount during this time. By geography, total construction starts during the January-March peri- od of 2015 showed this performance – the South Central, up 98 percent; the South Atlantic, up 17 percent; the Northeast, up 10 percent; the West, up 1 percent; and the Midwest, unchanged from a year ago. Additional perspective comes from looking at 12-month moving totals, in this case the 12 months ending March 2015 versus the 12 months ending March 2014. On this basis, total con- struction starts were up 13 percent, as a result of this behavior by major sector – nonresidential building, up 22 percent; residential building, up 11 percent; and nonbuilding construc- tion, up 6 percent. By geography, the 12 months ending March 2015 revealed the following for total construction starts versus the pri- or 12 months – the South Central, up 32 percent; the South Atlantic, up 16 percent; the West, up 7 percent; and the Midwest and Northeast, each up 3 percent. led by $400 million related to site work at the Sasol ethylene cracker and deriv- atives complex in Louisiana and a $300 million petroleum pipeline in Texas. For the environmental categories, the March increases were as follows – riv- er/harbor development, up 33 per- cent; water supply systems, up 16 per- cent; and sewer systems, up 1 percent. Residential Building Residential building in March was reported at $251.4 billion (annual rate), essentially even with the pre- vious month. Single-family housing edged up a slight 1 percent, due to a mixed pattern by major region – the Northeast, up 19 percent; the Midwest, up 4 percent; the South Central, up 1 percent; and the South Atlantic and the West, each down 1 percent. In effect, there's not been much change from the flat pattern for single-family housing at the U.S. level that emerged during 2014, following strong percent- age growth in both 2012 (up 29 per- cent) and 2013 (up 27 percent). Multifamily housing in March receded 4 percent, staying close to the height- ened amount achieved in February when a 45 percent increase was report- ed. There were nine multifamily proj- ects valued at $100 million or more that reached groundbreaking during March, with the top four located in the New York metropolitan area – two in Brooklyn valued at $385 million and $197 million, respectively, and two in Manhattan valued at $168 million and $150 million, respectively. Year-to-Date: Big Jump