Construction restarting in the Big Apple
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has announced that the city is restarting $17 billion of capital construction projects as part of its pandemic recovery effort. During a press conference, De Blasio’s recently appointed Senior Advisor for Recovery Lorraine Grillo said 1,700 construction projects will be given the green light by the end of March.
Grillo said that the reboot will not only be an opportunity to put architects, engineers and construction professionals back to work after being sidelined by the pandemic but will also provide opportunities to the city’s minority- and women-owned contractors and to small construction businesses that can now restaff their operations.
After the COVID-19 pandemic arrived in the U.S., the city’s water, sewer and infrastructure projects, deemed essential, continued but in late March 2020 the New York City Department of Design and Construction directed firms with contracts for design services for city-backed projects to halt work, according to The Architect’s Newspaper.