While you can’t count too many of the metropolitan areas in NAED’s Eastern Region amongst the fastest-growing metros in the nation, the region’s largest cities are more than holding their own because of all the construction now underway.
When measured by year-over-year changes in construction employment, a key indicator to consider when taking the temperature of the region’s five largest metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs), only Philadelphia, with its 3.1% increase over 2016 2Q employment is showing a solid increase. The other MSAs in the Top 5 metros in the NAED Eastern Region are New York, Washington, D.C., Baltimore and Boston.
But when you look at some of the mega-projects now underway or on the drawing boards in the downtown business districts of these markets and in many of their surrounding suburbs, you can see that these markets will offer plenty of opportunities for any electrical distributors, independent reps or manufacturers servicing electrical contractor business in these metros.
Many of these projects are listed in the chart on page 2, which offers some insight into 50 of the largest construction projects currently planned or underway. Boston has all sorts of new office construction underway and big plans for the renovation of its mass transit system. The renovation of LaGuardia Airport, Penn Station and the Hudson Yards project highlight the construction activity in the Big Apple. Downtown Philadelphia is seeing a resurgence in multi-family construction with the addition of more than 4,000 apartments by next year, and the announcement that the University of Pennsylvania would be building a $1.5 billion addition to its medical facility, the Penn Medicine Patient Pavilion. And one of the larger projects in the Baltimore metro is the One Light Street, a 780,941-square-foot mixed-use project.
One market in NAED’s Eastern Region that stands out is Columbus, OH, which was ahead of the pack in terms of year-over-year growth in construction and manufacturing employment, population growth and several other key indicators. One sure indicator of the Columbus area’s growth prospects is population growth. The Columbus metro’s population has increased 7% since 2010 to just over 2 million residents. That’s in stark contrast to most of Ohio’s other large metros, which with the exception of Cincinnati and its 2% growth over this time period, actually lost population since 2010, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau.
Columbus is enjoying a surge of construction activity on the campus of Ohio State University, and as the capital of the Buckeye State, there’s usually better-than average office renovation and new construction to charge up electrical sales.
The chart above and on page 5 offer sales potential data and economic indicators for the region’s largest metros.