In many streets of the Mile-High City, you’ll find barricaded roads and sidewalks that come from the city experiencing tremendous growth. The cranes are everywhere and are now like Colorado’s new state bird. Walking around the city and seeing such big construction projects going on is quite stimulating. Denver has outdone Portland, D.C., and New York City, and more in the number of cranes in their skyline in just over a year. It has become the third-most cranes city among major U.S cities tailing Seattle and Los Angeles. This mainly has to do with the city’s surging population and the tech industry expanding big time. In 2016, half of Denver’s cranes were for residential construction as more people continue to move to the city. Earlier this year, Denver was ranked number two in the nation for the number of multifamily cranes in the skyline by a national Crane Index report. Other segments consistently strong in the city’s market include hospitality, mixed-use, and commercial developments.
The period between 2016 and 2017 saw the addition of 14 cranes, bringing the Denver crane count to 35. Over the same period, cities such as Boston and Los Angeles lost cranes. Five more cranes have been added to the downtown area as of May 2018. As this is happening in Denver, fewer cranes are seen in the skyline of Seattle, which has been dubbed as the U.S. crane capital for several years. Some other cities have had pretty volatile construction crane counts. Chicago, for instance, experienced a 39 percent decline in cranes last year while the number was cut in half in Austin, Texas, but doubled in Denver. Usually, cranes are needed for buildings that are five to six stories or taller.
The Mile-High City continues to see a lot of construction activity as projects are being finished up and quickly replaced with new ones that are starting up. This growth is expected to continue into next year as new projects are slated to begin. Construction trends are migrating just outside the metro area, creating an expanding real estate market. The local economy continues to add jobs, and this has created a construction craze driven by the need to accommodate new residents pouring in. The expansion of tech companies like Facebook and Google, and the unrelenting growth of Amazon, has seen several new office buildings pop up around the town. A few large condo and hotel projects are also underway. This brings out the Mile-High City as a center for urban development and growth.
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