NYC construction spending to top $31.5B in 2013

Construction spending soared in the boom days of 2007, but those numbers are peanuts compared to what we’re on track to see this year.

Construction spending in New York City is on track to reach $31.5 billion in 2013, a 14 percent jump from last year’s $27.6 billion and topping 2007’s high of $31.1 billion, according to a forecast from the New York Building Congress, cited by the New York Observer.

And that number is expected to continue growing, hitting $33.4 billion in 2014 and $37 billion in 2015, said the report, completed along with the New York Building Foundation and with help from Urbanomics.

“New York City is once again demonstrating its remarkable resiliency,” Richard Anderson, president of the Building Congress, said in a statement cited by the Observer. “Just five years after the worst downturn since the Great Depression, the city’s construction industry finds itself on the brink of yet another building boom.”

The numbers are buoyed by rebounding residential spending and new non-residential construction at the World Trade Center and Hudson Yards.

Government spending, meanwhile, is expected to increase this year from $13.4 billion to $13.7 billion in 2013, but to slow in the long term. [NYO] — Julie Strickland