[MarkDaMan]

21 cranes, 15 hotels, 10,000 jobs: Inside Oregon's development spree
Updated on July 16, 2017 at 11:06 AM Posted on July 16, 2017 at 7:03 AM
By Jeff Manning jmanning@oregonian.com
The Oregonian/OregonLive
By Jeff Manning and Anna Marum

http://www.oregonlive.com/business/i...tion_boom.html

John Killin pressed the panic button in February amid a multibillion-dollar tsunami of real estate development.

The building frenzy that lit up the Portland-area economy and changed the city irrevocably has depleted the pool of skilled construction workers. In a letter to fellow contractors, Killin warned of a "new normal" of chronic labor shortages.

"There are probably 10,000 open jobs out there," said Killin, executive director of the Associated Wall and Ceiling Contractors of Oregon and Southwest Washington. "We need 800 carpenters, we need about the same number of electricians. And there are 20 more trades."

Nearly a decade after the Great Recession, the long and frustratingly slow recovery has morphed into a barrage of development that by some measures surpasses the mid-2000s housing bubble. The city issued nearly 12,000 buildings permits through the first 10 months of its current fiscal year for a record $2.5 billion in projects, easily eclipsing the previous high of $1.9 billion set the year before.

Interviews with dozens of developers, construction company executives and union officials reveal a boom that includes all real estate categories, from high-end apartments in Portland's urban core to enormous data centers in the eastern Oregon desert. Fueled by strong in-migration and job growth, Portland should remain red-hot in the near-term, they predict.

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