Despite all the bad news from Wall Street, gazillions of square feet of new office space are still under construction at Ground Zero, helping the Big Apple to a 6.2 percent vacancy rate, the lowest of any central business district (CBD) according to Grubb & Ellis. On the down side, the $4 billion Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn that was to house the NBA’s New Jersey Nets, a hotel, offices, shops and apartments is in limbo because of financing difficulties. A surprising amount of casino construction is underway in this region. Gambling projects already underway or scheduled to break ground include an 184,000-square-foot casino at New York’s Aqueduct horse track; the $1.1 billion Revel Resort & Casino in Atlantic City; the $286 million Concord Resort in the Catskills; and the $800 million North Shore casino in Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh’s biggest downtown project is the new 26-story Three PNC Plaza building. On western Pennsylvania’s steel front, a $1.2 billion hot rolling mill being built by Allegheny Technologies Inc. at its Brackenridge facility will keep much needed steel jobs in the region.
