Construction in interior Alaska: 'kind of a slow start'.

• Author: Stricker, Julie
• Position: SPECIAL SECTION: Building Alaska

As a couple of large construction projects In Fairbanks progress toward their expected completions this year and next, summer 2016 Is looking very quiet. But It may be the calm before the storm.

Slow Start

"Except for the projects that were started last fall, it's kind of a slow start because of concerns over the economy," says Clem Clooten with the city of Fairbanks Building Department.

With low oil prices putting a huge dent in the state budget, the University of Alaska bracing for large cuts, and the Alaska Legislature in early June still without a plan to close those gaps, there's a lot of uncertainty in the industry.

Despite that Clooten is expecting a busy building season as summer progresses.

"We're just finishing up the Food Factory's new restaurant," he says, ticking off current large projects. "In a couple of weeks the new Ryan Middle School will be complete, and we'll have a new sixty-unit surgery wing for Fairbanks Memorial Hospital."

The surgery unit is part of an $88 million expansion project at the hospital that has been in the works for more than a decade. It includes a 95,000-square-foot addition with seven surgical units equipped with the latest high-tech equipment.

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On the University of Alaska Fairbanks campus, work is progressing on a 17 megawatt heat and power plant to replace the previous plant, which was designed in the 1930s and feared to be on the brink of failure. Under Senate Bill 218, the Legislature and former Governor Sean Parnell provided the university with $157.5 million of revenue bond issuance authority to pay for the project. It is scheduled to be completed in 2018.

New Projects

Elsewhere in Fairbanks, a new Spring-Hill Suites hotel is going up on the northeast side of town and a twenty-four-unit-apartment complex is slated for south Fairbanks, Clooten says.

"I would expect some new projects coming this fall on new foundations and stuff like that," he says.

Stacy Wasinger, a planner with the Fairbanks North Star Borough, say a lot of single-family residences are being built around the region, but nothing out of the ordinary.

Decline in Spending

The 2016 annual construction spending forecast written by Scott Goldsmith and Pamela Craves, Institute of Social and Economic Research, University of Alaska Anchorage, for the Construction Industry Progress Fund and the Associated General Contractors of Alaska, shows an 18 percent decline in construction spending statewide from 2015. Overall...