The erector set.

• Position: North Carolina construction industry - Industry Overview

With skyscrapers lying low, you'd be surprised at what's big with builders these days.

Back when he was studying to become an architect, Phil Kuttner never thought that someday he'd be designing jails.

But in today's construction market, you take what you can get, and the president of Charlotte-based Little & Associates is proud of his firm's work on a new $77 million jail for Mecklenburg County. He hopes the experience might lock up some more jail and prison work for his firm.

With few office towers, industrial plants and large shopping centers on the drawing boards or under construction, the nonprofit sector has become a focal point of the state's building industry. In its annual survey of construction activity, BUSINESS NORTH CAROLINA found four of the 10 largest projects involve nonprofit organizations. Only three commercial office projects made the cut.

That's a big change from recent years, when skyscrapers popping up in Charlotte, Greensboro and Durham dominated the list. To keep busy while tenants absorb all the space that has been built, some contractors are hustling to get a piece of government contracts for new highways, hospitals, jails and schools.

To compile our list, we interviewed more than two dozen architects, contractors, chamber of commerce executives, developers and others in the industry. Particular assistance was offered by Construction Market Data Inc., a Charlotte company that monitors building. We excluded highway construction, buildings that opened in 1992 and projects announced after June 15, 1993. And because we didn't want jails and prisons to dominate the list, we spun them off into a separate story, on page 35.

Charlotte Convention Center

The latest evidence of Charlotte's penchant for thinking big is a $141 million convention center aimed at attracting national gatherings of industries and organizations when it opens in 1994.

As anyone who's driven by the downtown site knows, the convention center will be enormous: 850,000 square feet of exhibit space on 11.5 acres. There will be a 34,900-square-foot ballroom, 46 meeting rooms and 25 loading docks.

Overseeing construction is Irvine, Calif.-based Fluor Daniel Corp. Since demolition of existing buildings began in July 1990, convention-center construction has been broken into 28 different packages. Fluor Daniel Project Manager Billy Crockett says the largest, a $12.5 million contract, was awarded to Cives Steel Co. of Winchester, Va., for erecting structural steel. Building costs will total $89 million. Architects for the project are Thompson, Ventulett & Stainback of Atlanta and The FWA Group of Charlotte.

To pay the debt service on the city-owned center, Charlotte is relying on a 3% hotel and 1% prepared-food tax. The principal is being repaid through certificates of participation, which are not backed by the credit of city government.

Expectations for the center run sky-high. A KPMG Peat Marwick study two years ago estimated that its economic impact will total $322 million a year, compared with $117 million for Charlotte's existing convention center.

N.C. Baptist Hospitals buildings

After three decades of almost constant construction, Winston-Salem residents must be wondering whether cranes are an architectural feature at North Carolina Baptist Hospitals.

The Winston-Salem hospital has two $55 million projects under way: the Emergency Department and Dietary Building and the Bowman Gray School of Medicine Center for Research on Human...