ARCHITECTURE & CONSTRUCTION
One of the hardest hit sectors was hospitality , where funding for new projects dried up . Tricorp Group CEO Tony Moayed says his Sacramento company had a couple of hospitality projects put on hold , but one of them was recently given the go-ahead for construction after being delayed for a year . He says lenders are slowly starting to back hospitality projects again but are placing more burden on the contractors who will build them .
“ They ’ re very careful . We answer more questions than ever before from lenders now ,” says Moayed . “ They want to know our policies , they want to know our history , they want to know our success rate with handling COVID and other projects .”
SHUTTERSTOCK PHOTO
“ I have a lot of work out to bid right now , some of it from owners who literally lost their financing … and some who put things on a slow boat on purpose because of COVID .”
TONY MOAYED CEO , Tricorp Group
A positive outlook
If there is one across-the-board item that is plaguing the construction industry as a result of the pandemic , it ’ s supplychain issues . There has been a significant uptick in warehouse space leased to hold building materials , including a 20,000-square-foot space rented by Tricorp Group . DMG North also recently upgraded and expanded its Sacramento warehouse space to hold HVAC stock . “ There are folks out there that I know are filling up their warehouses with materials ,” Moayed says . “ Remember the toilet paper issue ? That ’ s exactly what ’ s happening to the construction market out there .”
Cohen expects supply-chain challenges to persist for an extended period of time and says the slowdown is leading to price increases . “ You have tons of ships sitting off of ( at the Port of Los Angeles in ) San Pedro in LA that cannot get unloaded fast enough that are full of building supplies ,” she says .
Many of these building products originate in China , where factories were temporarily shut down during the pandemic . Kitchell CEM is encouraging its clients to make sure the materials they specify are available from alternate suppliers in the U . S . or countries that aren ’ t experiencing the same backlog .
Moayed decided early in the pandemic as the bottleneck in supplies became apparent to rent warehouse space and or-
58 comstocksmag . com | June 2021