Needed: Shot in the Arm

The local commercial property market is starting to recover from the 08-09 crash but, like in much of the rest of the country, there's little incentive to build new office or retail space. An exception is in the health care sector. In residential construction, multi-family construction projects are doing much better— just look at all the permits in place for apartment projects. Crain's points to a study by NYC-based McGraw-Hill Construction that illustrates the situation. It's the sixth consecutive year of declining value in construction contracts, although multi-family contracts were up 33% from 2010. According to the study, multi-family is doing much better in Chicago than the nation as a whole, and should continue to, but single-family is going nowhere fast. [Crain's]