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March 16, 2011
Prefabricated Tower May Rise at Brooklyn’s Atlantic Yards
The New York Times
by Charles V. Bagli
The Times's Charles Bagli has a blockbuster, and the big news isn't Bruce Ratner's fascination with unproven building techniques — it's his apparent screwing over of the construction unions.
In a bid to cut costs at his star-crossed Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn, the developer Bruce C. Ratner is pursuing plans to erect the world’s tallest prefabricated steel structure, a 34-story tower that would fulfill his obligation to start building affordable housing at the site.
The prefabricated, or modular, method he would use, which is untested at that height, could cut construction costs in half by saving time and requiring substantially fewer and cheaper workers. And if that method works, the large number of buildings planned for the $4.9 billion Atlantic Yards — 16 in all, not including the Nets arena, now under construction — could also make it economical for the company to run its own modular factory, where walls, ceilings, floors, plumbing and even bathrooms and kitchens could be installed in prefabricated steel-frame boxes.
The 34-story building, with roughly 400 apartments, would comprise more than 900 modules that would be hauled to Atlantic Yards, lifted into place by crane and bolted together at the corner of Flatbush Avenue and Dean Street, next to the arena.
Mr. Ratner’s development company, Forest City Ratner, has been investigating modular construction for a year, but has kept its plans secret. MaryAnne Gilmartin, executive vice president of Forest City Ratner, confirmed Wednesday that the company was seriously considering the modular method, although, she added, no final decision had been made.
...“The company is interested in modular, high-rise construction in an urban setting,” Ms. Gilmartin said. “It’s driven by cost and efficiencies.”
But it would also infuriate the construction workers who were Mr. Ratner’s most ardent supporters during years of stormy community meetings, where they drowned out neighborhood opponents with chants of “Jobs, jobs, jobs.”
“This is something that could be of great consequence to the building trades,” said Gary La Barbera, president of the Building and Construction Trades Council of Greater New York, an umbrella group for the construction unions. “We have never been supportive of prefab buildings, for obvious reasons.”
...Modular construction saves time because the building components can be put together at the same time the foundation is being dug, and because the factory is indoors, weather is not a problem. Materials can be bought in greater bulk and stored on-site. More of the work is done horizontally, on the factory floor, rather than vertically, saving the time it would normally take for all the plumbers, carpenters, electricians and others to move up and down the structure every day.
But it is the labor savings that are suddenly worrying some union officials, who were repeatedly asked by Forest City to mobilize their members for years of raucous community meetings.
The state and the city agreed to provide $300 million in direct subsidies for Atlantic Yards, in part because Forest City insisted that the project would generate “upwards of 17,000 union construction jobs.”
Not to worry, Ms. Gilmartin said: “We’re a union shop, and we build union.”
But under current wage scales, union workers earn less in a factory than they do on-site. A carpenter earns $85 an hour in wages and benefits on-site, but only $35 an hour in a factory.
And while modular construction employs a large number of carpenters, ironworkers, who earn as much as $93.88 an hour in pay and benefits, could lose a lot of jobs.
NoLandGrab: Certainly, some chickens are coming home to roost for the building trades, who were only too happy to disrupt public hearings on Atlantic Yards that were already shams. But in the end, they're just another of Bruce Ratner's many victims. Live and learn, folks.
Posted by eric at March 16, 2011 11:00 PM