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Manhattan reigns supreme as top borough for new NYC construction projects

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Manhattan accounts for 60 percent of the value of all started construction projects

Manhattan remains New York City’s top borough for new building projects, as measured by the value of all construction starts, according to the New York Building Congress’s analysis of data from Dodge Data & Analytics.

In the first nine months of 2016, Manhattan had 58 percent of the value of all started construction projects (residential and non) in New York City. That’s exactly as expected: as the report notes, precisely 58 percent of initiated projects by value from the previous five year period (2011 through 2015) were likewise in Manhattan.

On the residential front, the numbers are similar: Manhattan accounts for 50 percent of construction projects, with Brooklyn a distant second at 24 percent. “It will be interesting to see if that trend continues, with the number of available development sites diminishing in Manhattan and given all the residential and commercial projects that are in the Brooklyn and Queens pipeline,” NYBC president Richard T. Anderson said in a statement.

There was a moment, in 2015, when it seemed, perhaps, as though the residential tides might be shifting. For the five year period between 2011 and 2015, Manhattan accounted for 54 percent of the value of residential construction starts, followed by Brooklyn (23 percent), Queens (16 percent), the Bronx (5 percent), and Staten Island (2 percent). But in 2015 itself, the gap between Manhattan and the rest of the city seemed narrower: that year, Manhattan accounted for just 43 percent of residential starts by value, while Brooklyn was up to 29 percent, and Queens accounted for 22 percent. Was it the beginning of a trend?

Not quite. “Six of the top ten projects by value through the first nine months of this year were Manhattan residential projects,” Anderson noted. Go figure.

Unsurprisingly, Manhattan’s dominance even starker in the non-residential sector — offices, government buildings, assorted venues, and hotels — where it was boosted by two major office tower projects, 3 Hudson Boulevard and One Vanderbilt.