Dive Brief:
- Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Carlos Scissura has been selected as the next president of the New York Building Congress, according to the Commercial Observer.
- Scissura will replace current President Richard Anderson, who will retire from the Building Congress at the end of the year.
- Anderson has been at the helm of the Building Congress for 22 years and has been a noted champion of industry diversity and infrastructure investment.
Dive Insight:
The NYBC represents a wide variety of construction-related industries and counts contractors, developers, designers and real estate professionals among its membership. It has 400 member organizations representing 250,000 professionals and tradespeople and serves as an industry watchdog on behalf of smart public policy and spending initiatives.
The NYBC's board of directors is a who's who of the construction and development industries, including executives from companies like Skanska USA, CBRE, STV Group, Turner Construction and WSP|Parsons Brinckerhoff. In January, Richard Cavallaro, president and CEO of Skanska USA, was elected chair of the NYBC.
The Building Congress also provides analysis on the city's construction activity. Most recently it reported that the New York City public and private institutional construction projects started in 2015 totaled $4.6 billion, up 22% from 2014. Although starts in the first half of 2016 were down 50% from 2015 at $1.4 billion, the total was still up from the same period in 2014 ($796 million) and 2013 ($1.2 billion).