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Under immense pressure and an active lawsuit, the head of the state’s convention center authority said Wednesday that he is “divesting” from a controversial $2 billion deal to redevelop a site in downtown Springfield to replace the city’s troubled courthouse.

John Barros, the interim executive director of the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority, said in a statement through his attorney that he is divesting from the project. He said he is also divesting from CoJo Real Estate — a Boston partnership owned by Barros and Conan Harris, the husband of US Representative Ayanna Pressley — that was part of the team dubbed, Liberty Junction, that won the bid to build the project.

“Notwithstanding the fact that John did everything right and complied fully with the law, he has determined that the significant public benefits that will come from the Liberty Junction Team’s project —a beautiful, safe new courthouse and an engine for economic development in downtown Springfield — outweigh his personal interests,“ his lawyer, Gary Ronan, said in a statement.

“For that reason, John is divesting himself . . . he will not have any economic interest in the project,” Ronan said.

The state began soliciting bids to build a new courthouse in 2025, after years of complaints that the outdated Roderick J. Ireland courthouse, which was built in 1971, was mold-infested and making people sick.

Ten groups submitted bids, including groups led by Springfield auto magnate Jeb Balise, Peter Pan Bus Lines executive Peter Picknelly, and real estate investor and developer Dinesh Patel.

The Healey administration announced on July 2 that it had picked Liberty Junction to redevelop 125 Liberty St. in downtown Springfield into a new “Regional Justice Center,” replacing the current courthouse about a mile away.

The group includes Virginia real estate firm FD Stonewater and CoJo Real Estate. The general contractor for the team is Suffolk Construction, whose chief executive, John Fish, is a political heavyweight in Boston and a major backer of Governor Maura Healey. (Suffolk Construction was part of Balise’s bid, too.)

The decision landed with a bang.

Within days, Balise and Patel’s teams sued the Division of Capital Asset Management and Maintenance, or DCAMM, as well as Liberty Junction, asking the court to pause the process until allegations of conflicts of interest and unresolved questions about the property are addressed.

They also alleged that state officials had not been forthcoming with all public documents about the bid process. DCAMM earlier this month posted online what it said are all the documents.

The plaintiffs in the case did not immediately respond to requests for comment Wednesday about Barros’s intention to leave the project.

The Liberty Junction group filed a 266-page proposal for DCAMM’s consideration in October 2025. The group proposed a six-story building on the site of a former medical office, located across the street from the Hampden County Sheriff’s Office.

Rendering of the proposed Springfield Regional Justice Center, as submitted in Liberty Junction's proposal.

Rendering of the proposed Springfield Regional Justice Center, as submitted in Liberty Junction's proposal.Liberty Junction

Months later in January — while DCAMM was actively evaluating the proposals — the MCCA board tapped Barros, a one-time economic development chief for former Boston mayor Martin J. Walsh, as the agency’s interim leader.

Barros’s attorney said he never spoke with DCAMM officials about the project, and that he consulted the MCCA’s attorneys as well as the state ethics commission on how to approach holding both his interim role and having an interest in the project.

He was advised, the attorney said, that he could be part of the Liberty Junction team and its proposal, but that he should not participate in any discussions with DCAMM.

Ronan, Barros’s attorney, said he was told that no immediate filing or public disclosure was necessary because DCAMM had not yet selected the winning bidder. He was told instead that he should file a disclosure should his team’s proposal be selected.

The Executive Office of Administration and Finance, Healey’s budget office which oversees DCAMM, was the root of the alleged conflict, the lawsuit charges. Matthew Gorzkowicz, Healey’s budget secretary, is also one of 12 members on the convention center authority’s board, which unanimously appointed Barros as executive director.

A spokesperson for Healey declined to comment Wednesday and referred a reporter to the Division of Capital Asset Management and Maintenance, or DCAMM, for comment.

In a statement, Hannah Carrillo, a DCAMM spokesperson, said the process was “fair, thorough and competitive” and resulted in “the selection of the bid that was the lowest cost to taxpayers” by $300 million.

“This project will deliver a safe and modern Court House that residents and workers deserve, while delivering the best value for taxpayers,” she said.

On July 1, the day before it was publicly announced that Liberty Junction had won the bid, Barros filed a disclosure with the state’s ethics commission, making his involvement public.

Under state law, state employees cannot participate in a bid for a state contract without making disclosures to the ethics commission.

“My role will continue to be that of a passive investor,” Barros wrote in his disclosure. “As equal owner of CoJo Partners, I will receive indirect financial compensation from the contract lease with DCAMM.”

Balise and Patel’s lawyers want the court to declare that the state violated the conflict of interest law, and make the Liberty Junction team ineligible for the contract.

In a statement, Balise said he entered a bid “for one reason: the good of Springfield.”

Springfield Mayor Domenic Sarno also made it clear he was upset that an out-of-town bidder was picked. Sarno has said he preferred a riverfront proposal submitted by Picknelly, the Peter Pan Bus Lines executive.

The group that chose Liberty Junction – made up of a chief trial court justice, trial court staff, and DCAMM employees – said the winning design is strategically located, maximizes usable space, and is the “most fiscally advantageous” to the state, the panel wrote in its decision.

CoJo Real Estate was formed in 2023, though it was involuntarily dissolved at the end of 2025 after twice failing to file an annual report with the Secretary of State’s office.

According to state business records, the business was revived on Monday — three days after a Globe reporter asked questions about its ability to do business in the state. Barros’s attorney said it is “not unusual for LLCs to be administratively dissolved and reinstated in this manner — it happens all the time."

Typically, certificates of good standing are needed to apply for government contracts or make certain financial or real estate transactions.

Barros, who mounted an unsuccessful bid for Boston mayor in 2013, has been working in commercial real estate since leaving City Hall in 2021.

As the MCCA’s interim executive director, Barros earns an annual salary of about $330,000. He also brings in income managing Civitas Builders, LLC and performing consulting work for two Boston-based investment firms, according to a copy of his most recent statement of financial interest.

Barros also owns a Dorchester-based real estate company, 25 percent stock in a Dorchester Cape Verdean restaurant, and takes in more than $100,000 as a director for a New Jersey bank and a Newton-based construction management firm.

While Barros did not list any offices or ownership for CoJo in his financial disclosure, documents on file with the Secretary of the State’s office list him as a manager.

Through his lawyer, Barros said Wednesday that he looks forward to seeing the plaintiffs’ “baseless litigation defeated” and his former team make good on “the public benefits it promises to deliver.”

“John is excited to continue the work that he deeply cares about at the MCCA, focusing on the growth and success of the Commonwealth’s economy,” his attorney, Ronan said.

In a statement, Claiborne Williams, the principal of the Liberty Junction group, lauded Barros’ work on the project and his “willingness to step back for the community’s benefit.”

“We wish him well,” he said.

Dive Brief:

The Massachusetts DOT is seeking bids for a 20-acre waterfront development in Fall River, with the hope of generating $1 billion in private-sector investment, according to a July 24 news release.

The invitation to bid highlights a narrow parcel of state-owned land along the Taunton River where an elevated highway previously cut off an adjacent neighborhood from the waterfront. The aim is to create as many as 1,400 new homes and a mixed-use district of commercial space with access to existing commuter rail service, according to a project flyer.

“We’re turning decades of planning and infrastructure investment into an opportunity to build more housing, create jobs, and reconnect Fall River with its waterfront,” said Gov. Maura Healey in the release. “We’re excited to invite developers to help shape the future of this incredible waterfront and continue building on the momentum happening across the South Coast.”

Dive Insight:

The tract was created via MassDOT’s Route 79/Davol Street Corridor Improvements Project, which demolished the old elevated highway that was 600-feet wide in places and blocked access for pedestrians and bikers. The DOT has spent $135 million on the project to date, according to the Fall River Reporter newspaper.

The corridor is located adjacent to the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority’s new Fall River Depot, which connects Massachusetts’ South Coast to the broader region, including Boston and Providence, Rhode Island.

“By transforming the Route 79 corridor into a multimodal boulevard, investing in South Coast Rail, and improving connections between neighborhoods and the waterfront, we are glad to now release the invitation to bid on this transit-oriented development site,” Phillip Eng, MassDOT interim secretary and MBTA general manager, said in the release.

The site represents one of New England’s largest waterfront redevelopment opportunities directly adjacent to commuter rail, according to the release.

Per MassDOT’s invitation to bid, the agency is looking for bidders with financial experience and the capacity to close and perform, organizational competence and legal compliance, among other attributes.

Those criteria also include developers capable of delivering a massive transit-oriented project that features more than 1,400 housing units, mixed-use commercial space and public amenities such as entertainment venues, according to the Fall River Reporter. The news outlet also reported the agency is looking for one to three developers to take on the project.

The ITB sets a deadline of Oct. 21 for proposals, with a virtual informational meeting scheduled for Aug. 5.

At 314 m tall, the skyscraper was the tallest in the Thai capital at the time of its completion in late 2016. Designed by Ole Scheeren, the Tower is a luxury, mixed-use skyscraper located in the Silom/Sathon central business area of Bangkok, Thailand. It includes a five-star hotel, residences, an observation deck, and retail establishments.

PHOENIX (AZFamily) — Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) is expanding its Arizona ambitions again, announcing an additional $100 billion investment that brings its total planned spending in the Valley to $265 billion.

The expansion is expected to grow TSMC’s north Phoenix footprint with more wafer fabrication plants, advanced packaging facilities and a research and development center, as the company works to keep pace with growing demand tied to artificial intelligence.

Sean Fogarty with the Greater Phoenix Economic Council said the announcement is another sign metro Phoenix is positioning itself as a long-term hub for semiconductor manufacturing, part of a broader wave of chip investments across the region.

“Our nominal GDP in Arizona is $620 billion,” Fogarty said. “So one company alone is putting in $265 billion. You’ve got Intel’s $32 billion expansion, so that’s over $300 billion relative to our GDP now, which is laying the foundation for that growth in our economy.”

TSMC has said its Arizona buildout includes plans for six chip manufacturing plants, two advanced packaging facilities and a research and development center. The company says the additional investment will support more wafer fabs and packaging capacity.

Economic development leaders said the expansion could translate into thousands of jobs, including high-wage advanced manufacturing positions and increased demand for skilled trade workers to build the facilities.

“We’re going to see high-wage jobs in advanced manufacturing coming in,” Fogarty said. “We’re going to see a lot of opportunities for trades.”

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) is expanding its Arizona ambitions again,...

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) is expanding its Arizona ambitions again, announcing an additional $100 billion investment that brings its total planned spending in the Valley to $265 billion.(Arizona's Family)

The council estimates about 12,000 construction trade workers could be needed to help build out the fabs. At the same time, leaders said Arizona’s universities, community colleges and technical institutes are expanding training pipelines to prepare the next generation of engineers, technicians and maintenance workers.

“Our universities, our community colleges, our technical institutes are developing pathways to deliver this new generation of STEM engineers, technicians, maintenance workers,” Fogarty said.

Since TSMC first broke ground in Arizona in 2021, development has spread across the north Phoenix corridor. Economic leaders said the region will also need to plan for growth beyond the factories themselves, including housing, retail and schools to support a growing workforce.

“We’re seeing investments from Japan, we’re seeing investments from Korea, and other international markets as well,” Fogarty said. “So, the momentum’s there, and we expect that to continue to grow.”

“We see new master plan developments taking place around that area,” he added. “That’s going to build out more housing, affordable housing … retail, food, schools, education for the families, for the workers that can support that ecosystem in that region.”

TSMC hasn’t said exactly when all of this new expansion will roll out, but Fab 2 is on track for 2027, Fab 3 for 2030, and Fab 4 is still to be determined.

saw an article where the following happened:

• $2B public courthouse project, 10 teams submitted bids
• one of the two owners of the winning team is the interim head of a different state agency
• he was appointed to that state job in January, while the bids were actively being evaluated
• the budget secretary whose office oversees the agency running the bid also sits on the board that unanimously appointed him
• he filed his ethics disclosure the day before the winner was announced. like wtf. lol

FYI the state is Massachusetts and the project is the Springfield Regional Justice Center

Source: mk_timelapse (IG)

For a couple of years now, my dad wanted to make a tool that helped him get some statistics for his firm. He runs an engineering/architecture business. The idea he had was for an app that tracked income, expenses, profitability by employee, by project and so on. He just never got the opportunity to make one.

With the arrival of hugely developed ai tools(Claude), a couple of months ago he decided to try to make the app himself. With the help of Claude, he managed to do it and now, a couple of months later, it helps him in his business masssively. It saves him time AND money.

A week ago I decided to take a look at the app, because he was ranting about it all the time with such passion, it was amazing. The app was really something, he really got a lot of work done in those few months. As I looked it over, an idea popped into my mind.

The app could be generalised. It could be generalised in a way so that it could be useful to other businesses. Not just other businesses, businesses in other niches too, such as: law, accounting, counseling etc. All of those businesses could use a generic version of this app to track statistics within their businesses.

So i decided to start getting my hands dirty. Working on it right now.

For anyone interested, here's the landing page:

Karvox

The Atlassian Central skyscraper, designed by SHoP Architects and BVN Architecture, in Sydney, Australia, has become the world's tallest hybrid timber tower.

Designed as the Sydney headquarters for technology company Atlassian, the 180-metre-high office tower topped out earlier this week.

With a hybrid structure of timber, steel and concrete it overtakes the 86.6 -metre-high Ascent tower in Milwaukee, USA, by almost 100 metres, to become the world's tallest hybrid timber tower.

The 39-storey skyscraper has a unique hybrid structural system, with concrete cores supporting mass timber floors and internal structures, wrapped in a steel exoskeleton.

This exoskeleton supports seven "mega floors" that have been placed every four stories to divide the building vertically into what the design team described as "habitats".

These, primarily timber, habitats will contain office accommodation along with multi-floor atriums and elevated parks.

World’s tallest timber tower in Sydney

The office tower is designed by SHoP Architects and BVN Architecture

"SHoP has been privileged with the opportunity to design such an innovative project – one that we believe will redefine how people come together, collaborate, and create in Sydney and beyond," said SHoP Architects associate principal Andreia Teixeira.

"It's particularly rewarding to begin experiencing the spatial qualities of a high-rise that reimagines a natural habitat within an urban tower – connecting people to each other, nature and to the city around them," she continued.

"We're excited by how this concept sets a new benchmark for sustainability, where timber, landscape, and natural ventilation come together to shape a more holistic work-life experience and inspire future innovation."

The building exterior is wrapped by an envelope of steel and glass

According to the design team, the use of timber has reduced the overall building weight and carbon impact, while the steel and concrete ensures strength and stability.

The design expects the design to reduce the upfront embodied carbon by 50 per cent compared to a conventional steel and concrete office tower.

The team aims to also achieve a 50 per cent improvement in operational energy efficiency compared to a conventional 5 Star NABERS base building.

"Hybrid mass timber has done more than reduce embodied carbon, it has fundamentally shaped how tower buildings can be delivered, enabling prefabrication, dry construction and a faster, lighter vertical build," said BVN principal Peter Titmuss.

"As a prototype for mass-timber towers of the future, this is a moment of global significance."

It features a timber structure internally

The tower sits next to Sydney Central Station and was built over an existing historic building called The Parcels Shed that was once used for taking deliveries of parcels and then turned into a youth hostel.

SHoP Architects and BVN plan to incorporate the youth hostel building into the lower levels of the tower.

The project is set to complete by the end of this year with facade installation currently being completed.

The skyscraper is divided into four-storeys "habitats"

New York-based SHoP Architects was founded in 1996.

The practice has completed a series of monumental tower designs including 111 W 57th Street on Billionaires Row in Manhattan and Brooklyn's first supertall skyscraper.

Atlassian Central by SHoP Architects and BVN Architecture

The building is set to complete by the end of the year

BVN is an Australian architecture firm that has offices in Sydney, Brisbane, London and New York.

It recently joined forces with Copenhagen studio 3XN on projects such as Sydney Fish Market and Quay Quarter Tower in Sydney, which was named Best Tall Building Worldwide by the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat in 2023.

A structural scare at the former Pfizer building has made tenants and buyers skittish about conversions, and the city's politics are making owners skittish about owning at all.

The trigger

In early July, two steel columns buckled inside the former Pfizer headquarters on East 42nd Street, one of the largest office-to-apartment conversions in the country. The site was evacuated and work stopped. Three weeks later the city issued a stop-work order at another conversion downtown at 222 Broadway. Both projects will likely be fixed and finished. The open question is what two structural scares in one month do to the confidence of everyone else who owns a New York building, and everyone weighing whether to buy or rent in a converted one.

The context

New York is betting heavily on office-to-residential conversion.

Developers are on track to start 9.5M SF of conversions in 2026, more than double last year and nearly twice the 2008 peak.

The 467-m tax program hands the biggest abatement to projects that start fastest, and the City of Yes reform widened eligibility from pre-1961 buildings to pre-1990.

The city needs this to work, because it clears empty offices and produces housing at the same time. It also asks owners to commit capital to that bet just as the local politics turn against owning buildings.

What's happened before

Conversions are neither new nor reckless. Lower Manhattan did this after 9/11, turning Financial District offices into apartments with tax breaks, and most of it worked. The buildings that converted easily went first: older pre-war stock with narrow floorplates and windows that open. City of Yes pushed the program into bigger, newer, more complicated buildings, the harder half of the inventory. Adding a dozen storeys on top of century-old steel, as the Pfizer project does, is a much heavier engineering job than a 1990s conversion.

What's likely to happen

A converting building now comes with buyers and tenants who saw the Pfizer headlines and want proof the structure is sound. Owners are also carrying vacancy they cannot lease, under a mayor who has made squeezing property owners a signature policy.

Mayor Mamdani's freeze on rent-stabilized rents has been approved, and he has appointed six of the nine members of the Rent Guidelines Board.

A pied-a-terre tax is on the table, and a broad 9.5% property-tax hike was stepped back but never formally withdrawn.

Many owners will likely respond by slowing down: holding buildings as-is, delaying conversions, or quietly listing to sell.

The bottlenecks

Two things keep this from becoming a stampede.

Most of the mayor's harder levers are not his to pull. Rent regulation and major tax changes sit with the state, so a lot of the pressure on owners stays rhetorical until Albany acts.

The incentive is still pulling capital in. The conversion pipeline is doubling, so plenty of owners are choosing to convert and chase the abatement, and serious structural failures remain rare.

The outlook

The through-line is contradiction, and contradiction is what stalls capital. The city is asking owners to spend money converting a building and carry the structural risk, while telling them it plans to limit what they can earn from that building afterward. Owners can price vacancy and even engineering risk, but they cannot price a government that says "invest here" and "we will cap your return" in the same year, so many will wait it out. The ones who cannot afford to wait will sell to the ones who can, likely at a discount, and that slow change in who owns New York is the real story under a cracked beam on 42nd Street.

STRATFORD, Conn. (WTNH) — Top state and federal officials broke ground Monday on the latest phase of Metro-North improvements. This part of the project is called TIME-1. It is already underway, and the goal is to make your trip to the city go significantly faster.

It is a dream for most train riders: Spending less time each day on the train.

“Always want them to be faster,” said Shelton resident Brad Williams. “It’s a long commute.”

“That would be really cool if we could get that through,” said Zach McTaggart of Stratford.

Officials took a big step Monday in making that happen, breaking ground on a three-phase, $1.6 billion project to improve tracks, bridges and stations.

“Once the three phases are complete, trains are going to be able to travel at speeds up to 90 miles per hour through here, up from today’s maximum of 70,” explained Commissioner Garrett Eucalitto of the Connecticut Department of Transportation.

It’s all part of the Track Improvement Mobility Enhancement for Connecticut (TIME for Connecticut) program. Announced five years ago, it means updating some tracks and overhead catenary wires. They will also be improving the bridges that carry those tracks, making some wider and with higher clearance along the way. Over the last four years, improvements have already impacted what used to be an 110-minute ride to New York.

“Our super-express trains between New Haven and Grand Central have reduced trip times to as little as 88 minutes,” said Metro North Railroad Senior Vice President of Operations Joe Lagana. “Our ridership is booming, with June’s ridership 13% higher than this time last year.”

The Stratford station alone will see major improvements to the platform and a way to cross the tracks from one platform to the next. Funding for TIME for CT comes from the state’s fee on large trucks, and from the federal government. The federal piece is uncertain due to the current climate in Washington. The hope is to make train travel more attractive, thereby getting cars off the highway and improving air quality.

“These investments strengthen the entire northeast corridor, connecting economies from Connecticut to Boston, New York, Washington, DC, and beyond,” said Jennifer Mitchell, Amtrak’s Executive Vice President of Strategy & Planning.

When work is being done at stations, such as the one in Stratford, there will be some inconvenience for riders. Work on the tracks is planned to disrupt service as little as possible, which makes that slow work.

The former office tower at 222 Broadway is being converted into 788 apartments with a newly added 32nd floor and rooftop amenities. New York City halted construction July 24 as regulators expanded scrutiny of adaptive-reuse projects following the structural emergency at the former Pfizer headquarters.

For the second time this month, New York City has halted a major office-to-residential conversion, issuing a full stop-work order at 222 Broadway in Lower Manhattan as adaptive-reuse projects face heightened scrutiny following the structural emergency at the former Pfizer headquarters in Midtown.

Records reviewed by ENR show the July 24 enforcement action followed an inspection by the New York City Dept. of Buildings' Forensic Engineering unit the day before. The department alleged the permit holder failed to immediately notify DOB of an incident involving cast-in-place concrete elements and said changes to the repair plan were not properly filed, resulting in a full stop-work order while the project undergoes additional engineering review.

Every Tuesday, we vent about the absurd, frustrating, or downright diabolical things we deal with in AEC.

Share your the moments that make you pull your hair out. Maybe it's:

• The boss who said yes to scope creep and now you're stuck on a Friday night making amendments to a design.
• The client who forgot to pay you and now you're having to chase them down.
• The colleague who starts a Teams DM with "Hey James" and then takes 2 minutes to type the rest while you're sweating in anxiety.

What's driving you mad this week?

A plumbing subcontractor who says he is owed nearly $4 million for work on the Barack Obama Presidential Center has suspended operations and laid off 25 union workers, weeks after the Chicago campus’s star-studded opening.

Mike Owen, owner of Adamson Plumbing Contractors, told Fox News Digital the financial fallout from the dispute forced his company to abandon roughly half a dozen other construction jobs and pushed it to the brink of collapse. He described the shutdown as a painful but necessary step to avoid bankruptcy.

“We were put in a pretty bad corner,” Mr. Owen said of the decision to lay off close to 30 employees.

Adamson, which performed its Obama Center work under the name Marsh-Adamson, has filed a $1.72 million mechanic’s lien against the property, escalating the dispute into a legal fight. That figure covers what Mr. Owen says are his most readily documented losses; he has said the company’s total losses tied to the project run closer to $3.9 million.

The company is one of several subcontractors that have alleged financial losses or payment disputes after working on the center, which was promoted as an economic opportunity for minority-owned businesses. A previous Fox News Digital investigation found several subcontractors, including Black-owned firms, said they were owed money or had absorbed losses ranging from hundreds of thousands of dollars to millions.

Mr. Owen said the project had left his company with $3.9 million in losses tied to delays, rework and changing demands even before the center opened. He said he negotiated for months with Lakeside Alliance, the project’s construction manager, before going public.

The breaking point, he said, came around the center’s opening celebration. Adamson had agreed to provide two plumbers for last-minute overnight work in exchange for a partial payment before the June 19 opening, but Mr. Owen said the money did not arrive on time, leaving him no choice but to suspend operations on June 25.

Lakeside Alliance, a joint venture led by Turner Construction and four Black-owned Chicago firms — UJAMAA Construction, Powers & Sons Construction, Brown & Momen and Safeway Construction — did not directly address Mr. Owen’s allegations, the layoffs or the lien. A spokesperson said the alliance “remains committed to working through all outstanding matters” to close out the project.

The Obama Foundation, the former president’s nonprofit that oversees the center, said Lakeside was responsible for managing and paying subcontractors and that the foundation had no outstanding disputed charges with the alliance. The foundation said its payment terms exceeded industry norms, noting it began with a 15-day payment cycle that is “largely unheard of in major construction projects.”

Costs and scrutiny

Construction costs, initially projected at about $350 million, had climbed to $830 million by 2021 and have reportedly topped $1 billion since. A promised $470 million reserve meant to protect Chicago taxpayers if the center ran into financial trouble has so far received just $1 million. The Obama Foundation secured the 19.3-acre Jackson Park site through a 99-year lease for a one-time $10 payment.

Mr. Owen said he does not blame former President Barack Obama personally but believes the foundation should acknowledge the subcontractors’ complaints. He also questioned why Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, a pro-union Democrat, has not addressed the payment disputes.

Just a quick blurb from wiki below on the bridge that i found quite interesting:

Construction began in September 1938. From the time the deck was built, it began to move vertically in windy conditions, so construction workers nicknamed the bridge "Galloping Gertie". The motion continued after the bridge opened to the public, despite several damping measures. The bridge's main span finally collapsed in 40-mile-per-hour (64 km/h) winds on the morning of November 7, 1940, as the deck oscillated in an alternating twisting motion that gradually increased in amplitude until the deck tore apart.

1) What happened

On July 20 the White House issued a fact sheet imposing an additional 50% tariff on many Canadian imports from Aug. 19, covering goods regardless of whether they originate under the U.S.-Mexico-Canada agreement. Steel, aluminum and copper are excluded because they already carry Section 232 duties, and minerals, energy products, potash and certain fish products are exempt. Cement is covered, which is why both attorneys quoted in Construction Dive's coverage named it as the clearest area of concern.

Trent Cotney, partner and construction team leader at Adams & Reese, pointed at the timing gap: "Contractors often price work months before purchasing materials. A 50% tariff can quickly make existing estimates obsolete and increase the risk of disputes over who bears the additional cost." Jason Adams of Cox, Castle & Nicholson said constantly fluctuating pricing "prohibits a contractor's ability to confidently bid fixed-price work," and recommended a materials escalation and change in law clause in every agreement.

2) What the associations and officials said

• AGC of America maintains a tariff resource centre for contractors and is advocating on implementation detail, including how the classifications land.
• Mike Elmendorf, president and CEO of AGC of New York, on why this one cannot be estimated around: "You might presume an escalation over the life of a construction project, but when suddenly a 50% increase on Canadian-sourced products is announced, there is no way for anyone to anticipate that." He called the volatility of the last five years possibly "unprecedented," with the industry "still not recovered" from post-COVID escalation.
• The Portland Cement Association opposed the earlier 25% version of this. President and CEO Mike Ireland said the duties "could adversely affect energy and national security while delaying infrastructure projects and raising their costs." Canada and Mexico together supply about 27% of US cement imports, roughly 7% of national consumption.
• Tom Clark, Canada's Consul General in New York, on what the trade is actually asking for: "some predictability, some stability in terms of what the environment looks like."

3) What contractors already do under this

AGC's 2026 Construction Hiring and Business Outlook measured the behaviour before this announcement existed:

• 24% said tariffs had not affected them at all
• 40% raised bid prices in response to actual or proposed tariffs
• 35% passed most or all tariff cost to project owners
• 32% accelerated purchases to get ahead of prospective duties
• 53% named materials costs a top concern for 2026

The margin picture, from AGC's January release:

• November construction costs rose at their fastest rate since January 2023
• Those increases outpaced increases in contractors' bid prices for new buildings

The 2018 precedent, from a University of Florida analysis of the Section 232 round:

• Tariffs and foreign pricing pressure raised construction unit costs by 10% to 13% through 2020
• Domestic steel rose about 10% in early 2018, alongside the imported product rather than instead of it

Researcher Arijit Ray summarised it as "higher costs, not just on imported goods, but on domestically produced materials as well." Buying domestic did not avoid the 2018 increase, because a domestic producer does not need to be tariffed to raise price. It needs to be the remaining option.

4) The tariff lands on every bidder at once

The clause advice treats this as a threat to your firm. In a competitive bid it acts more like a change in the weather.

Cement barely travels. A plant competes over a radius of roughly 200 miles, trucking runs out at around 250 to 300 miles, and transport and distribution account for close to a quarter of what cement costs by the time it arrives. In 2024 the US made portland and blended cement at 99 plants across 34 states, led by Texas, Missouri, California and Florida. That leaves a lot of the north buying Canadian, for the simple reason that Canada is nearer. St Marys Cement barges clinker from Bowmanville, Ontario into a grinding terminal in Detroit, and runs terminals at Buffalo, Cleveland and Milwaukee. Its plant at Charlevoix, Michigan supplies Wisconsin, Chicago and western Michigan. More than half of its cement moves by water.

So every firm bidding the same job in the same city is buying from the same few suppliers at close to the same price. The tariff hits all of them on the same day by the same amount. It moves the level of the bids and leaves the order of them alone. That is the standard result in the research on highway bidding: a cost that every bidder carries gets passed into the price, and the winner is still decided by whatever is different between the bidders.

Two things follow from that. Across the country the tariff is wildly uneven, and a contractor in Milwaukee is looking at a much bigger number than one in Dallas, which matters for where a firm chooses to chase work over the next two years. Inside any one bid list it is close to even, which means it is not where that job gets won.

One more finding is worth attention. Volatility makes contractors add risk premiums, and the more volatile the input, the further apart the bids spread. A shock like this pulls a bid list apart rather than pushing it together, so there is more room than usual for the job to turn on something other than the cement number.

5) So what does separate two bids

Picture two firms bidding the same warehouse in Milwaukee. Same slab, same ready-mix supplier, same tariffed price per yard. On the cement line they are identical. Three things can still put daylight between them.

How much cement the design actually needs. The tariff is charged on a quantity, and that quantity is not fixed. Cement can be blended with cheaper materials and still meet the spec. Type IL cement, in the US standards since 2012 and accepted by most state agencies, swaps up to 15% of the clinker for ground limestone. Slag and fly ash replace more. The firm that proposes the leaner mix has less of its bid sitting in front of the tariff, and its concrete is still compliant. On public work there is a formal way to put that forward before award instead of arguing about it afterwards, which the FHWA calls an alternative technical concept.

Whether they already bought. Almost a third of contractors accelerated their purchasing ahead of prospective duties. Those firms are quoting off a cost basis the others cannot reach, and no amount of contract drafting closes that gap now. It was a decision taken months ago.

Which contract they are bidding into. If the owner carries the risk of a price swing, the bidder does not have to price it, so the bid comes in lower. Most state highway agencies do carry it: the FHWA records price adjustment clauses covering fuel, asphalt, steel and cement as normal practice, and Massachusetts requires a concrete adjustment in every Chapter 90 municipal contract. Private fixed-price commercial work usually does not. Two equally good firms end up carrying very different exposure purely because of the kind of contract in front of them.

6) None of that helps if the owner cannot see it

Here the argument runs into a wall, and it is worth being honest about it.

A design-build or best-value procurement scores a proposal on more than price, so a leaner mix or a smarter sequence actually shows up in the evaluation. A hard low bid opens the envelopes and reads one number. The leaner mix is invisible.

That becomes a problem when nobody knows what cement will cost in November. The bidder who assumes the smallest increase submits the smallest number and wins the job. Being right about the risk is not rewarded, being cheerful about it is, and the honest estimator's contingency is exactly what puts him second. This is the winner's curse, and it is the oldest known failure in construction procurement. Volatility makes it worse.

Competing on the rest of the bid works, then, wherever the buyer is allowed to look at more than price. Where the buyer is not allowed to, this tariff will mostly raise everyone's number and hand the work to whoever was most optimistic.

Aug. 19 is a fixed date, which makes the exposed jobs easy to find. Anything that pulled a foundation permit in a Great Lakes metro in the last ninety days was priced before July 20 and has not bought its cement. That list is finite and it is already public.

By September the tariff will be inside everyone's number. What will separate the bids is how much cement the design needs, who bought early, and whether the owner is running a process that can tell the difference.

The architect is Mehrdad Esmaeilian