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April 11, 2023

Seattle jumps back on top, with tower crane count of 51 units

Image from RLB [enlarge]
Seattle gained nine cranes over the past six months.

After trailing Los Angeles or Washington, D.C., for the past two years in the number of tower cranes at work, Seattle has regained the top spot among U.S. cities.

Construction consultant Rider Levett Bucknall yesterday released its first quarter Crane Index, showing Seattle has gained nine fixed cranes since the last count in the third quarter of last year, when LA led with 46 cranes and Seattle was second with 42 in the U.S. count. Seattle's 51 cranes now top LA's 47, Denver's 36 and Washington, D.C.'s 26.

Toronto is still the dominant area for cranes, with 238 units at work, which is almost as much as the count for all 12 tracked U.S. metros combined.

RLB reported that 33 cranes were working in Seattle on residential buildings, followed by 11 on mixed-use projects, three on commercial, two on public/civic, and one each on health care and hospitality. In total, Seattle upped its count by 21% while the rest of the 14 tracked North American cities had an overall increase of just over 7%.

In Seattle, most new projects were mixed-use. The hottest area was Rainier Valley, where the count grew from seven to 15 cranes over six months.

Portland saw its crane count drop one unit, to 14. Eight cranes are working on mixed-use projects in the Rose City, followed by three in residential, two in education and one in health care. RLB noted that the slight decrease in Portland was due to several mixed-use and residential projects being completed. It said most cranes are found west of the Willamette River, and outside of the city there are a significant number of cranes up in the Beaverton/Hillsboro area.

RLB also reported the top three sectors in North America are residential (51%), mixed-use (22%) and commercial (12%). Though the commercial sector makes up 12% of the market, its crane count was down 20% over the past six months.

Only two of the 14 cities saw significant decreases in their number of cranes: Chicago, down four cranes to 14 total; and New York City, down four cranes to 10 total.

RLB conducts its crane count biannually as a simplified snapshot of the current state of the construction industry's activity in 14 metro locations.




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