Carbone of America in St. Marys, PA recently awarded a new building project to Kessel Construction.  This project is for a 31,250 square foot pre-engineered metal building system that will be used for the industrial sector.  We are excited to start this project in the near future and are looking forward to building for Carbone again.

As 2009 comes ro a close there are a lot of industrial and commercial businesses that are breathing a collective sigh of relief as they have survived the worst economic conditions in arguably 30 years.

The interesting times are still ahead. It seems most businesses in the area kept saying lets get through 2009, let's get through Q1 of 2010, it's gotta get better by Q2 2010. Anyone got a crystal ball?

What's going to happen here is anyone's guess. What does seem to be a consensus is that things have gotten as bad as they can and should start getting better.

One bright spot in the Northern Tier of PA and Southern Tier of NY is the Marcellus Shale Gas play. Should this prove to be as big as all the indicators suggest, there will be a lot of activity and peripheral businesses will grow and/ or be developed. One recent development that brought more positive news to the area was the ANF ruling in favor or Minard Run Oil and additional plaintiffs which allows Oil & Gas development in the Allegany National Forest to the holders of land leaes amd mineral rights and other permissions to the subsurface development of the valuable gas and minerals below. Basically, this gave back to the developers the rights they previously held prior to an earlier court ruling preventing them from developing the commodities below the surface.

The first two quarters of 2010 should still hold plenty of opportunity for businesses that want to build with depressed materials pricing. Currently, steel is still flat, concrete suppliers are indicating that while prices jumped from 2008 to 2009, they are holding 2009 pricing going into to 2010. Unfortunately, while the economy chugged along last year at a sluggish pace many suppliers did not replenish inventories due to the poor economic outlook. Due to this fact many commodities are at very low levels and as demand comes back the suppliers are looking to get more for thier products; - steel - lumber - insulation - membrane roofing products etc

Currently, many of the same folks that thought the first quarter of 2010 held so much promise are now wondering what it was that was going to magically change and bring better times. The indicators are still not there just yet.