CATCHING UP ON AREA BUILDING STATISTICS

Jonesboro and Paragould have been identified among Arkansas' fastest-growing cities.

More than $106 million worth of commercial/industrial projects were completed or started at Jonesboro, a city of more than 50,000 residents.

Dominating the Jonesboro construction scene is the $85 million, 400,000-square-foot Frito-Lay Inc. plant, which is expected to start cranking out snacks early next year.

Frito-Lay will initially employ 400 to 500, with eventual employment of up 800 people.

Frito-Lay considered two Missouri sites -- Sikeston and Malden -- before settling in a Jonesboro industrial park.

Also under construction at Jonesboro is an $18 million apartment complex, which will include a 12-hole golf course and a man-made lake and a new retail center featuring a second Wal-Mart Supercenter.

At Paragould, the big chunk of construction is taking place at Arkansas Methodist Hospital, where a $16 million expansion land remodeling project is under way. The project is the largest single construction permit in Paragould history and will add 35,000 square feet of new hospital space and a new medical office center.

Cape scene busy

Meanwhile, a lot of construction is going on in Cape Girardeau.

The construction scene has some catching up to do if it is to come close to last year's near-record year, when city construction permits topped $45 million for only the second time in history.

Work is continuing on some of those 1996 permits, along with construction on the $50-million-plus Bill Emerson Memorial Bridge. The bridge permit was not counted in the other city permit totals.

Another project not counted in the city's construction figures was the $15 million business building that has opened on the Southeast Missouri State University campus. These two projects shoved the city's construction permit totals past the $110 million mark.

Closing the books on the first six months of 1997, a total of 223 permits have been issued, in the amount of $10,408,828, less than half the $22.5 million for the same period a year ago.

Permits have been steady for 1997 and construction has been consistent, but projects have been smaller.

A year ago, only 245 permits were issued the first six months, but they included some major projects -- a $7.5 million project at Lone Star Industries, two major city park complexes, for a combined total of $4 million and a couple of other projects at more than $1 million.

This year's largest permit has been the $1.5 million Auburn Park Office Building permit, the only million-dollar-plus permit.

Housing permits up

Single-family housing permits are up from a year ago, however.

A total of 30 permits have been issued, in the amount of $4.2 million, up slightly from the first six months of 1996, when 29 permits were issued in the amount of $4.1 million.

The permit office has been busy during the first half of July with 20 permits, in the amount of $1.9 million, including a couple of $730,000-plus commercial permits.

Last year's $47.6 million was the city's second largest construction year, topped only by the $49.9 million of 1992.

Statewide construction

The city's construction totals this year are in line with activity statewide and nationwide.

Missouri's May construction activity was down 19 percent from numbers recorded in May 1996.

May totals were at $497,425,000, compared to the $616,582,000 during May 1996, according to the F.W. Dodge Division of McGraw-Hill, an authority on the construction market. Dodge, which issues monthly totals in its Dodge Report, also publishes Sweet's Catalog Files.

The state's May nonresidential construction, which includes commercial, manufacturing, educational, religious, administrative, recreational, hotel, dormitory and other buildings, was $188,245,000, down 23 percent from $245,652,000 in May 1996.

Residential construction, which includes single- and two-family houses and apartments, was on the downside for the month at $241,814,000, down 7 percent from the $260,627,000 during the same month a year ago.

Nonbuilding construction, which includes streets, highways, bridges, rivers and harbor developments, airports and a few other projects, was down in May, at $66,6185,000, compared to the $110,303,000 during the same month a year ago.

Total construction for the first five months of the year is down 13 percent, at $2.3 billion, compared to $2.7 billion through May 1996.

National statistics

Construction spending dropped 1.8 percent nationally in May, the worst showing in more than three years, reflecting widespread weakness in commercial, residential and public construction.

Construction activity totaled a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $585 billion, compared with $595.7 billion in April, the Commerce Department reports.

The 1.8 percent decline followed 0.3 percent gains in both April and March and was the worst since a 3 percent drop in January 1994.

In advance, economists were looking for about a 0.5 percent gain in May, but in the latest report, April was revised up from an earlier estimate of a 1 percent decline.

May's weakness was led by a 6 percent decrease in government construction to an annual rate of $131.3 billion. It, too, was the worst drop since January 1994. Spending for highways and streets, schools and public buildings all fell.

Non-residential commercial construction fell 0.6 percent to a rate of $160.4 billion in May, led by declines in spending for hospitals, private school and college buildings and shopping centers.

Residential spending, meanwhile, edged down 0.2 percent to a rate of $253.6 billion. A 1.1 percent drop in single-family spending offset gains in spending on remodeling and apartment construction.