Seattle has most cranes among U.S. cities

SEATTLE — Seattle is the crane capital of the United States for the third year in a row, as construction across the city has rebounded strongly from a relative lull in early 2018.

Seattle has 65 of the towering construction cranes reshaping its skyline, 25 more than the next U.S. city. In North America, Toronto leads with 97 cranes.

Seattle had held steady at 60 or so cranes over the past few years, but it had dipped to 45 in the last count six months ago, according to Rider Levett Bucknall, which counts cranes in big cities across the world twice a year. The decline, along with other data corroborating a construction slowdown at the beginning of 2018, suggested maybe Seattle development had peaked.

But now the tower-crane numbers are back up, with the most cranes seen in the city since the firm began counting in 2014.

Rider Levett Bucknall noted that the outlook for construction for the rest of this year looks optimistic.

It turns out that an unusually high number of projects happened to wrap up all around the same time toward the end of last year, before the last crane count was conducted.

Since then, new projects have broken ground while the number of developments that finished has been abnormally low, according to development data tracked by the Downtown Seattle Association.

The area’s suburbs weren’t covered in the report, but officials in Bellevue reported 14 cranes, twice as many as its high point in 2017, as its downtown springs up with new skyscrapers and the burgeoning Spring District rises around a new light-rail station. Bellevue actually has more cranes than Boston, Phoenix or Honolulu.

Doug Demers, managing principal of B+H Architects in Seattle, said he expects the jackhammering and concrete pouring to continue.

“Rising cost has some effect, but I also see still robust activity,” Demers said.

“I haven’t seen any slowdown in incoming investment from Asia or the Middle East. There’s huge demand for housing and infrastructure, and I don’t think that’s going to change.”

Seattle has more than twice as many cranes as any city other than Chicago (which was second with 40) or Los Angeles (which has 36). Portland lost a couple of cranes, but still moved up to fourth, with 30. In the last report in January, Chicago, Los Angeles and Denver had been tied for second, with 36 each.

The tower cranes, which have to be reserved about six months in advance, can cost more than $50,000 US a month. They can reach more than 200 metres into the air, and can be located so close together — often with several cranes at the same job site — that their giant swinging arms need to carefully dance over and under one another.

South Lake Union continues to the centre of Seattle’s construction universe, with 17 cranes, driven by Amazon’s supercharged growth as well as significant new office projects for Google and Facebook — plus a bevy of new apartments to house all those workers.

There are 14 cranes downtown, including for the biggest project underway now in the city, the Amazon-leased Rainier Square tower, which will be the city’s second tallest building.

The cranes are building mostly apartments, as has been the case for years.

However, Seattle pales in comparison to the construction going on in other parts of the world. Dubai has 1,182 cranes, while Sydney has 346.