The manufacturing business has been booming for the past few years and this isn’t just a lucky coincidence. Many aspects of manufacturing include the production of energy efficient glass for home remodels and home builders. If you look around any city in the USA these days, cranes speckle the skyline as building projects just don’t seem to be slowing down. If you look at East Washington Avenue the list of construction projects going on has created a traffic problem as with all the stop lights added at every intersection it can take you 30 minutes to go from East Town Mall to the Capital. Every open spot on the street is showing a new apartment or condo project. This is a good thing for the glass and glazing business and Mobile Glass is taking advantage of it.
This booming trend doesn’t seem to be affected with the recent CoronaVirus pandemic that has sent many people home to work. Large corporations are saying that if the work at home situation can produce profitable results employers will keep their workers home and sell their corporate buildings. I find this a dubious claim as the pandemic will not last forever and mid size and small corporations will still need to have regular office hours where people will have to return to work.
Epic Systems employs approximately 10,000 people and has spent hundreds of millions of dollars building one of the most spectacular corporate complexes anywhere in the country and although they have sent the large majority of their staff home they have said that all of those employees will return to the campus eventually.
The way companies like Epic will adjust to the virus is one thing, but to completely abandon their stand alone corporate buildings is another matter altogether. In addition to that, working at home for some people is not an easy thing to do, especially if this is the first time these employees have had to work from home over a long period of time. I’m not talking about putting in a few hours of work from home over the weekend, I’m talking about a full time home office that requires your attention all day long. This is an entirely different mindset and it takes discipline.
So for the foreseeable future building projects will need glass and glazing and Mobile Glass is in a prime position to take advantage of an expanding market.
Eight years of rapid development have yielded over 1,195 new housing units, and 556,900 square feet of new commercial space. There’s a new 2,500-capacity concert venue, a renovated soccer field brimming with events and a 144-room hotel, all of which routinely bring throngs of visitors to the area.
East Washinton Avenue has exploded with growth and is no longer the “eyesore” it used to be. Breese Stevens Field once looked like an abandoned castle is now one of the hot spots on the street. The Sylvee and the hotel Indigo have brought a vibrance to the stretch of road that has now become filled with light and activity. This all took place in just a few short years. The look is definitely shiny and glitzy with the glass and lights and there is still room to grow.