City Grill

Larry Rooney
President
Manhattan Construction Group

The construction outlook is strong for Tulsa—Oklahoma’s second-largest city—as well as for the surrounding northeast areas of the state. “Projects of all sizes are currently underway across a wide variety of market sectors,” Rooney says.

The largest ongoing project in the region is the Sofidel paper products manufacturing facility in Inola, just east of Tulsa. “We continue to see increased activity in the warehouse, industrial and manufacturing sectors,” he says.

Manhattan Construction’s largest project in the region is the Cherokee Nation’s 90,000-sq-ft casino and conference center at Tahlequah, in the eastern part of Oklahoma. This is scheduled for delivery in spring 2019.

Labor is “extremely challenged” in Oklahoma. “The subcontractor and labor pools are not quite as deep as in other regions, which does limit the amount of availability,” Rooney explains.

Still, the next few years should be busy. “This is particularly due to the oil and natural gas prices rising, along with the increased demand for manufacturing facilities in Oklahoma,” he says.