Are there any differences in working with union versus non-union contractors?
The Plaza job was union. Typically the workers speak better English. (In the Soviet Union, pretty much all of the laborers spoke Russian so that was very different from my experiences in the U.S. In today’s Russia there are a lot of workers from China and Turkey who don’t speak Russian – probably they all speak English at the site.) From the management point of view, union contractors are better at doing paperwork for the bank and for approvals. The documentation flow is much smoother. As far as quality differences, it really depends on the individual contractor. The foundation guy for Third + Bond—I couldn’t say anything bad about him. I dealt with a union guy who was much faster but that guy was exceptional. I think the non-union foundation work is good. What are the toughest challenges at Third + Bond right now? To get out of the ground. We had to remove an empty oil tank on one side of the site and we’re taking out much of the fill that was near the tank to make sure no contaminati
