Bay Area Construction Pulse: June 2025
What the Market Shift Means for Commercial Door Projects
1. A Two-Speed Market
After three years of post-pandemic expansion, Bay Area construction is cooling in some segments while gaining steam in others. Turner Construction’s Q1 2025 Building Cost Index climbed 3.62 percent year-over-year—still rising, but at the slowest pace since 2021. (turnerconstruction.com) At the same time, total U.S. construction starts fell 9 percent in April, the steepest monthly pull-back since early 2023. (construction.com)
Yet early-stage planning is perking up: the Dodge Momentum Index jumped 5.6 percent in January, signaling that owners are dusting off projects for 2026–27 delivery. (pitandquarry.com)
2. Demand Drivers to Watch
Office to Something-Else : San Francisco’s overall office vacancy hit 34.7 percent in Q1 2025—a record high. (cushmanwakefield.com) With so much surplus space, developers are flipping obsolete towers: nationwide, 23.3 million ft² of offices will be demolished or converted in 2025, versus 12.7 million ft² of new builds. (nypost.com)
Local example: Jay Paul Co. just switched its stalled CityView Plaza redevelopment in downtown San Jose from offices to 320 apartment units. (sfyimby.com)
Industrial Plateaus: Bay Area industrial vacancy ticked up to 6.0 percent in Q1 2025, reflecting a pause after the pandemic-era logistics boom. (cbre.com) Demand is still healthy for data-center and cold-chain facilities that require high-cycle, fire-rated openings.
Public-Sector Lifeline: Voters approved California Proposition 2, a $10 billion K-14 school facilities bond in November 2024. District procurement teams are already issuing RFPs that emphasize ADA hardware, fire-rated assemblies, and secure vestibules. (lao.ca.gov)
Housing Slowdown: Higher rates and permitting bottlenecks cut Bay Area housing permits roughly in half between 2019 and 2024. (sfchronicle.com) While that crimps new multifamily door packages today, it also fuels political pressure to expedite adaptive-reuse—another retrofit tail-wind.
Labor & Manufacturing Backdrop: Sheet-metal window and door manufacturers expect only 0.9 percent revenue growth to $75.5 billion in 2025, meaning capacity is stable but not expanding fast enough to absorb a sudden demand spike. (ibisworld.com) Concurrently, Bay Area metros are posting small year-to-year job losses, underscoring a cautious private-sector spending mood. (credaily.com)
3. How These Trends Hit Commercial Door Work
Retrofit > Green-field
High vacancy offices and aging schools are becoming the main source of door scopes. Retrofit schedules are tighter and margins often run 3–5 percent higher than ground-up jobs because of complexity and phasing.
Code & Compliance Center Stage
Conversions trigger life-safety and ADA upgrades: NFPA-80 inspections, power-assist operators, smoke-rated elevator lobby doors, and electrified hardware tied to cloud-based access control.Lead-Time Volatility Persists
Modest growth at the factory level means common SKUs are available, but specialty fire-rated frames and custom stainless packages can still balloon to 14–20 weeks when multiple public projects hit at once.Value Engineering Moves Upstream
With construction financing more expensive, GCs are demanding design-assist support during schematic phase—door schedules, BIM families, and VE alternates—so they can lock budgets before loan approval.
4. Keeping Projects Moving: E&A Door’s 6-Point Playbook
Move Why it Matters Now
Target Public Bonds & TI Conversions - Funding is secure and scopes are retrofit-heavy, aligning with our occupied-site skill set.Design-Assist Partnerships - Early hardware advice helps GCs hit pro-forma budgets amid rising cost indices.
Stand-By Stock of Critical SKUs - Holding fire-rated frames, Grade-1 closers, and ADA operators mitigates supplier lead-time spikes flagged by Turner’s cost data.
After-Hours & Phased Crews - Office-to-residential projects and school modernizations can’t shut down operations in daylight hours.
Maintenance Agreements - Service contracts smooth revenue when new starts dip, and keep facility managers compliant with annual NFPA-80 requirements.
Code-Compliance Documentation - Detailed inspection reports shorten punch-lists and help owners secure final occupancy on schedule.
5. Outlook
The Bay Area’s construction tide is neither roaring nor receding; it’s shifting. Private ground-ups may slow, but public modernization, adaptive-reuse, and specialized industrial builds continue to generate steady demand for precision, compliant commercial door solutions. By focusing on retrofit expertise, early collaboration, and code-driven deliverables, E&A Door Company and its GC partners can navigate the mixed cycle and keep openings—and projects—moving forward.
Stay connected to The Knowledge Hub for quarterly updates on regional metrics, code changes, and field-proven best practices in commercial door installation, retrofit, and maintenance.