There were a few interesting pieces of news from the first few days back after the holidays. While most of us were shaking off the cobwebs from the better part of two weeks off, the folks at Industrial Scientific made a decision on the construction manager for their new $40 million, 330,000 sq. ft. new campus in Robinson Twp. They selected Mascaro Construction to build the new facilities, which should get started this summer.

Starting work now is developer Oxford Properties, from Atlanta, on their $45 million City Vista Apartments in Green Tree. The 272-unit project will sit on the hillside below Parkway Center.

The pre-Holiday bidding activity helped lift the spirits of many – especially about the prospects for 2013 – but a key confidence measure shows that not everyone felt the cheer. The Master Builders’ Commercial Contractor Condition Index (C3 Index) was released on Friday and it showed a slight decline in the outlook of the region’s largest contractors. The C3 Index is a quarterly survey of the owners of the MBA’s 32 contractor members, which asks about their grade for the coming quarter and queries their grade on bidding and backlog conditions. Contractors gave the market a C- or 1.73 score out of a possible 4. That’s down from the 1.79 grade the group gave the third quarter.