The nonprofit CIRB, based here, says the statewide total for all categories of construction was more than $69.2 billion in 2003, up 7.8$ from 2002 on an inflation-adjusted basis. But commercial building dipped for the third straight year, dropping 6.6% to $13.9 billion after falling 15.5 % in 2002 and slipping by 12% in 2001.

Ben Bartolotto, director of CIRB, tells GlobeSt.com that the worst could be over for the commercial building sector because the CIRB foresees a slight uptick in commercial construction for 2004. One reason: Most of the statewide decline in commercial building can be attributed to the San Francisco area, Bartolotto says, and that region appears to have bottomed out.

Although commercial building declined in 2003, Bartolotto notes that some signals suggest it might be picking up. "Alterations and additions were up in 2003, so that suggests that there's a lot of stirring in the private sector, which could signal a turnaround," Bartolotto tells GlobeSt.com.

Commercial construction is part of a "private building construction" category tracked by the CIRB that totaled $52.7 billion in 2003, up 6.6% from 2002's $48.83 billion. All of the private building increase in 2003, however, was in the residential sector, which offset the continuing declines in the commercial sector.

A significant part of the overall increase in statewide construction in 2003 resulted because of a strong December, according to the CIRB, which reports that construction volume rose $5.45 billion, or 14.9% from November's total. Once again, however, commercial building had little to do with the increase. The December gain was driven primarily by a strong housing sector and several large public building projects, the CIRB reports.