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G LOBA L MARKE T P L AC E
• Cuba maintains trade relations with 75 countries, and some
foreign debts have been renegotiated with creditors. (“We
don’t want to be dependent on one market,” Mr Malmierca
Díaz said – an apparent reference to past ties with Russia.)
• The net incomes of foreign companies operating in Cuba
are generally taxed at 35 per cent. But tax on income
from new investment will be waived for eight years and
thereafter taxed at 15 per cent.
• A new “special development zone” will offer tax incentives
to tenants. And three marine terminals are being built for
the cruise trade.
› Mr Malmierca Díaz said that Cuba needs about $2bn
annually in direct foreign investment to attain its goal of
raising GDP by 5 per cent. He acknowledged that some delays
may occur as American companies negotiate with their Cuban
partners, but he affirmed the commitment of his government to
the elimination of barriers.
“It would be stupid for us to delay,” Mr Malmierca Díaz told the
Chamber of Commerce in downtown Washington, DC.
Steel
After 1,600 suicides, deterrent steel netting
will be installed beneath and along the sides
of California’s Golden Gate Bridge
As reported in the Marin Independent Journal, the opening
of bidding for construction work on a suicide barrier on the
Golden Gate Bridge linking San Francisco with Marin County
was postponed from 8 March to 3 May, in part because the
steel specified for the $76mn project cannot be manufactured
in sufficient quantity in the US. (“Golden Gate Bridge Suicide
Barrier Project Delayed Two Months,” 18 February)
Procurement of the steel from overseas was rejected on
grounds that this would violate the Buy America provisions of
the US Department of Transportation. Instead, another grade
of domestic steel will be substituted. Golden Gate Bridge
district spokeswoman Priya Clemens told the Journal’s Mark
Prado, “[This] continues our tradition of building the bridge
with all American steel.”
The district expects to award the contract this summer, with
construction to take about four years. The project will be the
first large-scale horizontal installation of a suicide-deterrent
net on a major bridge in the US. At 385,000ft2, the net will
be almost the size of seven football fields, suspended 220ft
above the water.
The steel netting and its supports are to be manufactured
off-site. Mr Prado reported that plans call for a net extending
20ft below and 20ft from either side of the 1.7-mile span. The
netting will be made of stainless steel marine-grade cable
for resistance to the elements, grey in colour to better blend
with the water. For maintenance, the design allows for mobile
scaffolding – “travellers” – to traverse the bridge.
› The Bridge Rail Foundation, an organisation dedicated to
stopping suicides from the Golden Gate, estimates that,
since the bridge opened in 1937, more than 1,600 people have
leapt to their deaths – 46 in 2015 alone.
According to the Associated Press, talk of installing a suicide
barrier started up in the 1950s. From the 1970s on, 18 designs
were considered and dismissed before the current project was
announced last year.
“We are very hopeful this will curb the scourge of suicide at
the bridge,” Ms Clemens told the Marin Independent Journal.
But the broader effectiveness of the expedient is apparently
open to question.
Mr Prado noted that similar nets were installed in 1998 at the
Münster Terrace cathedral in Bern, Switzerland. However, as
reported by the Bern Common Council and Board of Public
Works in 2009, “All available data [over a mean period of
11.6 years] indicate that the suicide nets at the Münster
Terrace have been unsuccessful in preventing suicides due to
displacement to other locations.”
The specifications for an unusual building in
downtown Chicago expose a gap in US steel
production: extra-long beams
Another notable project for which the sourcing of steel proved
problematic is 150 North Riverside, a 54-storey Chicago office
building whose unique one-legged silhouette calls for some of
the largest steel sections milled anywhere.
Currently under construction on the south branch of the
Chicago River, the 732ft skyscraper uses ArcelorMittal
steel – 2,530 tons of it. But it could not be supplied by the
company’s plant in Northwest Indiana, just 20 miles to the
southeast. The only mill equal to the task was ArcelorMittal
Europe’s Long Products Differdange mill at the firm’s
Luxembourg base.
Business reporter Joseph S Pete of the NWI Times noted
that the mills of Northwest Indiana provided the bulk of the
structural steel that built up the Chicago skyline over the
course of the 20th century. Now, with a workforce of around
10,000, ArcelorMittal is one of the region’s biggest employers.
But, like the others, these days it is focused more on sheet
metal. For steel sections to the specifications of 150 North
Riverside, the builders had to look to Luxembourg. (“Non-
Local ArcelorMittal Steel Raises Up Chicago Skyscraper,”
16 February)
As reported by Mr Pete, ArcelorMittal Differdange has a
history with outsize building projects. It supplied 3,307 tons
of steel beams for the Burj Khalifa in the Arab Emirates, the
world’s tallest structure; as well as 30 to 56ft beams (weighing
730 pounds per foot) for the Freedom Tower at the site of the
World Trade Center, destroyed in the 9/11 attacks in New
York. And the company’s Belval mill delivered 149,000 tons
of steel beams in lengths up to 165ft for the MOSE (Modulo
Sperimentale Elettromeccanico) flood protection system in
Venice.