It is said that a rising tide lifts all ships. It would stand to reason, then, that California's resurgent economy is uniformly raising construction activity. But tides are, after all, fluid. Swells and surges may drop a boat here or there, depending on the harbor. And so it is with California's building. Some of the trends that we began to notice last year are holding strong, while others have reversed — suggesting that the current boom manifests in ways that are particular to California's varying regions. Don't get us wrong. Real estate and building — in case you have been traveling in the Amazon Basin for the period and had not noticed — have been on a roll for more than two years. With the Construction Industry Research Board finalizing data from the 1997 statistical year, it's now official: that was the year of the big comeback. During that term, annual spending for residential construction reached almost $20 billion, a first since the recession hit the state in 1991. And commercial and industrial building spurted 25% higher than the prior year, the largest year-to-year increase since the 1970s. One counter-intuitive trend we noticed last year is holding true. Look again at San Jose — beaming capital of Silicon Valley and in many ways the epicenter of California's economic recovery. Here, among the tech campuses that sprawl to the south of Stanford University, construction of commercial and industrial space continued to slow. By comparison, commercial and industrial building activity statewide, as measured in dollars spent, surged 21% during 1998 compared with 1997. But in Santa Clara County, it dropped by 2%. A similar pattern was observed in San Francisco, where non-residential building decreased by 5%. In these venerable loci of the state's vaunted economy led by technology and creative enterprises, the construction of space to house these activities is sputtering. So are these regional economies on the wane? After all, we have learned that construction is clearly a lagging indicator of economic growth. For the answer, look to the broader hinterland of these economies. Silicon Valley's core industries are setting up shop to the east and south, in Alameda, Santa Cruz, and Monterey counties. Commercial and industrial construction shot up 14% in Alameda, 142% in Santa Cruz, and 28% in Monterey. Silicon Valley is maturing as an industry center to the point of needing to back-office operations, especially as land prices and lease rates continue to soar close to home. San Francisco's banking industry followed the same course during the 1980s boom. Still, Santa Clara County's $1.8 billion worth of commercial and industrial construction during 1998 was greater than the combined total in Alameda, Santa Cruz and Monterey counties. By far the biggest story on the homebuilding scene was the explosion in the Bay Area spill-over markets of Modesto and Stockton. They are especially interesting because their growth now seems more clearly than ever tied to the expanding economy of the Silicon Valley, whose commercial and industrial development has yet to flow into the Central Valley. In Modesto, construction spending for housing continued a four-year growth trend — this time clocking a 46% increase in 1998 compared with 1997. And the Stockton area, which recently linked to the Silicon Valley via a regionally sponsored heavy rail line, experienced a surge of 56% in homebuilding expenditure. These two markets were only surpassed in homebuilding year-to-year growth by tiny Yolo County, which serves as a bedroom to Sacramento. Yolo grew by 80%. These figures are all the more dramatic when held up to non-residential building activity. Stockton's commercial and industrial building only grew 6% last year, making the region a poster child for Vice President Al Gore's Smart Growth campaign. On the other hand, another trend we noticed a year ago, regarding Central Valley homebuilding, has reversed itself. Last year, we observed that some of the San Joaquin Valley's urban complexes — Bakersfield, Fresno, and Visalia — had bucked a strong state trend by exhibiting ongoing declines in residential construction. Today, that has completely reversed. And so an adage holds: the last into the recession — as the San Joaquin Valley was during California's 90s downturn — is the last out. The Valley's burgeoning agricultural burgs joined the rest of the state in the home-building boom during 1998. Bakersfield made the most startling turnabout, with a 31% increase in dollars spent on housing construction after three years of decline. Fresno and Visalia both logged in with 15% increases, also following a decline during recent years. The Construction Industry Research Board's numbers should squelch any lingering doubts that the latest real estate boom is in full swing. And after six long years of recession, it has been widely regarded as a welcome turnabout. These days, the 5:30 a.m. Altamont Commuter Express train heads out of Stockton for San Jose, and sleepy commuters settle in for 90 or so minutes of pre-dawn shut-eye. As the train rolls past subdivisions sprouted from farmland on the way to the land of tech jobs, one can ponder where this rising tide will next deposit their ship.