New Jersey/In the Region - Mixed Signals for Builders - NYTimes.com THERE was plenty of room to move up and down the sparsely populated carpeted aisles of the recent 63rd Annual Atlantic Builders Convention in Atlantic City. The organizers were anticipating a better turnout than last year's 7,000 visitors, but if the first day was any indication, the slogan stripped across the cover of the official show guide - "Building is Back in Business!" - may not tell the whole story. Promoted as the largest building industry trade show in the Northeast, this three-day convention is something of a bellwether for the industry as a whole. And while many exhibitors talked about fielding more queries, receiving more job leads and a growing sense of optimism this year - particularly in comparison with the last two years - just as many are waiting to see that optimism translate into more work. "You mean the crawl?" asked Robert Poles III, the production director for All-tech Carpentry Contractors in Monroe, in reference to the building industry's alleged recovery. It's been slow and steady, but nothing like it was four or five years ago. In 2006-2007, Mr. Poles said his company, which builds shells of single-family homes and apartment buildings, was framing 120 units a week, but now 20 to 30 units is a busy week. For the hundreds of building-related businesses that came to promote their services at the Atlantic City Convention Center at the end of March, the latest statistics from the Commerce Department offered a glimmer of hope. Building permit requests for single-family homes and apartments were up 5 percent in February, the biggest month-to-month increase since October 2008. With an average build time of 12 months, those requests translate into an annualized rate of 717,000 units to be built nationwide this year, compared with 611,000 units built in 2011. Timothy J. Touhey, the chief executive of the New Jersey Builders Association, the organization hosting the convention, admitted that the last few years had been bleak for his industry. But while the total number of exhibitors at the convention was down from last year's 475 to 415 this year - as were the attendees, with just over 6,000 coming out in the end - he sensed a change in the air. "It's obvious there's been a fall off," Mr. Touhey said. The industry got whacked. But we had more people registering for the show this year, and there's a different feeling on the floor. We've been through the war and we're starting to get on the other side of the battlefield. Depending on where one's services fit into the building process, the battle may not yet be won. For Rob Blackman, the national sales manager at Carfaro, a Hamilton company that installs porch, balcony and stair railings, a job that usually comes toward the end of a construction project, there's little reason to celebrate. "We're seeing a lot of bidding opportunities, but they're still not turning into business as quickly as they should be," said Mr. Blackman, noting that the competition has increased as well. Where they may have bid against three or four companies in the past, he said, they're now competing with 13 to 14 companies from across the country. At the front end of a job, Caruso Excavating in Ocean Township is finding the increased competition brutal, as well as what the company's president, Carmine Caruso, considers "a tremendous amount of talk, but not much action." "When things were good, one out of every 10 jobs we went out for, we got," Mr. Caruso said. Now, it's one out of 100. And it's not because we didn't get them. It's that 75 percent of them didn't go. Most businesses are seeing mixed signals of a building revival. Pete Smeretsky, manager at TES in South Kearny, said his company's rental business for large cranes and other equipment had doubled in the last two years, while sales of those machines are still soft. Understandably, since the 30-foot-high red and silver telescopic handler, for lifting heavy materials, that dominated the back corner of the convention hall last week sells for $269,000 but rents for $6,000 to 8,000 a month. "People are being cautious," he said. They don't want to commit to such a big purchase if they don't have enough continuous work. Down to Earth Landscaping in Jackson has been providing landscaping for large home builders like K. Hovnanian Homes and the Lennar Corporation for 20 years, a business that had all but disappeared in the last few years, according to the company's president, Bill Merkler. This year, he said, some of that work is returning. "When I did this show two or three years ago, I had more people asking for jobs than offering business," Mr. Merkler said. That's when I knew it was going to be a bad year. Still others are benefitting from contracts on public projects, like Nova Crete of South Amboy, which recently installed decorative stamped concrete pathways around the Somerville train station and will do the same for a new train station in Pennsauken. Likewise, Najarian Associates, an Eatontown engineering firm, has seen an increase in requests for feasibility studies, many for projects in the public sector, but according to the project manager, Eric Glasser, the company is "keeping a close eye on the budget, and none of them have broken ground yet.." For those who have been coming to the convention for years, there has been a measurable dialing back on the glitz once connected to the industry, and this show. Giveaways were largely limited to pens, key chains, reusable grocery bags and miniature candy bars, with the occasional yard stick, calculator or protective gloves thrown in. Door prizes, announced throughout the day over the loudspeaker, consisted of bottles of wine, or an overnight stay in Atlantic City. Even the after-hour party schedule was light, unlike in the past, according to Mr. Glasser, when "attorneys would be throwing big bashes, courting the developers." "I remember coming to this show in the "90s and early 2000s and you had waterfalls, bathtub displays, lots of bells and whistles," said Joe McGinley of the LEW Corporation, an environmental evaluation firm in Mountainside. But it's a lot less depressing than last year. Hopefully, we've hit bottom and we're starting to come out of it.