Discovery Village at Sarasota Bay is being built on 11 acres at 1414 69th Ave. W. in Manatee County

MANATEE COUNTY - A "topping out" occurred this week on a new, 130,000-square-foot senior-living community that only a few years ago would have been a rarity in Florida.

The final pieces of the roof's structure were hoisted into place this week on Discovery Village at Sarasota Bay, an 11-acre complex at 1414 69th Ave. W. in Manatee County.

The $30 million senior-living community -- expected to open in the fall -- will have a "Grande Clubhouse" building with a three-story wing of 30 apartment homes for supervised independent living.

There also will be a three-story wing of 66 apartment homes for assisted living and a one-story wing of 30 suites for memory care.

The new community will offer tableside meal service; complimentary scheduled transportation; health and wellness visits; an on-site medical director; on-site therapies; an on-site, Medicare-certified, home-health care agency; concierge services and housekeeping, Discovery Senior Living said.

The clubhouse will have two dining rooms, social areas, a game room, a bistro and an ice-cream parlor. The center also will have a bar and lounge, movie theater, a wellness center, a senior-equipped fitness center, an indoor, heated pool, a beauty salon and spa with a barber shop, a media center offering brain-fitness services and a multifunctional art, hobby and craft center and activity room.

"Seeing a community come up out of the ground in so short a time period is exciting and everything is on track as planned," Discovery Senior Living CEO Thomas J. Harrison said in a statement.

Largo's Architectural Concepts Inc. designed the project. Wegman Design Group did interior design and The Douglas Co. was the general building construction management firm.

Bonita Springs-based Discovery Senior Living has developed "apartment homes" in Bradenton, Fort Myers, Naples, Tampa, Palm Beach Gardens and Palm Coast. It also has an ownership interest in Venice's Aston Gardens.

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Milestone for construction of Manatee senior living center

Published: Wednesday, 3/4/2015 - Updated: 44 seconds ago

BY MARK REITER BLADE STAFF WRITER

Despite objections from residents of an apartment building that will be bulldozed, the Lucas County commissioners on Tuesday approved plans to realign Brandyway Lane and build a road to provide access to the planned new headquarters of The Andersons Inc.

The improvements to extend Briarfield Boulevard north of Salisbury Road west of U.S. 23/I-475 in Monclova Township were requested by the Lucas County Transportation Improvement District through the Lucas County Engineer.

The project will require the county to buy the western-most structure of Brandywine Estates, a three building apartment complex at 6538 Salisbury, to build the extension of Briarfield.

Plans also call for adding turn lanes on Salisbury to accommodate the increased traffic that is expected for the Maumee companys new location.

The Andersons announced in November plans to buy 55 acres north of Salisbury, including 37 acres of the Brandywine Country Club golf course. Plans call for the Fortune 500 company to construct a building to house 450 workers.

Marv Robon, a Maumee attorney who represents the owners of the apartment complex, questioned the legal authority of the county to acquire private property for the roadway through eminent domain that will give a private company better access to its planned headquarters and provide improved traffic management on Salisbury.

Four residents of the apartment complex affected by the removal of the building also spoke against the realignment of Brandyway.

Work on the roadway project is scheduled to begin in early 2016.

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County OKs new road to Andersons

Supermodel Linda Evangelista is embroiled in a $1.5 million (937,000) lawsuit with the managers of her apartment building in New York City over the cost of replacing the roof.

The catwalk beauty owns a penthouse at the building in Manhattan and is faced with a potentially enormous bill over the upcoming construction works.

The management board of the Spears Building in Chelsea wants to charge the roof maintenance work solely to the owners of the penthouse suites, but they insist it should be shared among all 30 apartments.

The penthouse owners filed a lawsuit at Manhattan Supreme Court on Monday (02Mar15) in an attempt to block the move and force the board to spread out the $1.5 million bill, according to the New York Daily News.

A vote on the proposal is due to take place on Thursday (05Mar15) but the penthouse owners are urging a judge to block it until more information about the extent of the work can be provided.

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Linda Evangelista In Legal Battle Over Penthouse Roof

Bowman had admitted to investigators that he had been smoking Spice, a synthetic form of marijuana, before setting the blaze in one of the unfinished units.

Stewart handed down the four-year sentence after telling Bowman he found his remorse among the most sincere of the thousands of people who have appeared before him for sentencing.

Bowman's court-appointed attorney, Jaime Zenger, said Bowman had made a "horrible mistake."

"He had no intention of burning the building down and causing millions of dollars in damage," she told Stewart.

The sentence was part of a plea bargain that Bowman and Zenger reached with federal prosecutors last year. The judge ordered Bowman to pay restitution of $2.98 million at a rate of at least $15 a month while imprisoned and $400 a month once he gets out or in an amount determined by probation officers.

Bowman asked to be placed in a halfway house to serve out part of the sentence but Stewart said that request was up to the federal Bureau of Prisons, though the judge included that request in his recommendations, which also included placing Bowman in a prison in Colorado.

The four-alarm fire on Feb. 9, 2014 sent flames billowing into the nighttime skies and spread quickly through the complex's exposed lumber and siding. The resulting glow could be seen as far away as Davis County.

In several interviews with investigators, Bowman admitted that after smoking Spice, he entered the apartment complex and lit some cardboard on fire and tossed it against a boxed bathtub leaning against a wood wall because he "wanted to see the fire department," according to the complaint file against him.

Bowman became a suspect after investigators watched surveillance-camera footage that captured the image of a man walking through an alley immediately west of the apartment building shortly before the fire began.

The apartment building was rebuilt and now has tenants living there.

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Electrician gets 4-year sentence for arson at Utah apartment complex

Published: March 2, 2015

By Bob Niedbala

Staff Writer

WAYNESBURG Greene County Planning Commission granted final approval Monday to plans for the construction of a four-story apartment building for seniors on High Street in Waynesburg.

The 52-unit building, being developed by PIRHL Development LLC of Warrensville Heights, Ohio, will be built on the northeast corner of the intersection of High and East streets.

I think it will be an attractive addition to that corner, Todd Robie of PIRHL told the commission.

The L-shaped building will be constructed into the hillside and have its first floor and parking areas accessible from Nazer Street, Robie said.

The building will contain one- and two-bedroom apartments designed for independent seniors, 62 or older. Plans also call for a community room as well as space for activities and support services, Robie said.

Groundbreaking for the project could be held as early as April.

Plans for the project were earlier approved by Waynesburg Zoning Hearing Board. Borough council, in addition, agreed to contribute $50,000 toward the project over three years.

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Planning Commission grants final approval to Waynesburg senior housing project

By Michele Lerner March 2 at 5:30 AM

Social spaces have become a distinguishing feature in many new apartment communities.

At The Kingsley, a new mixed-used community with 175 apartments at 500 Madison St. in Alexandria, the developers sought to create a distinctive modern yet vintage gathering space in the lobby.

Multiple seating areas, custom-designed tables and chairs, unexpected art objects and unusual lighting fixtures add whimsy to the lobby, which has 24-foot-high ceilings and a view of the fitness center on the mezzanine level. A huddle table, designed to be a hub for meetings, is attached to the fireplace.

The project was developed by Buchanan Partners and The Pinkard Group and managed by Bozzuto. The developers partnered with the Hartman Design Group to create the interiors.

In addition to the community space in the lobby and the fitness center, The Kingsley includes a clubroom, a rooftop terrace with river views, a bike shop and bike storage. The pet-friendly building has a Harris Teeter grocery store on the street level.

The apartments range from 650-square-foot studios that rent for $1,850 per month to 1,350-square-foot two-bedroom units that rent from $2,895 to $3,625. The units have granite counters and stainless steel appliances in the kitchen and ceramic tile floors in the baths.

For more information, go to http://www.thekingsleyapts.com.

New service is like Carfax for homes

Renters, buyers, homeowners and sellers can all use some help managing data associated with their home.

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Town Square | Social spaces a key attraction in Old Town apartments

By MIKE SCHNEIDER Associated Press

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) - As Florida's housing market tanked seven years ago, construction worker David Rager saw jobs dry up. So he left construction, along with 2.3 million others nationwide during the economic downturn, and got a job installing traffic signals and street lights.

"I couldn't afford to sit at home for a month here and a month there," said Rager, 53.

Now Rager is back in construction, working with a crew on a custom-built home in Orlando, framing walls "and doing a little bit of everything." In the past four years, hundreds of thousands of workers have returned to construction, making it among the nation's fastest growing job sectors.

In the busiest markets, there aren't enough construction workers to keep up with the pace of building. In a recent survey of more than 900 contractors by Associated General Contractors of America, 83 percent said they were having trouble filling craft positions. The most difficult positions to fill were carpenters, roofers and equipment operators.

Given the amount of building going on, "it's going to be interesting because we're going to have a labor shortage here in South Florida," said Scott Moss, president of Moss & Associates, a South Florida-based construction firm with offices in California, Texas, Georgia, South Carolina and Hawaii.

Yet it's a measure of how hard the sector was hit that at it has regained just 900,000 of the 2.3 million jobs it lost from 2007 to 2011. The annual unemployment rate for construction workers stood at 9.8 percent last year, down steeply from the industry's 20.6 percent annual unemployment rate in 2010, but still significantly higher than last year's national annual unemployment rate of 6.2 percent.

In the meantime, returning workers such as Rager are finding a different business from the one they left.

ALTERED LANDSCAPE

Apartment buildings are going up at a faster rate than single-family homes, a trend fueled by tighter home-lending standards, an increase in people choosing to live in or near urban centers and a drop in the rate of new households being formed.

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Construction picks back up, but it's a different gig now - Quincy Herald-Whig | Illinois & Missouri News, Sports

A construction worker suffered minorinjuries in Midtown when part of a wall collapsed at a vacant building where TF Cornerstonewill erect aluxuryapartment building,according to officials.

FDNYDeputy Assistant Chief Dan Donoghue said at a press conference this afternoon that at 2:30 p.m., the New York CityFire Department received a call about a collapsed building on West 57th Street. When the fire fighters arrived at 642 West 57th Street between 11th and 12th Avenues, they saw the building hadcollapsed inwards, the chief said.

Department of BuildingsCommissioner Rick Chandler said TF Cornerstone had been issued a full demolition permit for the site but the department would reviewthe submitted paperwork in light of the collapse.The construction workers were doing mechanical interior demolition work at the existing five-story building when the collapse started on the third floor, Mr. Chandler said at the press conference.There are no open DOB complaints at the site,according to a spokesman for the DOB, and the last complaint at the site was in 2006 for insufficient power in the garage.

The sitehas been hitwith an Environmental Control Board violation, which is issued by theDOB, for failure to carry out demo operations in a safe manner, the DOB spokesman said.

Earlier today there was an incident during demolition at our site on West 57th Street, according to a statement from TF Cornerstone. Site safety is always our first priority as it relates to construction, and we are cooperating fully with all relevant authorities to try to determine what caused this occurrence.The work underway at the site was being carried out by a subcontractor with a third party engineer employed by the construction company to oversee the demolition process.

According to the DOB, Brooklyn-basedBreeze Demolition was contracted to demolish the site. A woman who answered the phone at Breeze said the company declined to comment.

There were 16 construction workers inside and one suffered minor injuries and was taken to St. Lukes Hospital,Mr. Donoghue said. There is no indication that anyone else was injured even witha school bus out front.

The building, Mr. Donoghue said, has not been occupied forsome time.

TF Cornerstone did not immediately respond with a comment bypublication time.

Meanwhile,yesterday aconstruction worker at the Barclays Center was killed when falling steel beamscrushed him, as was widely reported.

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Worker Injured During Demo for TF Cornerstone Luxe Building

Homebuilders in a rush to beat what could be costly code changes drove a February surge in construction of single-family houses in the Twin Cities.

During the past four weeks, metro-area builders were issued 347 permits to build 357 units, according to a monthly report from the Builders Association of the Twin Cities (BATC). Though that was a decline in total units because of a pause in apartment construction, there was a 47 percent increase in single-family houses compared with last year.

We know that builders across the region have seen a rush to get permits filed before the new expensive codes take effect, said Chris Contreras, an area homebuilder and BATC president. We are concerned that these new regulations will stifle the industry.

BATC estimates that an amended energy code that went into effect in mid-February could increase the cost of a new house by $6,000 to $10,000. That doesnt include an amendment to the building code that went into effect in late January that requires fire sprinklers in houses larger than 4,500 square feet, including the basement.

The changes followed years of debate among building scientists, builders, code officials and fire officials. In mid-January, BATC filed a petition with the Minnesota Court of Appeals challenging the Department of Labor and Industrys amendments, requesting a delay in enforcement of the rules until a decision is made on the main petition.

BATC believes the codes have substantial flaws, that the Minnesota Department of Labor and Industry did not properly analyze the impact of the rule and these codes need to be sent back and fixed for Minnesota homeowners, said David Siegel, BATCs executive director.

The group is in the process of preparing briefs, and an oral argument before the Appeals Court is expected in the next two to three months. In the meantime, the updated codes remain in effect.

The codes arent the only head winds that have faced homebuilders. Suburban housing construction growth has lagged the broader economic recovery in the Twin Cities and beyond. Observers think tepid wage growth and a slow return of move-up home buyers have stifled new home sales.

Most of the housing construction in the Twin Cities during the past few years has been luxury rental apartments in Minneapolis, which represented about half of all housing built in the metro area. While apartment construction is expected to be slightly behind last year, more than 3,500 apartment units are expected to be permitted later this year, according to a year-end report from Marquette Advisors.

Sales trends have prompted growing optimism within the industry. Sales of new homes across the United States posted a solid gain during December, and economists at Wells Fargo Securities recently raised their housing forecast, saying that new-home construction should be one of the significant upside surprises for the economy during the next two years.

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Building code changes prompt construction surge

A local developer plans to add a $10.6 million apartment building with office space and a cafe on Badger Street near the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse campus.

The 90,000-square-foot, five-level building at Badger and 13th streets just behind the West Avenue Kwik Trip will have 57 three-bedroom units designed to meet the demand for private-sector quality student housing, along with four one-bedroom apartments for staff, Three Sixty Real Estate Solutions owner Marvin Wanders told the La Crosse Economic Development Board on Thursday.

The development has been dubbed Aguilera Spanish for eagles nest in a nod to the UW-L mascot.

Plans also call for 3,700 square feet of first-floor office space for Three Sixty Real Estate Solutions headquarters. The first floor will have a 2,500-square-foot fitness center and 1,600 square feet of retail space, likely a cafe, Wanders said.

The building also will have an inner courtyard with green space off the third level. Plans call for 39 parking spaces on the first level with another 30 outdoor spaces off La Crosse Street on land now occupied by three residences.

Three existing properties a private home and two rentals will remain in place between the building and the parking lot.

UW-L has been approached about parking as well, Wanders said, and the company actively promotes healthy transportation and the reduction of vehicles, such as biking or use of the nearby mass transit line, to its tenants.

This is a pedestrian and people-focused development, Wanders said.

The building and parking area will replace seven houses and several garage or storage structures with a combined assessed value of $528,800.

Wanders said the Aguilera would raise the current $14,786 a year in property taxes generated to at least $150,000.

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Developer plans $10.6M mixed-use building by UW-L