BERWYN A planned cellular phone antenna added atop a Harlem Avenue apartment building in Berwyn is expected to increase service and minimize complaints of dropped calls by T-Mobile cellular customers.

The City Council accepted the recommendation of the Zoning Board of Appeals to approve a request by T-Mobile to install an antenna on the roof of a building at 3201 S. Harlem Avenue.

The installation required a conditional use designation in a C-4 Restricted Commercial District by the board.

T-Mobile representative Mike Howley appeared before the ZBA last month and explained the need for additional wireless coverage in response to customer complaints over dropped calls,.

Howley said T-Mobile is trying to avoid the construction of a new antenna tower by installing smaller antennas on existing structures.

T-Mobile engineers determined the Harlem Avenue site to be more suitable than other sites examined in the area.

The antenna will not exceed the height of the buildings existing chimney and will be painted to match the chimneys color, Howley said.

Engineers said the antenna will produce a humming sound, but the noise will be muffled as a result of the height of the antenna.

T-Mobile will still need to secure construction permits with the village before construction begins. A date has not yet been scheduled.

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Berwyn approves T-Mobile antenna on Harlem Avenue

LOVELAND --Artists who hope to live in the arts-focused apartment building under construction next to the Loveland Feed and Grain building downtown can learn about the project at a meeting Wednesday night.

The informational gathering on the Artspace Loveland Lofts will start at 6:30 p.m. at Loveland Aleworks, 118 W. Fourth St.

"Anybody who hasn't attended a meeting yet who's interested either in the live-work spaces or has an interest in the Feed and Grain project should attend the meeting if they missed the first one," said Heidi Zimmer Kurtze, vice president of property development for Artspace, the Minneapolis nonprofit that is building the 30-unit apartment and renovating the old feed mill.

The Loveland Housing Authority will manage the low-cost apartment complex and process potential tenants' applications.

At the end of the process, Artspace will have applicants go before a selection committee to determine if they qualify as artists, Kurtze said.

The agencies probably will begin accepting applications in February, she said. The four-story building just west of the Feed and Grain at 130 W. Third St. should be ready for occupancy in May 2015, she said.

"We're having these meetings to help people have the information they need to get the paperwork together to submit the application in February," she said.

Artspace's projects typically get four or five times as many applicants as available units, she said, and it will be important for prospective tenants to submit their applications as soon as possible.

"Based on the interest and turnout at these meetings, they're going to be in high demand," she said, adding that a similar meeting in October drew about 75 people.

Craig Young: 970-635-3634, cyoung@reporter-herald.com, twitter.com/CraigYoungRH.

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Meeting set for Wednesday on Loveland Artspace apartments

CHICAGO (PRWEB) November 11, 2014

Webster Square Apartments, the only new-construction luxury apartment building in Chicagos Lincoln Park neighborhood, has surpassed the 90-percent-leased mark with just six units remaining. The 75-unit building, developed and managed by affiliates of Chicago-based Sandz Development Company, Inc., opened this spring. Chicago-based brokerage firm @properties has overseen leasing and marketing.

The remaining apartments include:

Rental rates include one garage parking space.

Located at 558 W. Webster Ave., at the intersection of Webster and Lincoln Avenues, the apartment building is part of the larger Webster Square master-planned community, which is the redevelopment of the former Lincoln Park Hospital site. The development will also feature a 12-story luxury condominium building, eight single-family homes on Grant Street, a 255-car parking garage, and Mrs. Greens Natural Market, which opened last year.

Webster Square is a rare opportunity for new-construction apartment living in Lincoln Park. Weve been helped by a strong apartment market, but ultimately its new construction in such an established location that has driven the rapid lease-up, said Webster Square developer, Richard Zisook, president of Sandz Development Co., Inc.

Sandz knows their market and theyve delivered a first-class building. Right product, right place, right time, said Thaddeus Wong, co-founder of @properties.

Among the upscale features in the apartments are 9 ceilings; wide-plank flooring in living areas; stainless steel appliances; quartz countertops; contemporary European-style cabinetry; in-unit washer and dryer; Kohler and Grohe plumbing fixtures; and views of the downtown skyline, Oz Park and Lincoln Park.

Webster Square residents also have access to an assortment of amenities, including a fitness center, business center, bicycle storage, rooftop sundeck with gas grills and rooftop club room with kitchen. The building is also pet-friendly.

Located across the street from Oz Park in the heart of Lincoln Park, Webster Square is surrounded by shops and restaurants; top-notch public and private schools including Lincoln Elementary, Lincoln Park High School and Francis W. Parker; and cultural attractions such as The Lincoln Park Zoo and Steppenwolf Theatre.

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Webster Square Apartments Hit 90-Percent Leased Mark

An investigation by Washingtons Department of Labor & Industries (L&I) into a demolition project at a Seattle apartment building found a total of 19 willful and serious safety and health violations. As a result, the two businesses involved in the project have been fined a total of $379,100.

Partners Construction Inc., of Federal Way, Wash., was cited for a total of 14 willful and serious violations and fined $291,950. Asbestos Construction Management Inc., of Bonney Lake, Wash., was fined $87,150 for five willful and serious violations.

The violations were for asbestos exposure to workers, asbestos debris left on site and other violations that occurred during demolition of an apartment building in the Fremont neighborhood. The three-story, five-unit apartment building was originally constructed with popcorn ceilings, a white substance containing asbestos fibers, as well as asbestos sheet vinyl flooring.

Asbestos is an extremely hazardous material that can lead to asbestosis, a potentially fatal disease, as well as mesothelioma and lung cancer. Removal of asbestos-containing building materials must be done by a certified abatement contractor who follows safety and health rules to protect workers and the public from exposure to asbestos. The contractor also must ensure proper removal and disposal of the asbestos materials.

Partners Construction Inc., a certified asbestos abatement contractor at the time, was hired by the building owner to remove the asbestos before the apartment building was demolished.

After several weeks, Partners provided the building owner with a letter of completion indicating that all asbestos had been removed. When L&I inspectors responded to a worker complaint, the inspectors found that the removal work had not been done and approximately 5,400 square feet of popcorn ceiling remained throughout, as well as asbestos sheet vinyl flooring.

Partners came back to finish the abatement work; however, due to a prior history of willful violations, L&I was in the process of revoking Partners certification to do asbestos abatement work. In May, Partners was decertified and went out of business.

A new company, Asbestos Construction Management Inc. (ACM), owned by a family member of the Partners owner, took over the job using essentially the same workers and certified asbestos supervisor as Partners, and sharing the same equipment.

A subsequent L&I inspection of ACM found many of the same violations as in the Partners inspection. L&I has initiated decertification action against ACM.

The employers have 15 business days to appeal the citation.

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Major Asbestos Violations Result in $370,000+ in Fines for Two Companies

10.11.2014 - (idw) Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft

Coming home from work one day, youre taken aback to find your apartment building encased in scaffolding. And then it hits you that the agency that manages the property did announce that your building is going to be renovated with the promise that a new faade and new windows will mean paying less for utilities. You can now look forward to months of noise pollution and to artificial darkness caused by the scaffolding wrap and there are bound to be interruptions and delays that draw the whole thing out. Strangers will be traipsing through your apartment in dirty boots and youll have to figure out how to tell your boss that youll need to occasionally take off work to let workmen into your private space and hang around until theyre done. If you rent in an apartment building or complex, this may indeed have happened to you. But the truth is that such renovations are by and large both sensible and justified. Older buildings account for over 80 percent of heating requirements in the majority of European industrialized countries, but the current renovation rate aimed at raising energy efficiency is less than one percent per year. One reason may be that property owners tend to have a hard time deciding whether or not to renovate. They want to be sure that, in addition to improving energy efficiency, any renovations they commission can also be carried out as economically as possible, within a reasonable timeframe and ideally with some form of public subsidy to offset some of the cost. Since its common for a number of different contractors to be involved, planning and executing these kind of renovations ends up being rather complicated. And any substandard construction work is likely to anger residents who, in the worst-case scenario, may even seek rebates on rent to compensate for the great inconvenience they have suffered. Minimally invasive procedures a trend that is gaining ground in the medical world are also making their mark in the construction sector. This is because having a comprehensive and well-planned concept that incorporates minimally invasive renovation processes is a way for both tenants and landlords to avoid the problems described above. Weve found using prefabricated multifunctional building components to be a promising approach for renovating residential buildings and can be used on the majority of existing buildings, explains scientist Horst Stiegel of the Energy Systems department at the Fraunhofer Institute for Building Physics IBP. One of the things Stiegel and his colleagues are working on can aptly be described by the title of one of their projects Developing prefabricated multifunctional systems for the energy-efficient renovation of residential buildings which draws a portion of its funding from the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi). Among the aims of this project is the provision of minimally invasive and multifunctional renovation concepts that, thanks to a high degree of prefabrication, are capable of greatly reducing disruption suffered by residents while also streamlining the whole process. In simple terms this involves making, say, window or entire faade modules complete with insulation framing and possibly a ventilation system in the workshop before going to the renovation site and fitting them to the building shell. The next stage is then to integrate or extend existing heating systems into the renovation modules, says Stiegel. But despite being a clear way to save time and with it money there were still some difficult challenges to overcome in terms of how the modules are designed and manufactured. What Stiegel and his colleagues from the Building Systems and Services working group did was to develop systems and modules tailored specifically to the purposes of renovation.

Prefabricated window modules Windows have always been the most technologically demanding components that go into a buildings envelope. This is true both in terms of what it takes to manufacture windows and to install them in whatever openings a particular building provides. Sadly this is also where you encounter the bulk of faulty planning and workmanship. The more difficult the assembly work, the more likely it is that a mistake will be made, which is why moving operations to the workshop greatly increases the quality of the finished product, explains Stiegel. This is also where in line with the minimally invasive approach to renovation the buildings technical components and supply systems are integrated into the faade modules. Supply systems have to be fed through the exterior wall so they can be connected to the likes of heaters or electrically operated shutters. The Fraunhofer IBP scientists developed a technical systems box that is integrated into the window module directly underneath a removable windowsill. Locating the box here provides an easily accessible space in which to install technical components. In addition to ventilators, heat exchangers and filters, each box accommodates all the building service components required to supply each room. Any attempt to install all these features on the interior walls would prove so unpopular that it would simply be impracticable. What the scientists have done is to produce an insulating collar construction around the window facing a construction that lines the entire existing window jamb, enables the window to be installed at exactly the desired wall depth and removes the need for any significant on-site reworking.

Innovative ventilation solutions Supplying a building with fresh air can be done using either a centralized or decentralized ventilation system. Equipping an apartment building with a centralized ventilation system capable of heat recovery relies on each apartment having its own ventilation channels in order to ensure the required air flow to and from each room. Adapting the fabric of existing buildings in order to retrofit them with these channels is extremely complicated, expensive and simply for reasons of space often impossible. A promising alternative is to integrate ventilatio

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Renovating a piece at a time

MITSU YASUKAWA/staff photographer

Allen F. Goldman, president of developer SJP Residential, standing near the floor-to-ceiling windows during a tour of the Modern, where one-bedroom units like the one above rent for $2,150 a month.

More than 40 years after Fort Lee cleared 16 acres downtown for redevelopment, the first building on the site a 47-story luxury rental is opening to tenants this month.

The glass-clad monolith, called the Modern, is the tallest building in Bergen County and a familiar sight to anyone who crosses the George Washington Bridge. It's also emblematic of a resurgence in apartment construction in New Jersey, especially along the Hudson River waterfront, stretching from Fort Lee south to Jersey City.

Mitsu Yasukawa/staff photographer

The Modern in Fort Lee symbolizes the state's resurgence in apartment construction. It opens to tenants this month.

MITSU YASUKAWA/staff photographer

Tucker Development of Chicago has begun construction on a mixed-use development called Hudson Lights.

In a recent tour of the building, Allen F. Goldman, president of Parsippany-based developer SJP Residential, showed off the Modern's high-end finishes, the sweeping views through floor-to-ceiling windows and amenities that include a pool, basketball court, three gyms, a sauna and 10 barbecue grills.

Construction on the building started two years ago, but the development's drawn-out history stretches to the 1970s. The first redevelopment proposal on the site fell apart when the developer was jailed after trying to bribe Fort Lee's then-mayor. The land languished for years under the ownership of New York developer Harry Helmsley, then was bought by Town & Country Developers of Westwood in 2003 for $45 million. But that developer's plans for an ambitious, mixed-use project collapsed after the financial crisis of 2008.

Link:
N.J. rental market soaring

OLYMPIA After state regulators cited and decertified Partners Construction for exposing its workers to asbestos at a Seattle apartment project, a family member from the company started a new business to take its place on the same project.

That business, Asbestos Construction Management, shared workers and equipment used by Partners Construction.

Together, the businesses are being fined about $380,000, according to the state Department of Labor & Industries (L&I).

The violations occurred during the demolition of an apartment building in the Fremont neighborhood where the companies were supposed to remove asbestos before the building was torn down. A three-story building with five units, it featured popcorn ceilings and vinyl floors that both contained asbestos.

An L&I investigation between February and May revealed nearly 19 willful and serious safety and health violations between work done by the two companies. Workers were exposed to asbestos, and hazardous debris was left on site, according to a statement Friday from L&I.

Donald Murray, listed in state documents as the owner of Asbestos Construction Management, did not return a call or email seeking comment.

Asbestos, a mineral fiber found in soil and rocks, has been used in buildings and automobiles, among other things, and today is used in small amounts in a few products. It can cause mesothelioma and lung cancer, and even has its own potentially fatal disease named after it: asbestosis.

The state fined Partners Construction, which was based in Federal Way, for $291,950 for 14 violations. Asbestos Construction Management, of Bonney Lake, was fined $87,150 for five violations.

Before Partners Construction was decertified to handle asbestos and went out of business, it provided the apartment buildings owner in March with a letter stating that all asbestos had been removed.

But when L&I inspectors responded to a worker complaint, they found the site grossly contaminated, with about 5,400 square feet of popcorn ceiling and some vinyl flooring remaining in the building.

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2 companies fined $380,000 over asbestos exposure

Work has stopped on a luxury apartment building at the former Lanes Bakery on South Park Street after DNR inspectors found oil-contaminated water being pumped from the site into the storm sewer without a permit.

JD McCormick Developmentis working on a five-story, 40-unit apartment building with commercial space on the bottom floor. The $5 million project at 444 S. Park St., directly across Drake Street from the new Ideal Apartments, includes underground parking.

The problem was discovered on Oct. 14 after a Department of Natural Resources staffer noticed cloudy water and sediment flowing into Monona Bay just a block from the construction site, according to DNR groundwater supervisor Linda Hanefeld.

An investigator then went to the site and saw water being pumped from an excavation hole into the storm sewer. Construction crews were not on the site at the time and the pumps were operating off a diesel-powered electric generator.

The inspector also detected a petroleum smell. A review of records then found no permit to discharge water into the storm sewer.

Hanefeld said the DNR was unable to connect with the owners and eventually had Madison police come to the site to shut off the generator and stop the pumping.

It appears the pumps were set up to operate as long as the generator would keep working, she says.

The DNR also took samples from six different locations where the water was pumped and found one sample nearest the corner of Park and Drake street with some level of petroleum-related contamination, Hanefeld said.

Hanefeld says its unclear if the water was contaminated would require special treatment. In either case, a permit is needed whether the water is sent to the storm sewer or the sanitary sewer, where it is then treated by the Madison Metropolitan Sewerage District before being discharged into Nine Springs Creek.

Developer Joe McCormick did not return a phone call seeking more information or the status of the project.

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Park St. apartment project on hold over groundwater contamination

Green Hills Retirement Community in Ames is preparing for another expansion.

Adding 32 apartments to its more than 130 units for independent living, the community is heading into another stage of its master plan.

Currently a green space, some of the land on the north part of its property and connected to its current facilities will be home to a four-story building.

Rod Copple, Green Hills executive director, said the apartments will feature 9-foot-high ceilings, in-home washer and dryer and covered balconies. All features are new to Green Hills units, and were added due to increasing demand for them.

People are starting to see that these are a part of the transition to senior living, said Copple, who has been at Green Hills for nearly 14 years.

Sales for the upcoming apartments recently started.

When completed in late spring 2016, Green Hills will be home to 166 units for independent living, 16 assisted living units and 56 skilled nursing and memory care units.

The project, which also includes adding some more common space and a new entrance to the retirement community, will cost about $13 million.

Parking for the new units will be underground.

Green Hills Retirement Community, located south of U.S. Highway 30 and just west of the Gateway Hotel, opened in 1986.

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Green Hills readies for more growth

Australia's construction sector continued to expand in October, though at a slower rate, the latest survey from the Australian Industry Group, or AiG, revealed on Friday.

The AiG performance of construction index fell to 53.4 in October from the nine-year high of 59.1 in September.

This marked the fifth consecutive month of expansion. A reading above 50 signals expansion in the construction sector.

Among the sub-indices, new orders, construction activity and deliveries from suppliers increased at a slower rate in October.

Employment levels also rose for the fourth straight month, but at a slower rate.

Among the sub-sectors, House building and commercial construction advanced at a slower rate. Apartment building continued to increase at a solid rate and was unchanged from the previous month.

However, Engineering construction declined at a steeper rate in October.

by RTT Staff Writer

For comments and feedback: editorial@rttnews.com

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Australia Construction Sector Growth Slows In October