View Larger View Larger Crime & Safety Headlines More Crime&Safety Crime Stoppers More Crimestoppers Crime Databases More Databases Continuing stories More Ongoing Stories Local Stories from ThisWeek More Articles By Encarnacion Pyle The Columbus Dispatch Friday September 12, 2014 6:33 AM

Benito Lucio worries that memories of the 10 people killed in a Prairie Township fire a decade ago are as abandoned as the memorial where their apartment building once stood.

To see the memorial today with weeds, its obvious people have forgotten, Lucio said last week.

Gone are the candles and flower-draped white crosses that honored the 10 people, including three young children, who lost their lives on Sept. 12, 2004.

One of three markers lies broken among tall weeds and uncut grass. A boulder surrounded by a semicircle of pavers is dwarfed by the boarded-up remains of the former Lincoln Park West apartments.

So many lives gone, just like that, Lucio said as he stood in front of the memorial. I cant help but wonder what would have become of those three little children if things had been different."

The fire was ruled arson, but the crime has not been solved a fact that Lucio finds disheartening.

The retired migrant-worker monitor for the state said he will talk about the fire today on his local Spanish-language radio show. He wants to encourage anyone with information to come forward.

People who do bad things are supposed to get punished, he said. We cant rest until that happens in this terrible tragedy.

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Apartment fire that killed 10 still unsolved 10 years later

Architecture is not just slow. It's a hurry-up-and-wait profession at its core, chancy and contingent, as vulnerable to the cold feet of clients as the whims of capital markets. During the Great Recession, as financing dried up and confidence cracked, the construction of important new buildings in Los Angeles ground nearly to a halt.

And so this fall, which brings with it a number of significant architectural debuts, is both welcome and a little alien: For the first time in nearly a decade, thanks to a stronger domestic economy and an influx of investment from China, South Korea and elsewhere, a steady supply of ambitious, market-tested architecture is emerging from the city's cultural pipeline.

The crop includes ground-up projects by some of L.A.'s most talented architects. The city is also learning to reuse its underappreciated older buildings in inventive ways.

All in all, it's a season of marked if still cautious revival for Los Angeles architecture: a fall that feels more like a spring.

An improving economy tends to produce what might be called a reverse domino effect. A big project coming out of the ground pulls up others by sheer force of momentum. Witness the buildings, good and mostly bad, sprouting like mushrooms in the shadow of L.A. Live's Marriott hotel tower downtown.

Even stalled projects can have this effect. Opening next month on Bunker Hill, across a new plaza from Eli Broad's delayed contemporary art museum, is the Emerson, an expedient-looking residential tower by the firm Arquitectonica with 271 apartments on 19 floors.

More impressive models for new residential architecture have popped up in Santa Monica, where the second phase of the Expo Line is expected to begin running to the beach by early 2016 and where a mid-rise collection of condos and apartments has just opened across the street from popular Tongva Park. Divided into a section of affordable rental units by Koning Eizenberg and condos by the Santa Monica firm Moore Ruble Yudell, the complex offers a compelling combination of spare neo-modern design and generous open space.

An expanding transportation network is also producing new architecture in Orange County, where the $190-million Anaheim Regional Transportation Intermodal Center, or ARTIC, will open in late fall.

As designed by architecture firm HOK and engineers Parsons Brinckerhoff, the station may seem an overly grand arrival hall for the scant number of passengers it is likely to attract in its first years of operation. Enclosed under a wide roof covered with pillowy ETFE (ethylene tetrafluoroethylene) panels, it was designed in part to hold high-speed trains that won't begin running for about two decades, if ever; perhaps over time the train-riding population in the O.C. will grow to match its magisterial scale.

The colleges and universities in town, many of which kept building at least modestly during the recession, with endowments or fundraising efforts robust enough to withstand the downturn, are now accelerating those efforts.

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Fall marks season of revival for architecture in Los Angeles

A New York property developer is offering the uber-wealthy the opportunity to buy a condo parking spot for a cool $1m merely six times the value of a typical American home.

The 10 parking spaces are for sale at 42 Crosby St, the luxury apartment building under construction in the SoHo neighbourhood in Lower Manhattan.

Based on the $1m price tag, the spots are probably the most expensive residential car spaces in the country, said the broker marketing the seven-storey building.

Anyone who lives in Manhattan and has a car knows that parking is a premium in the city, said Shaun Osher, chief executive of the brokerage Core. Theres definitely a large demand and a short supply.

Prices for the parking spots compare with the US median single-family home value of $174,800, according to real estate website Zillow. For that price, however, there are few if any residences for sale in trendy SoHo, known for its high-end fashion shops and art galleries

Osher said he expected residents of the 10-unit building to snap up the parking spots when the underground spaces, which were approved for construction this week, hit the market.

The building, designed by German-born architect Annabelle Selldorf, will include 10 luxury condominiums priced at a minimum of about $8m each with private elevator access.

The 14-19 sq m parking spaces will be offered under a 99-year license to tenants, who will have the right to transfer or sell their parking spaces to other building residents.

The pricey spaces will not lack for amenities. Osher said they would come with storage space and electric car charges.

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Million-dollar parking spaces in Manhattan

NEW YORK - A New York property developer is offering the uber-wealthy the opportunity to buy a condo parking spot for a cool $1 million - merely six times the value of a typical American home.

The 10 parking spaces are for sale at 42 Crosby Street, the luxury apartment building under construction in the SoHo neighborhood in Lower Manhattan.

Based on the $1 million price tag, the spots are probably the most expensive residential car spaces in the country, said the broker marketing the seven-story building.

"Anyone who lives in Manhattan and has a car knows that parking is a premium in the city," said Shaun Osher, chief executive of the brokerage CORE. "There's definitely a large demand and a short supply."

Prices for the spots compare with the US median single-family home value of $174,800, according to real estate website Zillow. For that price, however, there are few if any residences for sale in trendy SoHo, known for its high-end fashion shops and art galleries

Osher said he expected residents of the 10-unit building to snap up the parking spots when the underground spaces, which were approved for construction this week, hit the market.

The building, designed by German-born architect Annabelle Selldorf, will include 10 luxury condominiums priced at a minimum of about $8 million, each with private elevator access.

The 150-to-200-square-foot (14-19 square-metre) parking spaces will be offered under a 99-year license to tenants, who will have the right to transfer or sell their spaces to other building residents.

The pricey spaces will not lack for amenities. Osher said they would come with storage space and electric car charges.

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A cool million will buy a parking space in trendy SoHo

A woman walks past the construction site at 42 Crosby Street, which is being developed into a luxury apartment building with 10 subterranean parking spaces priced at $1 million per parking space, on September 10, 2014 in the SoHo neighborhood of New York City. (Andrew Burton / Getty Images / September 10, 2014)

5:50 p.m. EDT, September 10, 2014

NEW YORK

The 10 parking spaces are for sale at 42 Crosby Street, the luxury apartment building under construction in the SoHo neighborhood in Lower Manhattan.

Based on the $1 million price tag, the spots are probably the most expensive residential car spaces in the country, said the broker marketing the seven-story building.

"Anyone who lives in Manhattan and has a car knows that parking is a premium in the city," said Shaun Osher, chief executive of the brokerage CORE. "There's definitely a large demand and a short supply."

Prices for the spots compare with the U.S. median single-family home value of $174,800, according to real estate website Zillow. For that price, however, there are few if any residences for sale in trendy SoHo, known for its high-end fashion shops and art galleries

Osher said he expected residents of the 10-unit building to snap up the parking spots when the underground spaces, which were approved for construction this week, hit the market.

The building, designed by German-born architect Annabelle Selldorf, will include 10 luxury condominiums priced at a minimum of about $8 million, each with private elevator access.

The 150-to-200-square-foot parking spaces will be offered under a 99-year license to tenants, who will have the right to transfer or sell their spaces to other building residents.

Read more here:
Where $1 million will buy you a parking space

By - Associated Press - Wednesday, September 10, 2014

CHICAGO (AP) - A lawsuit has been filed against the owner of a Chicago apartment building where a fire killed four children this week, attorneys announced Wednesday.

It was filed late Tuesday on behalf of the mother of a man who jumped from a third-floor window and was critically injured while escaping the blaze.

The lawsuit contends the 18-unit building was unsafe and accuses owner Tahir Sheikh of suburban Oak Brook and J & J Management and Construction, Inc., of failing to adequately equip the third-floor apartment with fire escape routes and working smoke detectors.

There were no working smoke detectors in that third-floor unit or the one on the second floor where the blaze started, according to Fire Department spokesman Larry Langford.

Sheikh said earlier this week that the management company informed him last month that all tenants had signed statements acknowledging they had working smoke detectors, the Chicago Sun-Times reported (http://bit.ly/1rGYPQJ ). Debra Jenkins, an agent for the company, told the newspaper all tenants had detectors as of Sept. 4.

Mondays fire began shortly after 3 a.m. and raced up a stairwell, trapping four children in their bedrooms and forcing their mother and her boyfriend, Nate Johnson, to leap from a third-story window.

Lawyers representing Johnsons mother released a statement Wednesday saying he suffered burns and smoke inhalation in addition to injuries from leaping from the window.

Sheikh did not immediately return a message seeking comment on the lawsuit.

He told reporters Tuesday that he was heartbroken over the childrens deaths.

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Lawsuit filed over Chicago fire that killed 4 kids

A New York property developer is offering the uber-wealthy the opportunity to buy a condo parking spot for a cool $1 million - merely six times the value of a typical American home.

The 10 parking spaces are for sale at 42 Crosby Street, the luxury apartment building under construction in the SoHo neighborhood in Lower Manhattan.

Based on the $1 million price tag, the spots are probably the most expensive residential car spaces in the country, said the broker marketing the seven-story building.

"Anyone who lives in Manhattan and has a car knows that parking is a premium in the city," said Shaun Osher, chief executive of the brokerage CORE. "There's definitely a large demand and a short supply."

Prices for the spots compare with the U.S. median single-family home value of $174,800, according to real estate website Zillow. For that price, however, there are few if any residences for sale in trendy SoHo, known for its high-end fashion shops and art galleries

Osher said he expected residents of the 10-unit building to snap up the parking spots when the underground spaces, which were approved for construction this week, hit the market.

The building, designed by German-born architect Annabelle Selldorf, will include 10 luxury condominiums priced at a minimum of about $8 million, each with private elevator access.

The 150-to-200-square-foot (14-19 square-metre) parking spaces will be offered under a 99-year license to tenants, who will have the right to transfer or sell their spaces to other building residents.

The pricey spaces will not lack for amenities. Osher said they would come with storage space and electric car charges.

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For $1 million you can buy a parking spot in New York City

A broad alliance of major German housing-related associations, the Verbndebndnis Wohnungsbau (VBWB), presented a "German Plan for Affordable Housing" on Wednesday (10.9.2014) in Berlin.

"Having a place to live is a basic need," said Hartmut Goldboom, a representative of the German construction materials supply industry, speaking on behalf of the alliance. "It should be affordable."

The VBWB claimed that the monthly rent of a typical medium-quality new apartment in Germany's major cities could be reduced by as much as 40 percent compared to current prices, if the government adopted a set of policies making it cheaper to build new apartments.

That could represent a great benefit to millions of renters over coming years - if it turned out to be both accurate and achievable. Moreover, despite its focus on Germany, the twin reports underlying the VBWB report could prove thought-provoking for policymakers in other countries faced with housing affordability challenges.

Reducing the landlord's claim on renters' monthly income

One of the studies underpinning the report was produced by the Hanover-based Pestel Institute, which specializes in regional development and urban planning studies.

There's no shortage of luxury apartments being built, like these in Frankfurt

"In pre-unification West Germany, we had around four million social housing units. But a wave of privatization policies post-unification has led to a situation where there are only a million and a half in the whole of unified Germany today," said Pestel Institute director Matthias Gnther.

"There's a shortage of affordable housing in the bigger cities - not in most small towns, or in the countryside, but in big cities it's getting worse. We need another 250,000 to 300,000 new apartments in the cities - affordable ones, for low- and middle-income people."

The study's focus was on new build, not on renovations. The latter may make life better for residents, but they don't increase the building stock - or its affordability.

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German building industry proposes affordable housing push

BY STEFANO ESPOSITO AND JON SEIDEL Staff Reporters September 8, 2014 5:50AM

Updated: September 9, 2014 2:14AM

Eric Patton Smith spent much of Monday morning standing close to the empty brick apartment building, as fire investigators traipsed across a courtyard littered with shattered glass and charred debris.

And then a bit before noon, Patton Smith pulled himself away to face a grim task: identifying the remains of his little girl, Eriana Patton Smith.

Beautiful in every sense of the word, he said of his 7-year-old daughter, one of four children who perished in a fire early Monday in the apartment building in the Roseland neighborhood.

Two adults, including the childrens mother, also were critically injured in the extra-alarm fire on the Far South Side, officials said.

The blaze began at 3:25 a.m. on the second floor of an 18-unit building in the 11200 block of South Vernon Avenue, authorities said. It was not being treated as a suspicious fire, Fire Media Affairs Director Larry Langford said.

Eriana and her three siblings were found in a bedroom of a third-floor unit, he said.

There were no working smoke detectors in either the unit where the children were found or in the second-floor unit where the fire started, Langford said. But hard-wired detectors were sounding in the buildings hallways, Langford added.

Found in the bedroom with Eriana were Shamarion Coleman, 12; Carlvon Clark, 13, and Carliysia Clark, 15.

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4 children die in Roseland fire, 2 adults critically injured

ST. PETERSBURG At old Kmarts and mobile home parks, on grassy fields near the edges of town and cracking asphalt parking lots, new apartments, corporate offices and shopping centers are on the rise.

An annual report released by Pinellas County's economic development department this week is full of big numbers: 8,400 condo and apartment units in planning and construction, 1,900 hotel rooms, companies such as General Electric and Tech Data investing tens of millions in new manufacturing and office space.

Niche retailers such as Trader Joe's and Whole Foods preparing to open their first Pinellas locations, and outmoded shopping plazas being reworked into destination shopping locales like downtown St. Petersburg's Sundial.

Construction spending nationally has reached its highest levels since 2008 this summer, with so much new work that many companies have been turning down projects.

Though it's unlikely that every chic waterfront condominium project actually will break ground, there's been a marked shift in the past couple years in the attitude of investors.

They appear particularly confident in the kind of urban multifamily redevelopment that seems to be cropping up on every other block in downtown St. Petersburg, said Mike Meidel, director of Pinellas County Economic Development.

We definitely have the mood among investors and, to some extent, the general public that we are coming out finally from this Great Recession, he said.

It's been a hard go for a lot of people. I think now, finally, people are beginning to invest.

Those investments are happening, to a greater or lesser extent, in nearly every category of construction.

BayCare Health System is spending $99 million on a 300,000-square-foot headquarters in Clearwater, and GE Energy Management is sinking $50 million to add 190,000 square feet to its manufacturing center, where it plans to add 250 jobs.

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In Pinellas, developers hitting the ground running