Bottomline

City Commissioners will consider a request to close down a portion of the 800 block of New Hampshire Street for up to two years to accommodate the construction of a new multistory apartment and office building in downtown.

Background

The request comes from Lawrence-based First Management, which plans to build an apartment and office building at the northeast corner of Ninth and New Hampshire streets. To accommodate construction equipment, the company is asking for the portion of New Hampshire Street north of Ninth Street and south of the mid-crosswalk in the 800 block of New Hampshire to be closed for the duration of the project. Traffic on Ninth Street also would be impacted. Traffic would be open in both directions, but crews would shift all traffic to south half of the street.

The city also is noting that a portion of the 900 block of New Hampshire Street already is reduced to southbound traffic only. That is to accommodate construction of a hotel/retail building on the southeast corner of Ninth and New Hampshire. The city projecting there will be a time period when traffic in both the 800 and 900 blocks of New Hampshire Street is impacted.

Consent agenda

Approve City Commission meeting minutes of 09/09/14 and 09/16/14

Approve all claims. The list of approved claims will be posted to the agenda the day after the City Commission meeting.

Approve licenses as recommended by the City Clerks Office.

Approve appointments as recommended by the Mayor.

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Lawrence City Commission meeting for Oct. 14

GROTON The state Fire Marshals Office, which asked the state to halt operations at the Groton Wind facility last fall because of building and safety code violations, issued a report this week saying the plants owners have met the states requirements and all the needed permits have been issued.

The $120 million, 48-megawatt, 24-turbine wind-energy plant, which the states Site Evaluation Committee (SEC) threatened to close on Nov. 4, has now satisfied the fire marshal, the Attorney Generals Office and several others.

At least one intervenor still has complaints, and the SEC has more investigative and administrative work to do, so the investigation is not complete, said Michael Iacopino, the SECs attorney.

But the owners of Groton Wind, LLC Iberdrola Renewables of Spain and Portland, Ore. have fulfilled the requirements of an April compliance agreement with the Fire Marshals Office, which was the chief complainant.

The applicant has completed all of the requirements of the compliance agreement to the satisfaction of the fire marshal. Occupancy permits for the (Operations and Maintenance) building and each of the 24 towers were delivered to the site on Sept. 26, wrote Deputy Attorney General Ann M. Rice and attorney Dianne Martin of the states Transportation and Construction Bureau in a letter sent Monday to the SEC.

Art Sasse, director of communications and brand for Iberdrola Renewables, said his company has been busy, making sure it meets all the states requirements.

Public safety is our number-one priority at every single wind farm and solar plant that we operate and weve worked very hard to meet the rigorous safety standards at the state and local level, to assure the Groton community that we take our role as a responsible business partner and a good neighbor very sincerely, Sasse said Thursday.

Fire marshal investigators had said the plant did not have all the required state permits when it went online in December 2012. In August 2013, Ronald D. Anstey, section chief and investigator with the state Fire Marshals Office, found that the plants owners did not file fire code and safety code plans with the fire marshal, failed to provide required fire suppression at the turbines, and had not obtained proper approval from state agencies for its design and construction of the plant and its Operations and Maintenance building, which the company moved across the street from its originally stipulated location.

In its initial responses to the fire marshals claims, Iberdrola officials said they had obtained the proper permits through the Department of Environmental Services, and claimed they had acted lawfully.

But the company later agreed to the compliance agreement with the Fire Marshals Office, working to properly obtain the required permits for the wind turbines and for the Operations and Maintenance building,

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Fire marshal OKs Groton Wind operations after deeming facility safe

ORLANDO, Fla. -

Nearly half a dozen construction projects in downtown Orlando are creating a construction boom, according to Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer.

The projects are mostly residential, with 900 units being built over several projects. Commercial construction is ongoing too with both a hotel and office building planned for Orange Avenue north of Colonial Drive.

Over the last few months crews have been busy constructing the 270-unit Crescent Central Station, a mixed-use development across from the Orange County courthouse at Orange Avenue and Amelia Street. The development has some two-story units facing a courtyard pool and a rooftop amenity deck. Several retail spaces are planned in units facing Orange Avenue.

Meanwhile, Dyer helped break ground Thursday afternoon on The Brownstones at Thornton Park. Twenty-eight town homes are projected to be complete next fall at Summerlin Avenue and Jackson Street.

Dyer says the spate of construction projects represents renewed interest in living in downtown Orlando.

"It continues to emphasize how much people want to live in our downtown, that the economy is coming back," said Dyer.

According to Dyer, more apartment developments are planned for downtown. He says he expects to preside over another groundbreaking sometime within the next few weeks.

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Orlando mayor: Projects creating downtown construction boom

An artists rendering of the first office development at Bay Meadows, known as Station 4. The four-story building is slated to be 210,000 square feet.

Bay Meadows will soon be ripe for companies to start roots at the massive transit-oriented development in San Mateo as developer Wilson Meany announced it will begin construction on the sites very first office complex this month.

Decades in the making, Wilson Meany and partner Stockbridge Capital Group will break ground on Station 4, a 210,000-square-foot four-story office building at 3050 S. Delaware St. that developers anticipate will attract top tenants with its central location near State Route 92 and Highway 101.

With commercial space in San Francisco and the valley dwindling, were seeing numerous companies looking to expand in the mid-Peninsula. There is an intense demand for this type of product right now, Janice Thacher, partner at Wilson Meany, wrote in an email.

San Mateo has become a hotbed of development proposals as of late. Developer Hines seeks to start construction on 292,400 square feet of office space on Delaware Street just north of State Route 92 at the end of the year. EBL&S Development submitted an application to transform the 12-acre Station Park Green site next to the Hayward Park Caltrain station into 599 residential units and up to 15,000 square feet of office space.

Caltrain itself seeks a partner to build a mixed-use development atop the agencys 2.7-acre Hayward Park Caltrain station surface parking lot and two recent pre-applications propose turning two former gas stations on El Camino Real and Third Avenue into two smaller three-story office and retail space buildings.

Bay Meadows, now in Phase II, has long sought to incorporate office space into its transit-oriented development and anticipates Station 4 to open in mid-2016.

The entire 160-acre site was broken into two phases. A shopping plaza features a Whole Foods Market, 19 live-work condos, 55 single-family homes, 98 townhomes and 575 apartments, the Kaiser Permanente medical center, Franklin Templeton headquarters and San Mateo police station, The 83.5-acre second phase includes the recently-opened private Nueva School, open space and numerous residential developments. The site between the Hillsdale Caltrain station and 25th Avenue is nearly unrecognizable from its former days as a race track.

Bay Meadows variety of services will attract a modern workforce on which companies can capitalize, Thacher said.

Todays workforce wants to be integrated into a vibrant community where there are dining, shopping and entertainment options. Bay Meadows is a compact, walkable neighborhood that will be full of shops, restaurants, parks and humming with residents and students. That environment will help a company attract top talent, Thacher said.

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Bay Meadows beginning office construction: Ground to be broken this month on 210,000-square-foot building

By some measures, the office market in Northern Virginia is as bad as its been in 25 years. Fewcompanies are expanding and those that are increasinglychoose from a small pool of buildings that are within walking distance of public transit, restaurants and other amenities.

Other building owners are weighing whether they shouldlower rents, wait until demand picks up or ifthings get really bad consider futuresfor their office buildings other than as office buildings. Among the possible escape clauses one might consider: turning those old office buildings into schools.

About 700 students elementary students began classes last month at6245 Leesburg Pike, a retrofitted officebuilding in Falls Church. Its a unique project in a lot of ways but it may not be for long.

Students in a hybrid theater-library space at Baileys Crossroads Upper Elementary.(Courtesy Cooper Carry)

In the D.C. market, the propertiesthat are Class A, that are near Metro or are in Arlington or downtown, are holding their value pretty well, saidLauren Perry Ford an architect at Cooper Carry. But anything another notch below that really struggles. So people who might not otherwise belooking around are lookingfor partners to see how they can put theirproperty to the highest and best use.

Perry Ford is head of Cooper Carrys education practice group in its Washington-area office. Most of the groups work is for colleges and universities. But because of a confluence of circumstances, she said, one of the fastest growing lines of business is in K-12 education.

Many of these conditions came into play in theLeesburg Pike project. For one, the office market in the area is hurting. As bad as things are in the rest of Northern Virginia, they are far worse in the Falls Church-Baileys Crossroads area. The office vacancy rate is 33 percent, 12 pointshigher than two years ago and two-and-a-half times the rate in the rest of Fairfax County. Space is being vacated far faster than it is being leased up (what the industry callsnegative absorption).

6245 Leesburg Pike (Courtesy Cooper Carry)

But while the office buildings in Falls Church and Baileys Crossroads are increasingly empty, the schools are packed to the brim, thanks to a booming residential population. Last year, Baileys Elementary was 30 percent over capacity, with more than 1,300 students.Overcrowding became such a problem that the school system brought in more than a dozen trailers for expanded classroom space.

Soa deal was struck: Fairfax County bought

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What to do with dying suburban office buildings? Turn them into schools

General News of Wednesday, 8 October 2014

Source: Daily Guide

After nearly three years of denial, the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC), has finally admitted that the party indeed owns the ultramodern office complex at Adabraka in Accra.

National Organiser of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC), Yaw Boateng Gyan made the confession last Tuesday on Accra-based Asempa FM.

This was after several denials by the leadership of the party concerning the ownership of the building. When the issue about the building was first made public, the party's Deputy National Organiser, Joshua Akamba, was among the first people to deny the story.

"The NDC has not acquired any new building, neither are we putting up any ultra-modem office building," was his exact rebuttal on Adom FM's 'Dwaso Nsem' programme in December 2011.

Fast forward to 2014, on the late afternoon political talk show programme hosted by the National Organiser of the NDC, who is seeking re-election, touted the construction of the building as part of his achievements for which he needed to be retained.

"Today, as I talk to you, I am just coming from our new office; we will soon commission the building and when people come and see it, they will realise the work we have done," he posited.

He justified the construction of the building saying they could not continue to rent office spaces for the NDC.

Aside that, he said they could not compare their office to those of their colleague political parties outside the country, claiming theirs looked like a hen coop.

Read more:
NDC admits ownership of ultramodern office complex

ALAN WOOD AND LIZ MCDONALD

Fertiliser manufacturer Ravensdown is spending more than $20 million on new office headquarters and a revamp of its supply line as it concentrates operations in the Christchurch suburb of Hornby.

Construction has begun as it confirms head office will stay outside the central city. Before the 2010-11 Canterbury earthquakes, the manufacturer had about 120 head office staff in the central business district.

Now there are 200 staff at Hornby, which chief executive Greg Campbell says is not a lonely location given the amount of commercial building that continues to take place.

Before the quakes, the farmer-owned co-operative worked from leased premises in Oxford Tce in the central city, after moving its head office up from Dunedin in the late 1990s.

Campbell said building on the land made sense, as it had been under-used and as they wanted to stay in Christchurch. There was also the replacement of older earthquake-compromised storage buildings that had been pulled down.

"The office is only one part, because we are investing in a whole lot of infrastructure across the country. In Hornby, for example, we are looking at new large stores, taking delivery of a new materials handling system.

"We're replacing conveyors and have got a new blending system ... which is the way we handle product on site here ... that increases the load out (by truck) by four or five times faster than our existing one."

Ravensdown supplies fertiliser to the farming community by truck and also by Cresco aircraft through its 100 per cent-owned subsidiary, Aerowork.

The new 1700 sqm single-storey office will be of similar size to the old building and include a customer centre. The site is on Main South Rd.

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Ravensdown to open new Hornby office

Boston Properties is in talks with two potential tenants to take the top floors of its $275 million, 17-story, 888 Boylston St. building under way in the Back Bay.

Were well into discussions and negotiations, confirmed Bryan Koop, senior vice president and regional manager of the real estate investment trusts Hub office.

Koop confirmed the company is targeting boutique financial, private equity, hedge fund and investment management firms.

Boston Properties and signed anchor tenant Natixis Global Asset Management will formally mark construction of the building with a groundbreaking today. Its the Back Bays first speculative office building since Boston Properties finished 111 Huntington Ave. in 2001 in the same Prudential Center complex.

In addition to 365,000 square feet of office space, 60,000 to 80,000 square feet of retail space could accommodate three to four retailers. Weve got really, really exciting retailers in discussion and close to agreement, Koop said.

Boston Properties goal with 888 Boylston city-approved in 2008, but delayed by the economic downturn is to build Bostons most sustainable office building. It is designed to consume 45 percent less energy and 37 percent less potable water than a typical office building of its size. It will produce energy on site through an 85 kW solar array and 14 wind turbines.

Everything about the building is designed first and foremost for the lives inside of the building, Koop said, noting the natural light will allow tenants to turn off their lights 60 percent of the time.

Excerpt from:
New Pru tower to be greenest in city

The Office of the Ombudsman (OMB) was asked yesterday to dismiss from office Makati Mayor Jejomar Erwin Jun-Jun Binay and 20 councilors charged earlier with plunder and graft in connection with the alleged overpriced construction of the Makati Parking Building.

A group mostly young Makati residents belonging to the United Makati Against Corruption (UMAC) trooped to the OMB headquarters in Quezon City City to file the 15-page consolidated reply-complaint.

It said the evidence submitted earlier against the respondents was strong that warrant their immediate ouster from the service.

UMAC spokesman Jhasper Cuayzon said lawyer Renato Bondal and Nicolas Enciso, convenors of the group, were supposed to file the reply affidavit but could make it for security reasons.

The consolidated affidavit also asked the OMB to include in the plunder and graft charges 10 key officials of the Hillmarcs Construction Corporation which put up the controversial 11-storey office-parking building.

They were identified as Efren Canlas, Damian Ramos, Trinitas Canlas, Susan Ramos, Shiela Dayrit, Edoyuard Canlas, Juan Canlas, Christima Elisse Canlas, Hak Jin Kim and Roberto Henson. (Jun Ramirez)

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Dismissal of Jun-Jun Binay sought

Raleigh, N.C. Crews demolishing an office building in Raleigh's Glenwood South district Tuesday morning damaged a neighboring jazz bar.

It happened shortly after 10 a.m. when a wall crashed through C. Grace Cocktail Bar, at 407 Glenwood Ave.

"I didn't know what had happened. It was really scary. Our whole building shook," said Lynn Snow, who was working at a nearby coffee shop at the time.

She went outside, she said, and found bricks and steel beams falling on top of the bar.

No one was injured, but C. Grace owner, Katrina Godwin, said the fall left a gaping hole over one of the bathrooms and a food prep area. A damaged water line caused flooding throughout the business.

The bar, Godwin said, will be closed for at least several days but that it could reopen by the weekend.

William Robertson, superintendent for Choate Construction Co., said he is still trying to find out what went wrong.

Crews began demolition last week on the office building to make way for a 6-story luxury apartment building at the corner of Glenwood and West North Street.

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Demolition crew damages Glenwood South jazz bar