Morgan-Keller Construction received two Associated Builders & Contractors, Baltimore Chapter, Excellence in Construction merit awards on April 12 at the Hyatt Regency in Baltimore.

Morgan-Keller Construction won awards for its work on the Brandywine Crossing Medical Office Building in Brandywine and Nymeo Federal Credit Union project in Gaithersburg.

The Nymeo Federal Credit Union project involved a 1,747-square-foot renovation to an existing branch bank to create a fully functioning financial services credit union.

The Brandywine Crossing Medical Office Building project involved the construction of a 65,330-square-foot, three-story medical office building using tilt-up structural concrete wall panels and interior steel column and beam framing.

Morgan-Keller Construction is a general contracting and construction management firm with offices in Frederick and Columbia. For over 60 years, Morgan-Keller Construction has completed custom home building and commercial building projects.

Follow Allen Etzler on Twitter: @AllenWEtzler

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Morgan-Keller Construction receives two honors - Frederick News Post (subscription)

US construction spending slipped in March Miami Herald U.S. builders trimmed construction spending slightly in March, one month after building activity hit an all-time high. Construction spending slipped 0.2 percent in March to a seasonally adjusted $1.218 trillion, the Commerce Department reported Monday. and more »

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US construction spending slipped in March - Miami Herald

HICKORY A vacant building along First Avenue SE will soon find a new purpose as office space for two local companies.

By June, Alex Harrill, owner of the customized home and renovation company Harrill Construction, said the building will have a new paint job and a new storefront.

The front space of the building will be used for office space for both Harrill Construction and the automotive customization business Xtreme Machines.

Its not the first time Harrill and his company embarked on a renovation project in that part of town.

The Block, a mixed-use development that housed both Harrill Construction's offices and the offices ofXtreme Machines across the street from the building being renovated, also was renovated in 2015.

The space at The Block is currently being rented out, while Harrill Construction offices are temporarily located off Highland Avenue until renovations are complete, Harrill said.

Giving new life to old and dilapidated buildings is a passion of Harrills.

"I just really love old buildings," Harrill said. There are buildings that are past the point of being repaired, but there is so much history in these thingsso much thats happened, that I think its important that we preserve what we can preserve.

In years past, the building has been used as a Chrysler dealership and the Ferguson Plumbing company.

Though Harrill said he had not set foot in the building until last year, he does remember it as the Ferguson Plumbing building.

Harrill said that while the building was in "poor condition," he saw a great deal of potential in it.

You know, a lot of people saw something that just needed to be torn down, but I saw opportunity, Harrill said.Its just really cool; the architecture of it and the barrel top roof is really neat.

The front part of the building had leaked and was moldy, Harrill said.

Renovators also had to contend with deteriorated wood in the building, but overall, the project has not been as difficult as the renovation at The Block, Harrill said.

The total cost of the project is roughly $500,000, a cost that will in part be covered by a $20,000 revitalization grant through the City of Hickory.

Community Development Manager David Leonetti said in a phone interview the project would be good for that area of town.

Were very excited to see the building moving toward re-development, Leonetti said.

Once this project is completed, Harrill hopes to continue renovating other buildings around the city.

I think its important that these buildings be refurbished and used, Harrill said. I dont like to see them torn down.

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Harrill Construction tackles renovation project in Hickory - Hickory Daily Record

The future of construction just got a little bit more real. Researchers at MIT have created a mobile robot that can 3-D-print an entire building in a matter of hours a technology that could be used in disaster zones, on inhospitable planets or even in our proverbial backyards.

Though the platform described in the journal Science Robotics is still in early stages, it could offer a revolutionary tool for the construction industry and inspire more architects to rethink the relationship of buildings to people and the environment.

Current construction practices typically involve bricklaying, wood framing and concrete casting technologies that have been around for decades in some cases, and centuries in others. Homes and office buildings are often built in the same boxy, cookie-cutter-like templates, even though the environment from one area to another may change dramatically.

The architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) sector tends to be risk-averse: Most project fabrication data nowadays have been digitally produced, but the manufacturing and construction processes are mostly done with manual methods and conventional materials adopted a century ago, Imperial College London researcher Guang-Zhong Yang, the journals editor, wrote in an editorial on the paper.

In recent years, scientists and engineers have begun to explore the idea that buildings could instead be built through additive manufacturing that is, 3-D printing. A home could be customized to its local environment, it could use buildings resources more efficiently, and it could deploy materials in more sophisticated ways.

Right now, the way we manufacture things is we go to the mine, we dig out minerals and materials, we ship them to a factory, the factory makes a bunch of mass-made parts, usually out of a single material, and then theyre assembled screwed together, glued together and shipped back to consumers, said lead author Steven Keating, a mechanical engineer who did the research as a graduate student under Neri Oxmans group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

But the groups many projects, he added, revolved around this question: How do we actually fabricate in a way that is more consistent with how biology works?

Keating pointed to the tree as one example of a natural builder. Trees can self-repair, operate with self-sufficiency, build onsite with locally sourced materials, and adapt to their environment.

These are the kinds of principals that weve looked at for a lot of the projects in the group, he said.

While several groups around the world have been working on large-scale 3-D printing techniques, there have been challenges in this process, Keating said.

A lot of other research projects that are looking at digital construction often dont create something of an architectural scale and if they do, theyre not using a process that could be easily integrated into a construction site, Keating said. Theyre not using materials or a process that can be easily code-certified. And what we wanted to make sure could happen is we could actually break into the construction industry, because its a very slow and conservative industry.

Keating and his colleagues robot, called the Digital Construction Platform, looks to address those issues. It features hydraulic and electric robotic arms and can be loaded with all kinds of sensors to measure its environment, including lasers and a radiation-detecting Geiger counter.

In less than 13.5 hours, the robot was able to zip round and round, printing a 14.6-meter-wide, 3.7-meter-tall open dome structure out of a foam used as insulated formwork.

Strange as it looks, this formwork could be filled with concrete. Since this is essentially what already happens in traditional construction, this 3-D printing process could be integrated into current construction techniques. (In both the traditional and 3-D-printed scenarios, the formwork ends up as the buildings insulation.)

The DCP builds an architectural-scale structure out of conventional insulation foam. (Rahkendra Ice / Keating et al., Sci. Robot. 2, eaam8986)

This process has a number of advantages, many of which allow the robot to design and build more in the way that living systems in nature do, Keating said. Three-dimensional printing uses fewer materials more efficiently. It can also create useful gradients, such as reducing wall thickness from the bottom of a wall toward the top. (Nature does this too: Think of a trees trunk at the base versus near the top, or the way a squid beak goes from hard at the tip to soft at the base.)

This process can create and work with curves, which are usually more costly for traditional building methods. The formwork also cures so quickly (within about 30 seconds) that the robot can build horizontally without needing structural support the way traditional construction methods do.

Rather than trying to design the perfect structure beforehand, a 3-D-printing robot could produce a building thats completely in tune with its environmental factors soil moisture, temperature, wind direction and radiation levels, among others. This is how scientists think animals such as termites build their homes by modifying the structure in response to the environment.

Since its solar-powered, this robot can be self-sufficient. And like living things, it could potentially create building materials out of stuff in the local ecosystem: The authors showed that the robot was able to take scoops of dirt and turn the compressed earth into building material. The researchers were even able to print with ice.

I know it sounds silly why would you want to print with ice? but if you actually look, NASAs very seriously thinking about using ice as a fabrication material for places in space such as Mars, because ice actually absorbs a lot of cosmic radiation, Keating said.

Printing with ice from the environment would be much more sensible than lugging all your building materials all the way to the Red Planet, he noted.

amina.khan@latimes.com

Follow @aminawrite on Twitter for more science news and "like" Los Angeles Times Science & Health on Facebook.

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Check out this building that was 3-D-printed by a robot - Los Angeles Times

Those shiny new office buildings downtown and trendy office parks under construction on Jefferson Highway may be good for the local construction industry. But theyve added a lot of space to the office market, which is a key factor behind the decrease in occupancy last year.

Overall occupancy decreased from 85% to less than 82.5% in 2016, while rental rates remained flat, according to Ty Gose with NAI/Latter & Blum in a presentation on the office sector at the annual TRENDS seminar.

The other factor affecting the slight downturn was the continued low price of oil, which fell to below $40 per barrel last year.

But oil is now stabilizing at $50 and BRAC has estimated we will gain 2% in employment this year, Gose says. So hopefully occupancy will go back up.

Among the other takeaways from Goses presentation:

In the local residential market, the flood has had a significant impact and in many respects it has been positive, according to Kyle Petersen of Keller Williams Realty First Choice, who made the residential presentation at the TRENDS seminar.

Home sale volume was up more than 10% in 2016 over the previous year, and demand outpaced supply, causing homes to fly off the market: 53% of homes sold within the first 30 days.

Two weeks ago, I listed a house at 6 p.m. Petersen says. I had two offers by 8 p.m. and had to cancel seven showings the next day. Homes are selling within hours of being on the market and at full asking price.

That said, average home sale prices in the Capital Region decreased 3% in 2016, after increasing a total of nearly 10% in 2014 and 2015.

Stephanie Riegel

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New available space, oil downturn cause Baton Rouge office occupancy rate to fall - Greater Baton Rouge Business Report

Before and after: The $44M transformation of a downtown Raleigh building Triangle Business Journal Built in 1970, the 192,370-square-foot state office building had been largely unchanged since its construction. It still had a large amount of asbestos a material commonly used in buildings before asbestos was banned for its risk of causing serious ...

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Before and after: The $44M transformation of a downtown Raleigh building - Triangle Business Journal

The former Goodman Furniture store, a problem property Bethlehem fought in court to get redeveloped, could become a $2.5 million project of storefronts topped by 14 apartments.

The proposal, which Bethlehem will present to a judge next month, calls for about three first-floor tenants, a bus depot and an optional building addition to the property at 30 E. Third St. The 700- to 800-square-foot apartments would be on the second and third floors.

The plans were proposed by Collaboration 3, a trio of Lehigh Valley partners: D'Huy Engineering, Alloy 5 Architects and Skepton Construction.

Bethlehem picked the project out of four submitted after the city put out a call for proposals on what to do with the vacant property.

Alicia Miller Karner, director of the city's economic and community development department, said she liked the proposal because it calls for several commercial tenants rather than one large tenant.

She also likes the idea that some of the tenants will face the Greenway trail and Adams and Mechanic Streets. She said that would promote use of the Greenway, which meanders between Third and Fourth streets along the path of a former railroad bed.

She said the plans show the option of a drive-thru for a commercial tenant, but drive-thrus are not allowed in that zoning district. She said the city would not support that portion of the project.

Collaboration 3 indicated the project could be completed within 16 months. The city needs to get approval from a judge because of a legal maneuver the city used to force the redevelopment of the building.

The city had battled with owner Alvin Kanofsky, a 78-year-old physicist, for years to fix up the vacant building. Over the last couple of years, he was cited for code violations some of which are still under appeal.

The city stepped into make emergency repairs in the building and successfully argued to be appointed the building's conservator. Under the conservatorship, the city can make decisions that a property owner would but does not hold the title to the land. The city is looking to force a sale to Collaboration 3.

The plan must be approved by a judge. The city is scheduled to present the plan May 8.

Kanofsky, who has represented himself in court, could not be reached for a comment. In the past, he has declined to discuss the property because of pending appeals.

The building was a priority for the city to redevelop because it is in a high-profile section of the South Side Business District.

The building is in a block the city has invested tens of thousands of dollars in to build up in the wake of Bethlehem Steel's demise and is around the corner from a parking garage and an office building under construction. The office building, developed by Dennis Benner, is to be anchored by St. Luke's University Health Network and Lehigh University.

nicole.mertz@mcall.com

Twitter @McallBethlehem

610-778-2253

Redevelopment plans for the former Goodman furniture store:

3 commercial tenants

14 apartments

1 bus depot

Source: Collaboration 3 proposal

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What's in store for old Goodman building in Bethlehem? - Allentown Morning Call

MENLO PARK, Calif. (KTVU) - An investigation is underway Wednesday night after a construction accident at Facebook's Menlo Park headquarters. It sent two workers to the hospital. The accident happened at an office building under construction, off Bayfront Expressway.

It happened at Building 21 thats part of Facebooks expansion where two men fell 40 feet while they were working on a horizontal cross beam.

Just after 5 p.m. Menlo Park Fire District got a call of a structure collapse with people trapped at the north end of Facebook's new building.

When firefighters arrived, they didn't find people trapped, but they found two construction workers had fallen 40 feet from the building's steel frame. The men were rushed to Stanford Hospital with significant injuries including broken bones.

There was rebar all over the place they could have landed on so if you want to say lucky for surviving, unlucky that it happened, but lucky, said Menlo Park Fire District Battalion Chief Dan Coyle.

A preliminary investigation reveals the men were working on a beam when something shook or shifted the building, causing it to become unstable and causing the men to fall. A crane was operating with them at the time. It's unclear if a piece of steel fell off that crane and hit the building.

Im not sure if it was a beam failing or if something was dropped, said Coyle. There was something that occurred with the metal framing that they were working with. What we saw it was little bit distorted.

Coyle said some beams now appear twisted and part of the building looks tipped over, five degrees out of alignment.

The men were said to be wearing full safety gear at the time and roughly 100 workers were at the site. The area has now been cordoned off.

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2 iron workers injured working on Facebook building - KTVU San Francisco

1020 Prospect Street #402, La Jolla, 92037 1020 Prospect Street #402, La Jolla, 92037

The premiere [sic] limited edition penthouse at 1020 Prospect Street in La Jolla promises buyers a one-of-kind property that has been meticulously designed and curated for discerning home collectors.

The penthouse suite, or Unit 402, comprises three bedrooms, two and a half baths, and over 3200 square feet of living area at Muse La Jolla, a project underway to convert Prospect Center, an office building built in 1967 and designed by noted Southern California architectural firm Ladd & Kelsey, into 16 luxury residential units.

The renovation of this classic icon preserves the integrity of the architects original modernist vision, listing materials promise, while elevating the property to a whole new level that meets the expectations of modern luxury.

Every element of Muses airy interiors have been thoughtfully considered to design the ultimate trophy property worthy of the most discerning buyers, the listing continues. Features include expansive stacking slider window walls opening the residence to the ocean for the ultimate indoor/outdoor living experience, dramatic 10- to 12-foot ceiling heights, gracious entry foyer, and a breathtaking private skytop terrace.

The kitchen includes a book-matched Taj Mahal granite full height signature kitchen wall, white acrylic cabinetry designed by Pininfarina (the Italian design studio thats also responsible for the look of Ferrari automobiles), white Alpine quartz counter slabs, and a Miele appliance package complete with built-in coffee system.

The master suite includes an indulgent two-person steam shower featuring a dramatic Copenhagen granite architectural detail. Other luxury appointments throughout the unit include gallery walls throughout the open floor plan for the display of private collections, designer fixtures by Gessi and a temperature-controlled walk-in wine room and bar with the same book-matched granite as the kitchen. (Book-matching is a technique wherein seams between multiple slabs are selected to match up, creating the illusion of one solid slab).

Soaring 1012ceilings, expansive window walls allow for panoramic view corridors of the ocean, Mount Soledad, La Jolla Village, Prospect Street, and Girard Avenue resulting in experiential moments throughout the living spaces, the listing continues, concluding that the extraordinary attention to detail illuminates a bespoke sophistication and creates a striking canvas for superlative interior materials and finishes.

Each penthouse includes a breathtaking private sky-top terrace with permanently protected ocean views (due to law changes since the 1960s construction concerning coastal building heights) as well as a private three-car garage within the controlled-access parking structure and access to a 24-hour concierge service.

Beds: 3

Baths: 3

Current Owner: RREF II HV Prospect Property Owner LLC

List Price: $10,120,000

The entire Prospect Center building was last sold in 2015 for a reported $27.9 million, with a $35 million construction loan going to fund the conversion.

Three units in the building are currently offered for pre-sale; completion is advertised for Spring 2017. These range in price from just over $2.7 million for a 1792-square-foot two-bedroom floor plan to nearly $6 million for a 2254-square-foot model. Unit 402s asking price, however, dwarfs other models listed in early April, the home carries a price tag of $10,120,000.

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La Jolla office building goes condo - San Diego Reader

With construction scheduled to begin this summer, the seven-story Twelve01West is expected to be completed next year.

McCaffery Interests recently approved final construction plans for a 140,000-square-footspeculative office development in Chicagos Fulton Market neighborhood. Avison Young, through Principals Brad Despot, Michael Curran and Vice President Erica Rogers, will be responsible for marketing the office space. McCaffery Brokerages Allan Perales, Andrew Macafee and Giovanna Ventola will be marketing the retail space. With construction scheduled to begin this summer, Twelve01West is expected to be completed next year.

Located at 1201 W. Lake St., the seven-story property is two blocks away from the Morgan Street Green Line CTA Station and minutes away from the Interstate 90/94 Expressway. The penthouse level will include a wellness center, tenant lounge, locker rooms and access to a roof deck. The ground floor features 45 indoor parking spots, bike room, more than 11,000 square feet of retail space, as well as 20,000 square feet of landscaped green space. Area amenities include Marcello Ristorante, Alhambra Palace Restaurant and Vera Chicago. The building is designed byAntunovich Associates, whileEastlake Studio is in charge of the interior planning and design.This is the second project under development in the Fullton Market area for McCaffery Interests. The company is also developing 1115 W. Fulton Market, a 37,500-square-foot mixed-use asset located two blocks from Twelve01West.

With the growth in this area, there is strong demand for Class A office space that caters to corporate tenants and those businesses that support them,Curran said in prepared remarks.

McCaffery Interests recently secured a lease for a new fitness center that will open this fall inGrosvenor Americas F1RST mixed-use residential community in Washington, D.C.

Image courtesy ofMcCaffery Interests

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McCaffery to Develop 140 KSF Office Building in Chicago - Commercial Property Executive