Free Republic

~ EXCERPT ~ Both short and long-term confidence in the U.S. housing market continue to fall, with homeowners now expressing the highest level of pessimism in two years. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just 15% of homeowners expect the value of their home to go up in the next year while 33% expect the opposite and think the value of their home will decline. The current figures reflect more pessimism than a month ago when 19% were optimistic and 30% pessimistic about the value of their home over the next year. Looking longer term, only 39%...

Sam Zell: Obamacare And Dodd-Frank Are Economy-Killing Monstrosities, And There Won't Be New Construction For Years Joe Weisenthal Mar. 3, 2011, 7:39 AM Billionaire real estate mogul Sam Zell is on CNBC's Squawk Box this morning. Like many guests, he's furious at the Obama administration over Dodd-Frank and Obamacare, both of which he regards as economy-killing, uncertainty-creating monstrosities that ought to be repealed. He considers the odds of repeal to be 0%. As for commercial real estate, his wheelhouse, he doesn't see any significant construction for the next 2-3 years, at least. Update: He continues to slam US policy, saying...

SIERRA VISTA — The importance of Fort Huachuca can be seen with the number of new construction projects which will start soon and future ones planned for upcoming years, Brig. Gen. Gregg Potter said Thursday. New facilities, worth $15 million for the Army’s Gray Eagle Unmanned Aerial System training, is a year out from opening and a $6 million replacement fire station will be occupied in May 2012, said Potter, who commands the Intelligence Center of Excellence and Fort Huachuca. Making his comments at a dinner of the Fort Huachuca 50, an organization which for the past 23 years has...

President Barack Obama unveiled a $37 billion budget blueprint that calls for $640 million in military construction projects at installations in Texas, including $315 million for Army and Air Force projects at Fort Sam Houston, Lackland AFB and Randolph AFB in San Antonio.The amount of Pentagon-proposed military projects in the state is far below the $1.1 billion sought last year, but represents the end of a building boom created by the 2005 base closure process and the transfer of Army troops from overseas installations to Fort Bliss and Fort Hood.

Dallas-based Primoris Services Corp. announced that its wholly owned subsidiary, James Construction Group LLC, has been awarded five contracts — worth about $89 million — for highway infrastructure work and projects related to the construction of natural gas production facilities in Louisiana and Texas. Primoris moved its headquarters to Dallas from California earlier this month.

Bones delay Blue Island stadium By Steve Metsch smetsch@southtownstar.com Jan 18, 2011 02:31AM Blue Island Park District Commissioner John Spizzirri isn’t joking when he calls the hill at Blue Island’s Memorial Park, “Curse Hill.” Over the past year, the construction of a new stadium there has been delayed by weather, building woes and, yes, bones. Human bones. “We didn’t find any full skeletons,” said park board president Fred Bilotto. “It’s all pieces. A femur here. A rib there.” Construction workers discovered the bones in September while excavating for the foundation of a new football stadium at the park. When the...

The stretch of U.S. 65 between Ozark and Branson (MO)has some of the Ozarks’ most impressive scenery. There are lush, rolling hills, distant horizons and, if you look east, one of the biggest homes in the United States. A house currently under construction near Highlandville spans almost a full acre from wall to wall, on a 500-acre site. The ambitious project, nearly three years in and barely at the first floor, totals 72,000 square feet. Putting that figure in perspective might require a few comparisons. According to the Census Bureau, the average new home size over the last five years...

Fort Walton Beach - Authorities believe that between 30 and 40 illegal aliens were employed in the construction of the 7th Special Forces Complex, but by the time the very thorough 3-month investigation was wrapped up, so was most of the work, and the great majority of the workers were unaccounted for. Fort Walton Beach - Authorities believe that between 30 and 40 illegal aliens were employed in the construction of the 7th Special Forces Complex, but by the time the very thorough 3-month investigation was wrapped up, so was most of the work, and the great majority of the...

The McMansion, the mass-produced, super-sized home that saw its heyday earlier this decade, is poised to resurrect itself from the ashes of the real estate collapse. A few months ago, real estate site Trulia declared, "The McMansion Era is Over." Just 9 percent of the people surveyed by the site said their ideal home was more than 3,200 square feet. That news came on top of data from the National Home Builders Association that the median size of new homes dropped from 2,268 square feet in 2006 to 2,100 square feet in 2009. The implication is that the recession has...

A 15-story hotel in Shanghai, China was built in six days, according to ArchDaily. What's even more impressive is that this building is apparently "Level 9 Earthquake Resistant." CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR VIDEO OF ITs CONSTRUCTION

  For union officials who wanted to line their pockets with benefit payments intended for members, Joseph Olivieri was the man to see. Now they will have to go elsewhere. This Wednesday a Manhattan federal jury found Olivieri, ex-executive director of the Long Island-based Association of Wall, Ceiling & Carpentry Industries (WC&C), guilty of perjury in a case that underscored the extent of Genovese crime family control of New York City-area construction contractors and unions. As part of the Justice Department racketeering probe, former Carpenters & Joiners District boss Michael Forde and eight other defendants already had pled guilty....

A plan to install what would have been North America’s largest living wall on the west facade of the Edith Green-Wendell Wyatt Federal Building in Portland has been deemed too risky, and too expensive, by the General Services Administration. Portland’s SERA Architects and Cutler Anderson Architects of Bainbridge Island, Wash., received international attention for proposing 250-foot-tall vegetated “fins” to shade the federal building’s west side. The building’s energy performance is tied to the amount of shade it receives throughout the day, according to Don Eggleston, president of SERA Architects. However, because of concerns about high costs of installation and potential...

And here you thought bedbugs were the biggest source of anxiety for hotel guests. Yes, guests at Vdara hotel in Las Vegas now have something else to worry about: being burned alive by the glare of the building's "death ray." What the heck's a "death ray," you ask? Well, first off, it's not as deadly as it sounds, since no one has actually died from it -- at least not yet. But according to the U.K. Daily Mail, the powerful beams of Nevada sunlight reflecting off the glass hotel onto sections of the hotel's swimming pool area have burned some...

A $7.25 million, 850-foot pedestrian bridge and guardhouse for the Volkswagen plant won approval from a city panel Tuesday. The steel-and-glass structure, more than one-quarter the length of the Walnut Street Bridge that spans the Tennessee River, will serve as the main entrance to the auto plant. The pedestrian bridge, paid from city, Hamilton County and state funds as part of the automaker’s incentive package, will cross over a stream and one of VW’s vehicle test tracks and negotiate a steep change in elevation at the site, officials said. “It will be an extraordinary bridge,” said Steve Leach, the city’s...

Peace Now: At least 2,000 W. Bank units have foundations laid, ready to be built as freeze expires; 11,000 ready for construction without further gov't approval. More than 13,000 settlement housing units in the West Bank are ready for construction once the building moratorium ends on September 26th and at least 2,000 are ready for immediate construction, according to a report by Peace Now released on Sunday. According to the report, 2,066 units in the West Bank have either had construction permits approved or their ground works already laid. Peace Now said that hundreds of additional units, whose foundations have...

HUAIAN COUNTY, CHINA—So you think struggling home from Ontario’s cottage country was tough? Think again. And consider, if you will, the case of Chinese trucker Pang Laisuo. On Sunday his coal-laden transport truck was caught in a traffic jam near here, about 240 kilometres north of Beijing. Pang knew he’d have something of a wait. What he didn’t know was that it would last 18 hours. “Everyone who pulled up at 4 o’clock Sunday afternoon ended up being stuck there until 10 o’clock Monday morning,” says Pang, a lean and grizzled man in his 50s speaking at a roadside stop...

Note: Video included. "Bin Laden's Son Is Hospitalized After He Hears His Father's Voice Omar Bin Laden Is Treated for Schizophrenia, Wife Asks for Divorce" July 9, 2010 SNIPPET: ""It's true that he was put on medication but released himself early," said a spokesman for Zeina Al Sabah, Omar's wife. The spokesman confirmed that Omar had bipolar disorder and was on anti-depressants." SNIPPET: ""Omar loves and hates Osama at the same time," she said." SNIPPET: "Omar, 29, has denounced his father's terrorist tactics and ideology. But he still maintains an emotional bond..." SNIPPET: "Much of Osama Bin Laden's family, comprising...

A nine-day traffic jam outside Beijing has drivers fuming, street vendors turning a quick profit and Chinese traffic authorities struggling for answers. Traffic has been slowed to a crawl since August 14 on a 100-kilometer stretch of National Expressway 110 that runs between Beijing and Heibei province. Officials say the jam is caused by an increase in trucks carrying goods to Beijing and by highway maintenance work along the route. Highways have become numerous and complicated in and around Beijing in recent years as the Chinese public has made a large shift to motorized travel over the past 30 years....

(07-29) 16:28 PDT Los Angeles, CA (AP) -- A construction worker has died after being buried under 11 feet of dirt at a Pacific Palisades home. Los Angeles Assistant Fire Chief Terry Manning says the man was buried in a trench during an excavation shortly before 11 a.m. Thursday morning. Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2010/07/29/state/n143938D50.DTL&tsp=1#ixzz0v8Fv9KJ4

The American Institute of Architects’ midyear look at nonresidential construction concludes that new development spending likely to fall more than 20% this year -- significantly more than forecasters predicted six months ago -- with hotel and office construction down by more than 43% and 29%, respectively. Even with a modest U.S. economic recovery under way, overall nonresidential spending is expected to drop 20.3% for 2010 - nearly 30% for private commercial development -- before edging up an inflation-adjusted 3.1% in 2011, according to the AIA’s semi-annual Consensus Construction Forecast, a survey of the nation’s leading construction forecasters. Manufacturing facilities will...