Free Republic

For three decades, Andy Henry has declined $20-30 million offers for his 21-acre, 175-year-old farm. Ironically, local government is using his perseverance to take the entire property via eminent domain and replace pasture with affordable housing. Grass for concrete? Legacy surrendered? No deal, Henry says. Period. Full stop. On South River Road, in Middlesex County, N.J., warehouses and industrial buildings have replaced the once abundant farms of yesteryear—except a lone holdout. “My family sacrificed on this land for 175 years,” Henry adds. “All the other farms disappeared. We did not. We will not.” In 1850, Joseph McGill—Andy Henry’s maternal great-grandfather—bought...

Shares in China Evergrande, the massively indebted property developer, fell back to all-time lows on reports that its chairman and founder has been arrested. Hui Ka Yan, who started the company in 1996, was taken away by police earlier this month and is being monitored at a designated location, Bloomberg reported.

A video posted by John Braswell, a resident closely monitoring the bald eagle nest in Auburn, revealed a devastating sight Saturday morning: the tree cradling the nest had been cut down, scattering its contents. For years, the nest was home to “Pam and Jim,” a pair of bald eagles beloved by the community.As neighbors gathered near the site off N College Street across from AU Fisheries many were brought to tears as Pam and Jim were seen flying in tandem over the area where their nest once stood, appearing to search for their missing home. “It’s just so sad,” one...

One of China’s leading property developers, Sunac, has filed for bankruptcy protection in the United States, shortly after winning approval from its creditors to restructure nearly $10 billion worth of debt. The company filed a petition for Chapter 15 protection with the US Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York on Tuesday. It’s the second big distressed Chinese developer in weeks to seek such protection: Evergrande made a Chapter 15 filing in the United States a month ago, after posting losses of $81 billion in the last two years. The process allows the court to step in when...

News AnalysisWhile commentators obsess about American weakness and worry about how Russia and China will divide up the world, China has its own problems, primarily an ever-growing burden of unpayable debt.It revealed itself first with the property developer Evergrande, but when that firm’s debt problems hit the headlines last spring, Beijing had to have known that the list of firms with problem debt would grow. And indeed, the list of insolvent development companies has increased, making China’s financial system increasingly fragile.On a deeper level, the circumstance reveals a fundamental weakness in China’s top-down, planned approach to economic management.The latest company...

Horizon International Group had just nabbed the contract and city tax breaks to develop the W Hotel, a 300-odd-room luxury hotel set to sit atop the Partnership Tower in downtown Houston, in early March 2020. A week later, pandemic lockdowns ground the construction industry to a screeching halt, setting off ongoing labor shortages and project delays that have since been compounded by layoffs, the Great Resignation and severe materials shortages. When the W Hotel project picks back up later this year for Horizon, it will mark more than two years of labor and materials difficulties that have driven up costs...

In 1930, John Maynard Keynes predicted that we’d be having 15-hour workweeks by the end of the century. But by the time it was 2013, it was clear that the great economist had gotten something wrong.Welcome to the era of bullshit jobs, as anthropologist David Graeber coined it. Since the 1930s, whole new industries have sprung up, which don’t necessarily add much value to our lives. Graeber would probably call most jobs in software development bullshit.I don’t share Graeber’s opinion, especially when it comes to software. But he does touch an interesting point: as more and more processes are automated,...

For years, Emory Morsberger has been a proponent of the possibilities along the Ga. 316 corridor. So when Gwinnett leaders on Tuesday approved up to $72 million in loans for a massive development, Rowen, that could eventually bring more than 50,000 jobs to 2,000 acres outside Dacula, he didn’t mind that the public never got to weigh in on the proposal.

Hillary Clinton has damaged our country in more ways than can be counted. Not only did she weaken our country along with former President Barack Obama, but she is also linked to numerous suspicious deaths of people who were either close to her or were close to sensitive information that would see Hillary imprisoned for treason. The “Butcher of Benghazi” proved that she has never cared for the people she was sworn to protect but was more interested in climbing the political ranks. Fortunately, Hillary was unsuccessful in her Presidential campaign or else we would be facing a real crisis.

The Manhattan district attorney’s office and New York state police are expected to arrest several senior executives in former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s finance company on fraud charges Tuesday, The New York Times reported. The executives are expected to be a part of a larger arrest of roughly a dozen senior executives spanning several companies involved in New York real estate and development. The district attorney’s office launched a new investigation into New York’s $62 billion construction industry, including the construction and facilities department of Bloomberg L.P., in 2017. Investigators uncovered a pay-to-play scheme in which subcontractors and...

Mayor Bill de Blasio on Friday took the extraordinary step of firing his embattled investigations commissioner, Mark G. Peters, the culmination of a fierce rivalry between the two powerful men. It was a rare and consequential action by a mayor to remove an investigations commissioner: The position is understood to come with a large degree of independence that allows impartial scrutiny of all areas of government, including the executive branch.

In a matter of days, time will run out on a plan that could cut down on commuting times, pave the way for even less traffic congestion, and potentially give taxpayers a break. For reasons that remain unclear, the General Assembly has ignored the Illinois Department of Transportation's I-55 managed lanes project, and the cost of doing nothing has the potential to harm the state's ability to do business for years to come. The I-55 managed lanes proposal would add an express toll lane between the Veterans Memorial Tollway in the southwest suburbs and the Dan Ryan Expressway in Chicago....

"...What it means: This aligns with the administration's focus on reserving the temporary visas for very high-skilled (and higher-paid) professionals while encouraging low- and mid-level jobs to go to American workers instead. The new guidance affects applications for the lottery for 2018 fiscal year that opened Monday..."

The city is trying to kick-start development of vacant 62-acre parcel near downtown controlled by a controversial Iraqi billionaire once linked to convicted Democratic influence peddler Antoin "Tony" Rezko.

Speaker Mop & Glo made headlines for her call to investigate opponents of the Ground Zero mosque, but there was something else about her remarks that should have raised your hackles: “There is no question there is a concerted effort to make this a political issue by some. And I join those who have called for looking into how is this opposition to the mosque being funded,” she said. “How is this being ginned up that here we are talking about Treasure Island, something we’ve been working on for decades, something of great interest to our community as we...

Pick on someone your own size! Why an elderly lady with a big fighting spirit refused to sell her home to developers When Barry Martin took on the role of construction supervisor of a huge Seattle shopping complex, he never imagined that he would end up caring for Edith Macefield, a stubborn 84-year-old who had refused $1 million from the developer to move house. Here he describes their unlikely friendship.

General Information The Public Improvement Fee (PIF) is collected and used to finance a portion of the cost of new public improvements at Belmar. www.belmarcolorado.com Public improvements at Belmar include such things as public parking, parks, streets and sidewalks, water, sewer and storm water utilities, public spaces and public art. The City of Lakewood is collecting the PIF on behalf of the Plaza Metropolitan District No. 1 and its Trustee, US Bank. The PIF at Belmar is 2.5% on all sales transactions, as defined in the PIF Covenant. The PIF is a fee and NOT a tax; therefore, it becomes...

The iPhone will be losing some of its popularity among developers, advertisers, and publishers next year as the app makers try to diversify their offerings to other platforms. In 2011, developers will be concentrating their efforts on making apps for Windows Phone 7, Android and the iPad, according to a report released today by Millenial Media, Digiday, and Stifel Nicolaus. The analysis--based on interviews with developers, publishers, and advertisers--shows that 29 percent plan to support Android in 2011, 20 percent will focus on the Windows Phone 7 and Apple's iPad, and 12 percent will target RIM's Blackberry platform. By contrast,...

The developers of the Ground Zero mosque are refusing to flat out reject cash for the project from Holocaust-denying Iranian nuke nut Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. “I can’t comment on that” was the reply of mosque spokesman Oz Sultan yesterday when asked specifically if the fund-raising would extend to Iran and Saudi Arabia. "We'll look at all available options within the United States to start." Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the leader of the project known as Park51, has said at meetings with downtown officials that he would raise money for the 13-story mosque from local Muslims, foundations and the sale of bonds....

With a record amount of commercial real-estate debt coming due, some of the country's biggest property developers have become the latest to go hat-in-hand to the government for assistance. They're warning policymakers that thousands of office complexes, hotels, shopping centers and other commercial buildings are headed into defaults, foreclosures and bankruptcies. The reason: according to research firm Foresight Analytics LCC, $530 billion of commercial mortgages will be coming due for refinancing in the next three years -- with about $160 billion maturing in the next year. Credit, meanwhile, is practically nonexistent and cash flows from commercial property are siphoning off.