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ATLANTA, October 12, 2006 - Off-campus internships have ironically sent Oglethorpe University seniors Nate Blong and Robert Pavelka, Jr. back to campus. They are interning for companies chosen to design and build Oglethorpe's new residence halls. Blong, from Panama City, Florida, is in Oglethorpe's dual-degree engineering program with Georgia Tech and plays on Oglethorpe's basketball team. An outstanding student, Blong is interning on the residence hall construction project through the architectural firm Gardner Spencer Smith Tench & Hensley and liaising with their engineering subcontractors. "I sat in on all the planning meetings and made corrections to the plans so that the architects could just focus on designing. After graduation I hope to get a job in structural engineering," said Blong.
(RTTNews) - Wednesday, Feldman Mall Properties, Inc. (FMP | charts | news | PowerRating) announced that it closed the joint venture agreement with an affiliate of Heitman in connection with Colonie Center Mall located in Albany, New York. According to the joint venture agreement, Heitman will contribute 75% in the joint venture equity. The company will retain 25% of the total equity in the property. The company will continue to manage the property and will receive customary management, construction and leasing fees. In connection with the recapitalization of the mall, the company has refinanced the $50.7 million first mortgage bridge loan with a new construction facility with a maximum capacity totaling $109.8 million. The new construction loan matures in October 2008 and has an all-in fixed interest rate of 6.84%.
JOHOR BARU: Malpakat Construction Sdn Bhd (MCSB) wants to strengthen its position in the local construction and property development sector before going overseas. Group managing director Char Hon Loong said the company would give itself two years after listing on Bursa Malaysia to embark on the expansion programme. He said the company would submit its listing proposal soon and targeted to be listed on the main board in the first-half of 2007. Char said the floatation exercise was mooted in 1998 but it had to be deferred due to the Asian financial crisis. .
It was October, 1969, when Inter State Paving Inc., a company founded six years earlier by Pietro Rizzuto, got the contract that would propel it to the top of Quebec's booming road-construction industry. Until then, Mr. Rizzuto's company had received only minor government contracts. One of its first was awarded by Daniel Johnson's Union Nationale government in the fiscal year 1968-1969 for a job worth almost $135,000, according to public-accounts documents. Mr. Rizzuto wanted in on the construction boom that was taking place in Quebec. Mr. Johnson had died in September of 1968 and Jean-Jacques Bertrand was premier. And Inter State Paving submitted and won its first bid for a major road project, a four-lane extension of Highway 19 known as the Papineau-Leblanc Autoroute in Laval.
A slowdown in the nation's overheated housing market has some analysts predicting that home construction is dropping into a bottomless chasm. But things may not be as bleak as the pessimists are predicting.
For one thing, the stocks of home building companies are seeing a boom on Wall Street, enjoying a bull run of more than 20 percent since midsummer. Part of the reason: anecdotal reports that a few more buyers are motoring to sales centers at outlying subdivisions.
A fresh reading on the industry occurs Wednesday, with housing starts for September. In August, the level of construction plummeted by 6 percent, a worse showing than analysts were expecting, to an annual rate of 1.665 million units. Watch for a very modest rebound.
Recently, sales of new homes have been running 22 percent below the levels of last autumn, said Mario Ricchio, senior homebuilding analyst for Zacks Investment Research.
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