Obviously, this week's enewsbrief is going out a day late. We enjoyed the Memorial Day weekend. Hopefully you did as well. I could go on and on about the liberties and freedoms we have due to Americans giving their lives on the battlefield for us, but that soapbox is pretty big right now. All I will say is thank you to all of those who have served.
We are looking forward to the Summer issues of Building Edge. Usually, whether it is the hot weather, kids out of school or family vacations, it seems the summer months are always a little slower on the publishing side. This year is very different. We are anticipating some of our largest issues ever.
Our ENewsBrief list continues to grow. Unlike the print copy of the magazine, there are no caps on distribution. If you know someone wh o would like to receive this, please send me their email and we will add them to the list.
This week, we close up on our July issue of Building Edge and Summer issue of Commercial Building Edge.
If you would like to stop in and see our new home, we are in Northwest Gainesville in the Metro Corp Center, on the corners of NW 39th Ave and NW 43rd St. Actual street address is 4110 NW 37th Pl, Suite C. Gainesville, FL 32606. The phone number for the Gainesville office is (352) 372-5854. The phone number for Ocala is (352) 368-1707.
We look forward to hearing from you.
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www.BuildingEdgeMagazine.com
Our June 2007 will be available at the end of the week. The Cover Feature is Jim & Pal Bennett with Bennett Construction Services in Ocala. We will have an Edge Spotlight this month on Via Bertolini . Our National feature is on Doors: Interior, Exterior, Patio and Overhead/Garage Doors. This is also our Parade of Homes Wrap Up issue. We anticipate this issue will be delivered the third week of June.
Sales will open this Friday on our August issue. The cover story is on Ocala's Adams Homes. The National feature is Curb Appeal: Entry doors, brick and siding, roofing, lighting, landscaping, paving.
Our July issue closes this week. The cover is Kara Sutton & Sutton Family Homes. Our National Feature is on Baths: Fixtures, faucets, home spas, hardware, tile and countertops. if you are interested in participating, please call today. If you would like to preview Kara's newest home before the magazine comes out, their first open house at the new Willow Oak Plantation will be this upcoming Saturday, June 2nd from 1-5. The street address is 8752 SW 74th Ave. To get more information, please contact Larry or Nancy Skaggs at (352) 472-6152.
Sales are wrapping up this week on the Summer 2007 issue of Commercial Building Edge. The Cover feature is on Gray Construction Services. The National Feature is on Green Building. To participate, please email scott@buildingedgemag.com.
Sales for new Home Magazine are open. Home: Living in the Heart of Florida, a ew magazine from Advantage Publishing is now open for sales. Taking the experience we have gained from Building Edge and Commercial Building Edge, we are very excited about this new endeavor which will showcase the best of living in our community. Home: Living in the Heart of Florida will be a general circulation publication available to everyone in the community. The early feedback is beyond anything we could have expected. The website is currently under development. With a distribution of over 30,000 copies, this will be the largest magazine in North Central Florida. For more information, please contact us at (352) 372-5854.
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Alachua County OKs How to Divide Gas Tax
A formula to distribute the money from a proposed gas tax increase between
Alachua County and its cities was approved last week by the Alachua County
Commission. The county will get 52.15 percent of the money, while the city
of Gainesville will get 38.6 percent. The rest will be doled out to the smaller cities.
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No Say for Voters on Development - Yet
A proposal to let voters decide if regulatory changes should be made to
allow a mixed-use development on Newberry Road was put on hold last
week by the Alachua County Commission, which instructed its staff to
continue negotiating a settlement to a legal challenge over the development.
None of the commissioners said they support a referendum vote that was
proposed as a settlement by Brad Stith, a Gainesville resident who has filed
a legal challenge to action taken by the commission last year for Newberry
Village on Newberry Road at Fort Clarke Boulevard.
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Landfill Expansion Approved, But Marion County Commission
Denies Projects
Marion County commissioners narrowly approved expansion of a
construction-and-demolition landfill last week, but rejected an upscale
residential development on a horse farm. Commissioners voted 3-2 to approve
an expansion of the Southside Materials Recycling Facility from 13 acres to
50 acres, despite a recommendation from county staff to reject the proposal.
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Acreage rezoned in Ocala for 186 homes
Despite concerns that development could crowd area schools, Marion County commissioners last week approved changing 75 acres of agricultural land to
residential for 186 new homes near The Villages.
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Development Incentives May Shrink
Major developments in Gainesville would be eligible for smaller tax
reimbursement incentive packages and must meet more specific criteria to
qualify for them under a proposal approved by the Community Redevelopment
Agency last week. The new program is designed to direct projects to the eastside
and Fifth Avenue/Pleasant Street redevelopment areas, while attracting
projects that fill specific needs to downtown and College Park/University Heights.
At the same time, it substantially reduces the amount of money projects can seek.
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Opposition to Tax Cuts Unanimous
Gainesville city commissioners blasted the state Legislature's plans to force
reductions in the amount municipalities receive from property taxes at a
meeting last week. Commissioners criticized proposals from the state
Legislature as forcing cuts in needed services, and handcuffing local officials
who are most directly accountable to their constituents. The commission detailed
its opposition to plans that could lead to reductions of more than 10 percent of
the city's operating budget. These cuts, commissioners warned, could lead to
cuts in core services of the city.
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MCBA Calendar of Events
Click Here>>
BANCF Calendar of Events
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Legislators Looking at Three Tax Plans
Heading into a special June lawmaking session on cutting property taxes, state legislators held a warm-up meeting Monday that ended much the same way it began -- with no agreement on how to cut taxes, how deeply to cut them or how to tax properties to pay for schools. Instead, they spent three hours listening to a PowerPoint presentation of data, much of which they already knew: that longtime homesteaded property-owners have such a good tax deal; it is shifting more of the tax burden to owners of commercial properties and second homes.
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Tax Relief for Homeowners Could Hurt Small Businesses
As the days leading up to June's special session tick past, small-business owners remain in the dark about whether the Legislature will hear their property-tax concerns. That's not to seem ungrateful- discussions about relief for homeowners appear to be progressing, and small-business owners are homeowners, too. However, as business owners, they dread a tax burden shifted to non-homesteaders.
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Small Communities wait for State Decisions to Prepare Budgets
In tiny Howey-in-the-Hills, 35 miles northwest of Orlando, cracks have begun to show in columns at the entrance at the town cemetery. The public works department's backhoe just broke down. And the police department, which gets by on one officer per shift, needs a new squad car. But the town has been forced to put such problems on hold while the debate drags on in Florida's Legislature about how much to cut property taxes.
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New Smyrna Beach Increases Building Fees
Developers here will pay more for city employees to review site plans, annexations and other requests. The city commission approved higher fees for a list of various development and zoning applications to better reflect staff time and other costs. The new fees went into effect immediately. According to a city report, the changes bring the city's fees more in line with those charged by other local municipalities.
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Toll Roads Seen as Way to Limit Growth
Former state Sen. Rick Dantzler defended the controversial Heartland Parkway plan Monday, telling members of the Tiger Bay Club of Polk County that the toll road cutting through Florida's interior would be a way to control and guide growth. Dantzler spoke on behalf of the Heartland Task Force, a landowner group that aims to build the toll highway between Polk County and Fort Myers. He serves as the group's lawyer. The interior of Florida will be changing dramatically in the next few decades, he said.
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New Home Sales Up for April
Sales of new single-family homes increased a surprising 16.2 percent in April to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 981,000 units, according to figures released by the U.S. Commerce Department today. The April sales pace was 10.6 percent below a year earlier. The increase followed downward revision to the sales rate for the previous month, and the sales pace remained below the 1 million-unit pace for the fourth consecutive month.
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NAHB Offers Green Bathroom Guide
The National Association of Home Builders' Remodelers Chair, Mike Nagel, has pointed out how homeowners can easily transform their bathrooms into green bathrooms. NAHB offers a guide of typical appliances and fixtures so that consumers can make smart decisions when remodeling their bathrooms. The guide provides the life spans and information about elements such as water heathers, showerheads, toilets and faucets.
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NAHB President Opposes Immigration Bill
Executive Vice President and CEO of the National Association of Home Builders Jerry Howard has released a statement formally opposing the current Senate immigration bill. He said that as written, the problems with the bill are so grave and extensive that it cannot be fixed. He said that the legislation needs major revisions. If enacted in its present form, it would be irreparable harm to America's small businesses. He then called on lawmakers to start from scratch and draft a new bill will the help of representatives from the small business community to create a reasonable bill that will benefit all Americans.
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Rental Apartment Market Builder Confidence up Due to Strong Demand
Strengthening demand and steady increases in occupancy levels in rental apartments with five or more units kept multifamily builder confidence up in the first quarter of 2007, with the next six months expecting to be even better, according to the Multifamily Rental Market Index. This means that demand is still outpacing supply for rental apartments. In between the first quarter of 2006 and the first quarter of 2007, the national vacancy rate for rental apartment communities dropped more than two percent.
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House Approves GSE Regulatory Reform Bill
The House passed the Federal Housing Finance Reform Act, a legislation that would establish a strong regulatory framework for the housing government-sponsored enterprises - Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Home Loan Banks. The National Association of Home Builders had sent letters to every representative urging them to support the bill. This bill offers a sound regulatory solution for secondary market institutions that would safeguard and strengthen their financial health, while simultaneously supporting their ability to fulfill their housing-mission activities.
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Affordable Housing Threatened by Operating Costs
Significantly increasing operating costs are putting hundreds of affordable apartment communities that were built using Low Income Housing Tax Credits in financial jeopardy. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development also changed the data it used to calculate income limits, which adds to this threat. This change in data has artificially frozen both the maximum income limit requirements of eligible residents and the rents that can be charged in a large number of areas across the country. In these areas, it is impossible to offset rising costs through increases in rents that would normally occur as the result of ordinary inflation.
Americans Go for Bigger Homes
One in five American houses had at least four bedrooms in 2005, according to a report by the Census Bureau, indicating that Americans want bigger houses. This is despite shrinking families and increasing costs for construction and energy. The average household size has shrunk slightly since 1990 to about 2.6 people, while the average new house grew by nearly 400 square feet. Some of the unneeded bedrooms are converted in dens and media rooms.
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Redevelopment Planned for Archer Square
Archer Square has seen better days, but big plans may be afoot.
Merchants are hearingthat owners are trying to bring in a Kohl's
department store. There has also been talk of demolishing and
rebuilding the strip mall in the southwest corner of Archer Road
and SW 34th Street, the site of a former Winn-Dixie.
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Building Industry Goes Green to Help Environment
As gas prices soar and weather patterns make it hard to contest the
impact of global warming, individuals in the building industry are using technology to give the environment and the country's energy supply a much needed breather. Because most people spend the majority of their day indoors, buildings have become the source of much pollution and resource waste. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, buildings in the United States annually account for 39 percent of energy use, 39 percent of carbon dioxide emissions and 70 percent of resource consumption. Additionally, buildings go through 15 trillion gallons of water and 3 billion tons of raw materials in a single year. Developers nationwide are making the choice to build in a manner that is more environmentally friendly.
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Plans Available to Deal with Workforce Problems
Engineering News-Record (ENR) magazine and McGraw-Hill Construction Research & Analytics have released a new report that presents a number of short-term and long-term actions that the construction industry can implement to help counter the growing workforce crisis. The "Ideas for Action: Solving the Construction Industry Workforce Crisis" white paper is the result of a Top Firm Leaders Forum hosted last September in Washington, D.C. Industry "thought leaders" from across the United States identified five main areas that needed to be addressed by the construction industry to tackle the workforce crisis: education and training; immigration reform; better pay and working conditions productivity increases; and improved industry image through full industry engagement. Click Here | |
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| Current Issues |
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Residential May 2007
Commercial Spring 2007
HOME: Living in the Heart of Florida
Coming Soon
Fall 2007
For more information,
Please contact
Scott Costello |
If you are interested in joining the BANCF and taking advantage of these great opportunities,
Please visit
www.bancf.com |
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