LYNDHURST, Ohio - More than 100 firefighters battled a large fire after construction crews ruptured a gas line next to an apartment building in Lyndhurst Thursday.

Crews broke the line at 12:30 p.m. right next to a building at the Sherri Park Apartments on Acacia Park, near the Interstate-271/Cedar Road area.

Lyndhurst Mayor Joe Cicero said emergency crews responded as soon as they learned of the 4-inch gas line rupture, and evacuated all the residents from the building.

A short time later, the gas caught fire and crews struggled to turn off the pipeline feeding that main.

Chief Mike Carroll with the Lyndhurst Fire Department said the fire was not widespread in the building. The fire department said the gas spread through the first, second and third floors, with most of the damage confined to the one wing of the building.

Carroll said many of the 120 residents in the building are elderly, but all were able to make it out safely. All of the evacuees were taken to the Greens Nursing Home in Lyndhurst with the help of the Red Cross and South Euclid Lyndhurst Schools.

Video from the Nikki Ferrell from the Beachwood Patch news website ( beachwood.patch.com ) shows flames shooting in the air.

At about 3:20 p.m. almost three hours after the fire started the gas line was shut off and the fire was put out.

The fire left behind black soot that covered the side of the apartment building and ground, and destroyed the construction vehicle that struck the gas line.

Three firefighters were accessed on the scene for injuries and one resident was taken to Hillcrest Hospital.

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Fire out after gas line rupture near apt

Soon after LP and I arrived in Boston a plot of land was bulldozed on our street in preparation for an apartment building to go up.

This section soon became a large, ugly hole that we didn't really like to walk past. But as 2011 crept by the wooden skeleton of a five-story building started to grow slowly up and out of the pit. The weather got warmer last year and surprisingly a group of protesters showed up on our street, decrying such-and-such labour practices from the property developer. This small band of bedraggled activists would brandish signs on random days over a few months, braving 30-degree plus heat to be seen. But as the old adage goes: you can't stop progress, and in the eight or so months since then, the building has still seen a steady stream of new developments.

Floors! Walls! Brick! Doors! Windows! Electricity!

LP and I digest and discuss all of the minute new details of the new building. "You notice all of those boxes sitting outside of the new apartment building today?" I find myself enquiring when she gets home from work, almost before I've asked about her day.

"Yeah, I think they're for the drywall they're putting in at the moment," LP will say, and we'll stand in silence for a little while and sort of appreciate this new development for a few moments. I'll probably stand and try and hide my confusion for a time, as I don't have any idea what drywall is.

I've come to like everything about this apartment building. I like the way that old policemen, who've obviously checked out a bit and are on some safe detail while they wait out a pension (or so I've decided), guard the construction site with a glazed, bored eye, a cup of coffee and a cigarette close at hand. I like the way that work on the building fills the air with the sounds of forklifts and power tools if I have the windows open. I've come to tolerate the way the builders stare slightly lecherously at LP as we walk past.

LP and I are moving to San Francisco in a little over a month. Her family is there, and Boston was always a graduate school and out destination for us. There are so many destination schools in America that most of the people we know in town have left now and returned to their home. So we need to find ours. We've been living the quiet life for a few months. It makes sense to be near LP's family, and we both have a number of friends nearby on the West Coast. We're getting married at the end of May, and then moving in with LP's aunt for a time and deciding whether to rent or... gulp... buy a place.

So I've come to contemplate recently this apartment building, as it nears completion, as a sort of obvious and sentimental metaphor for how long I've lived in Boston. I haven't been here long enough to watch the neighbourhood shift drastically. But, I have been here long enough for them to construct a five-story apartment building.

We came here with no roots and few possessions and little idea of the city. We leave with degrees and work experiences and new friends and the intimate knowledge of a new place. This whole structure of a life came out of an empty pit, like the building. But it's similarly substantial to us. We're not staying here, but we both readily acknowledge that if the pull of family wasn't dragging us Westwards, we could.

On Wednesday, I can go and pick up my Masters diploma from the registrar's office at Boston University. So I've got what I came here for.

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Finishing up our Boston project

An apartment with a view of Central Park is one of the most covetedand expensiveprizes of the New York real estate market.

The cheapest condominium at One57, a 90-story luxury apartment building currently under construction, for example,is $7.35 million while its two-floor penthouse is expected to sell for $115 million.

But according to Alexei Barrionuevo of The New York Times, there was a time when an apartment along Central Park was considered undesirable.

In the late 1800s, he writes, most buildings were not more than five stories high (tall building construction didn't hit its peak until 1961).What's more, malaria was widespread in the park at the time, and New Yorkers wanted to stay as far away as possible.

Malaria is, clearly, not a common problem in New York anymore. But theunseasonably warm weather could bring an influx of mosquitoes to the city. Which means that residents along the park should probably invest in some bug spray.

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A Hundred Years Ago, No One Wanted To Live Near Central Park

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New development in New York has soared over the last 10 to 15 years. While this may be good for the citys economy and the overall health of the real estate market, a new study examines one major downside to new construction.

"The report goes through all the new construction in a number of neighborhoods and it shows how many seats the city should have planned for based on the new housing units built. The city should have been building schools all along," says Barbara Denham, the chief economist of Eastern Consolidated.

Unfortunately, it has not. According to Denham's report, the city has not followed its own formula for how many new school seats should be created based on the number of new housing units added.

Her report evaluated the Upper West Side, Midtown West and Lower Manhattan and found the more construction, the more the public schools are being squeezed.

"From West 59th Street to West 77th Street, they have added over 6,000 new housing units and they only have four school buildings right now and all four of them are over-capacity," says Denham. "Enrollment in those four schools has grown by over 700 students from 2006 to 2011. There is a plan to build a new school on Riverside South that will open in 2016 but that school will likely be overcrowded by the time it opens."

That is because by the time it opens, an addition 3,000 units will have come on line.

The same goes for Midtown West.

"In Midtown West, they have already added 11,000 new housing units from 1998 to 2011 and the plan is to add 4,000 more. And thats before the plans for Hudson Yards gets underway, which is another 5,000 units," says Denham.

One school there is being replaced with a larger building, but it too will most likely be over-capacity by opening day.

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Apartment Construction Boom Has Packed Local Schools To Over-Capacity

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The weekend before 'Super Saturday' saw steady home sales. Simon Johanson reports.

Gone are the days when a pool or gym would suffice in a new apartment building.

Now nightclubs, bars, shared dining facilities, poker rooms and yoga are being included to create "vertical villages" and provide communal spaces for residents.

As a result, modern apartment blocks are becoming more like pseudo hotels.

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New apartment blocks, such as Fifty Albert as seen in an artist's impression, are emphasising communal space.

The large array of lifestyle services on offer caters for an increasingly sophisticated set of high-rise dwellers wanting spaces and facilities not found in older buildings.

Developer Hamton's new Fifty Albert building near Albert Park Lake offers residents a health club, day spa, on-site yoga, indoor garden retreat and concierge service at ground level.

On the top floor are a sun deck, hot tubs, fully equipped barbecue, kitchens, dining, lounge, cinema and poker rooms all shared.

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Rise of the vertical village

New apartment blocks, such as Fifty Albert as seen in an artist's impression, are emphasising communal space.

GONE are the days when a pool or gym would suffice in a new apartment building.

Now nightclubs, bars, shared dining facilities, poker rooms and yoga are being included to create "vertical villages" and provide communal spaces for residents.

As a result, modern apartment blocks are becoming more like pseudo hotels.

Advertisement: Story continues below

The large array of lifestyle services on offer caters for an increasingly sophisticated set of high-rise dwellers wanting spaces and facilities not found in older buildings.

Developer Hamton's new Fifty Albert building near Albert Park Lake offers residents a health club, day spa, on-site yoga, indoor garden retreat and concierge service at ground level.

On the top floor are a sun deck, hot tubs, fully equipped barbecue, kitchens, dining, lounge, cinema and poker rooms all shared.

Another architecturally striking building about to begin construction in A'Beckett Street called MY80 will feature a private rooftop nightclub-bar and lounge on the 53rd floor.

As well as a pool, residents get a business centre, cinema and barbecue terrace.

Link:
Welcome to the vertical village

Tenants that were evacuated out of a South Bend apartment building after it was hit by a car are anxious to get the rest of their belongings.

AsWSBT first reported early Thursday morning, a car slammed into the building located at the corner of Olive and Lawson Streets.

There is a major crack running up the building and city officials say it is unsafe and will have to be demolished.

However, South Bend's Code Enforcement Office is trying to have the building stabilized enough so the people that lived there can get their things out.

The building is made up of nine rooms that people rented. According to the St. Joseph County Red Cross, no children lived in the building and tenants were mostly older people who had fixed incomes. When the accident happened in the middle of the night, most of them were evacuated before they could grab all their belongings.

City building inspectors say the building is so unstable they blocked off part of Olive Street and are detouring traffic away from the area because of the potential danger of the building crashing down. On Friday a construction crew was brought in to board up a gaping hole in the front of the building and to try to stabilize the complex.

The local Red Cross has been assisting the 12 people that lived there.

"In this case we provided folks with a prepaid debit card they could use for food or whatever they determined was their need, as well as the motel," said John Pinter, St. Joseph County Red Cross director.

The tenants could stay at a local hotel through Saturday morning, but were told they needed to contact friends or family to find a place to stay after that.

South Bend Code Enforcement Director Katherine Topple said early Monday morning she and her inspectors plan on going in the building to see what the damage looks like from the inside. If they can stabilize it enough they are going to allow tenants to go inone byone to get their belongings out. And then they are going to tear the building down

Continued here:
UPDATE: Smashed South Bend apartment building to be demolished

After hibernating for years, apartment construction is poised to boom in San Francisco, where desperate renters say those high-rises can't rise high or fast enough.

Largely in response to the city's growing technology sector, 22,000 residential units are in various stages of approval and construction. In a few years, residents could be signing leases for new addresses in South Beach, South of Market, Central Market and Mission Bay.

"There's been so much approved over the last four years that's never been built, so there's essentially a backlog of projects waiting for financing," said John Rahaim, the city's planning director.

Since 2008, only about 1,710 units were built each year, compared with an average of 2,220 each year between 2004 and 2008, according to the department.

Now, five major dwellings that were approved before 2008 and stalled during the recession have been restarted. Developers have begun, completed or been cleared for construction on more than 2,000 units.

More are on the way. Eight residential buildings, with more than 1,300 combined units, received building permits last year. There are permit applications for another $1.6 billion worth of projects, Department of Building Inspection records show.

The upcoming construction boom, real estate observers say, gets its boost from a more stable economy, financiers once again being willing to invest and an incoming wave of employees at local companies like Twitter, Zynga and Salesforce. While some city-mandated affordable housing will be built, many of the new units will be priced beyond the reach of working- and middle-class residents.

"If these tech companies are moving in right now, where are all these people going to live?" asked Joske Thompson, a local real estate agent. "The demand is far greater than the supply right now."

One site that has come back to life is 1844 Market St., west of Octavia Boulevard, where construction will start in April.

Set to open in fall 2013, the $55 million building will have 113 rental units - 99 market-rate and 14 affordable units.

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S.F. apartment construction boom around the corner

Developers broke ground on two new apartment complexes at the St. Johns Town Center in the past month.

A few miles to the west, residents started moving into the 242-unit Bennett Creek apartments in January.

A mile or so south, Cabana Club is about to open on Baymeadows Road with 252 units. And the same developers plan to break ground this summer on another 300-unit complex, called Hacienda, right across the street.

Then theres Seagrass on San Pablo Road, 396 units. And 220 Riverside with another 294.

It hasnt always been like this. Apartment complexes suffered the same downturn that single-family construction did. In the 2009-10 fiscal year, not a single building permit was issued by Jacksonville for a new apartment complex. But thats changed with complex after complex breaking ground.

I think its seems about right, said Abe Fort with Perimeter Realty, the developers of Cabana Club. Historically, it wasnt uncommon to see 1,500 units a year. In the 90s, it was almost every year.

But in 2000, it became condos, and after 2008, we had nothing. We can easily handle 1,000-2,000 new units a year.

Ed Forman, president of Watson Realty, said hes going to meet with his managers next week to discuss, among other things, the recent growth in apartments.

If you look at the last five years, building stopped, both homes and apartments, he said. Now its a supply-and-demand issue. A lot of people exited their homes due to short sales or lost their homes to foreclosures. Now they cant qualify for a mortgage.

But housing is a requirement. You cant live on the street.

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After downturn, Jacksonville apartment construction is picking up

NORCROSS, Ga. -- A large fire raged through a building undergoing renovations Thursday morning.

The fire was reported shortly after 5 a.m. near the Overlook Summit apartments on Chase Lane in Norcross. The original 911 call reported a brush fire; 11Alive's Julie Wolfe learned that crews are trying to determine whether the brush fire caused the building fire or vice versa.

The flames were visible from Interstate 85, according to Gwinnett Fire spokesman Tommy Rutledge.

Originally, investigators thought part of the apartment complex was on fire. They now say that the fire was limited to a nearby empty building.

When crews tried to tap a nearby fire hydrant, they discovered that it was dry; they had to use 1,000 feet of fire hose to bring water to the blaze, according to investigators.

Two nearly buildings were evacuated while crews battled the fire. The all-clear was given at around 7 a.m.

Julie Wolfe learned that the opposite side of the same building caught fire in October. That blaze burned all the way into the building's firewall. Some of the apartment complex residents have complained of flickering lights and bad wiring in their units.

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NORCROSS | Fire rips through apartment under construction