Shares of Apogee Enterprises Inc (APOG: Quote) gained more than 7 percent in extended trades Wednesday after the glass-products designer's results for the fourth quarter beat analysts' expectations.

Apogee reported a 73 percent increase in profit for the fourth quarter from last year, helped by double-digit revenue growth in three of its four segments. Looking ahead, the company forecast earnings for fiscal 2016 in line with analysts' estimates.

Joseph Puishys, Apogee chief executive officer said, "Apogee's growth engine continued in the fourth quarter as we again grew revenues in the double digits and income more than 50 percent. Performance across the company was strong, with double-digit earnings and revenue growth in three of four segments."

Minneapolis, Minnesota-based Apogee Enterprises develops glass solutions for enclosing commercial buildings and framing art.

Apogee's net earnings for the fourth quarter were $13.89 million or $0.47 per share, up from $8.04 million or $0.27 per share in the year-ago period.

On average, five analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expected the company to report earnings of $0.43 per share for the quarter. Analysts' estimates typically exclude special items.

Net sales for the quarter grew 15 percent to $246.70 million from $214.42 million in the prior-year quarter. Analysts had a consensus revenue estimate of $242.38 million for the quarter.

The company noted that its sales performance was strong, with double-digit earnings and revenue growth in three of four segments.

Architectural glass revenues for the quarter rose 23 percent from the prior-year period to $92.3 million, while architectural services revenues were flat with last year at $63.5 million. Architectural framing systems grew 22 percent to $77.0 million and large-scale optical technologies revenue rose 18 percent to $22.7 million.

Apogee's backlog at the end of the quarter was $490.8 million, up 49 percent from the year-ago period. According to the company, about 80 percent of the backlog is expected to be delivered in fiscal 2016, while the remaining 20 percent is expected to be delivered in fiscal 2017.

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Apogee Enterprises Shares Rise As Q4 Results Beat View

The bids are in for the northwest Canton fire station and the Canton City Council will discuss which business will be awarded the design and construction management services contract to oversee the building of the new station.

The council will also discuss adopting a nuisance ordinance amendment to include banning LED lighting around windows of commercial businesses.

The fire station, which will be operated by the Cherokee County Fire and Emergency Services once it is built, underwent some delays due to the city requesting the bidders submit their own designs.

Mayor Gene Hobgood said at the time the process could confuse bidders instead of having a clear drawn design already on hand.

Only two construction companies submitted bids, which varied drastically in price, during the initial bidding process. The council voted to put the fire station design and construction management services out to bid again in order to get a clear cost estimate on the design and have the company oversee the construction phase.

Six businesses submitted price quotes: Sutton Architectural Services, Pieper OBrien Herr Architects, Wiley/Wilson, Sizemore Group, Casteel Construction Co. Inc. and Pond Constructors. The lowest bidder was Casteel, who submitted a bid of $617,406.

The council will vote on the bids and select a company at its meeting tonight at 6 p.m. at City Hall.

In other business, the city will also receive an update on the downtown parking enforcement from Councilman Farris Yawn.

The councilman gave an update in March that the parking time limit needs to be enforced. Changes suggested include three-hourparkingon East Main Street down to the dance studio; two 20-minute spaces in zone 3 in front of the Painted Pig Tavern; and three 20-minuteparkingspaces in front of Stouts Growlers.

Other items on the agenda are:

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Canton City Council to review contract bids for fire station

Ottawa, Canada (PRWEB) March 31, 2015

Leapfrog Lighting recruited two new expert team members to help manage increasing demand for the popular No-Trouble Retrofit Program. Sabiha Casey, recently re-elected as board member at BOMA Ottawa, joins the Leapfrog team to help communicate the benefits of fully managed LED retrofits for building owners and managers. Sabiha joins sales leader Jim Armitage to help drive business development and sales.

"Sabiha and Jim are key to managing our rapid growth in LED retrofit projects," explained Stephen Naor, CEO of Leapfrog Lighting. "It isn't about selling the concept. Everyone understands the savings potential on lighting operations costs afforded by LED retrofits, especially in the face of rising electricity costs. However many businesses are held back by the complexity of auditing, planning, installing and managing rebates. Sabiha and Jim will help put the "No Trouble" into the retrofit process."

Sabiha Casey brings twenty-four years of experience in marketing and business development across commercial building-related services, together with extensive work with trade associations such as BOMA.

"Sabiha's credentials are impressive. We were inspired not just with the years and loyalty she has shown, but her expertise. For me, the fact that she is a board member of BOMA Ottawa made it clear that she is truly invested in the industry. That's important. It's all about Leapfrogs relationships with clients."

BOMA Ottawa members own, manage and support 60 million square feet of office, retail and industrial space in Ottawa. Sabiha Casey has been a longstanding board member and returns in 2015.

Over her career she has worked with a variety of support companies, working with building and property managers. Mr. Naor explained: "Important skills she brings to Leapfrog include knowledge of building management, strong leadership skills, proven planning and forecasting, and a strong base in the application of lighting technology."

Jim Armitage, head of Leapfrogs sales team also brings more than two decades of experience, and has already helped shape and streamline the No-Trouble Retrofit program unique to Leapfrog.

"The secret of the success of Leapfrog's No-Trouble Retrofits is our team approach," said Mr. Naor. "Jim, and all the team really helped make this the best managed LED retrofit program out there."

Jim Armitage's successful business development career, bridging 1998 to today, covers diverse fields within commercial building, construction and related fields. Jim worked on program development and facilitation as a consultant to The Minto Group. For GRG Building Consultants he managed a regional office. At Dryvit Canada, Jim developed national sales programs for exterior insulation and finish systems. He served in the past on the Board of Directors for EIFS Council of Canada.

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Leapfrog Lighting Team Grows as Demand Increases for Leapfrog's Unique Managed No-Trouble LED Retrofits

Philadelphia, PA, March 28, 2015 --(PR.com)-- Alvin Holm of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania has been included in the Strathmores Whos Who Worldwide Edition for his outstanding contributions and achievements in the field of architecture.

About Alvin Holm Mr. Holm has over 35 years experience in the architectural field. He is the Principal of Alvin Holm AIA, Architects which is an architectural firm providing architectural design services in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He specializes in traditional and classical design for residential and commercial properties. Previously, Mr. Holm taught at the Bauhaus foundation program at the Philadelphia College of Art, as well as studio courses at Drexel University. He is affiliated with A.I.A., I.C.A.A. and N.S.S. He was born in February 1936 in Evanston, Illinois and obtained a M.A. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1962. In his spare time Mr. Holm enjoys music, reading and research. For further information, contact http://www.alvinholm.com.

About Strathmores Whos Who Worldwide Strathmores Whos Who Worldwide highlights the professional lives of individuals from every significant field or industry including business, medicine, law, education, art, government and entertainment. Strathmores Whos Who Worldwide is both an online and hard cover publication where we provide our members current and pertinent business information. It is also a biographical information source for thousands of researchers, journalists, librarians and executive search firms throughout the world. Our goal is to ensure that our members receive all of the networking, exposure and recognition capabilities to potentially increase their business.

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Alvin Holm Recognized by Strathmore's Who's Who Worldwide Publication

Without receiving a single competitive bid, the College of DuPage has paid a member of its foundation board more than $630,000 to design and install signs for the school over the past four years with much of the work made possible through a contract that references her experience as an architect.

That's where it gets tricky.

Foundation board member Carla Burkhart is not an architect. Her company, Herricane Graphics, does not provide architectural services.

A Tribune analysis of records from Burkhart's work at the school since 2011 raises questions about how Illinois' largest community college awards contracts, especially to vendors who serve on the board of the College of DuPage Foundation, the school's private fundraising arm. Ten of the foundation's 22 board members work for companies with financial ties to the college, according to documents obtained under the state Freedom of Information Act.

After questions from the Tribune, the chairwoman of the school's board of trustees, Erin Birt, recently ordered a review of contracts between the school and its foundation members. The publicly funded college does not have a policy regarding contracts with foundation board members.

The college's dealings with Burkhart also have prompted a state investigation.

The Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation recently filed a document with an administrative court against Burkhart, asking her to address the claim that she falsely represented herself as an architect when she signed a contract with the College of DuPage in 2012. Under state law, it's a misdemeanor to portray oneself as an architect without a license.

The Edgar County Watchdogs, a downstate group that has criticized the college, alerted the state agency to the issue.

Burkhart denied any wrongdoing earlier this month. She said in a response filed in court that the college provided a boilerplate contract for architects when it gave her a $106,885 deal for work as a signage consultant at its Glen Ellyn campus and defended her point by pointing out that attachments in the contract refer to signage. She declined to comment to the Tribune, except to say she has done work for the college since 2003. The college, however, did not provide any records to the Tribune showing her companies did work at the college prior to 2011.

Burkhart has not been charged with a crime.

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College of DuPage gives foundation board member $630,000 in no-bid projects

The following companies announced personnel moves this week: DTZ, NAI, NGKF, Rouse Properties, TD Bank, Transwestern, Colliers International, Hines, Cushman & Wakefield, Rosemont Realty, Mast Construction, Greystone, and Berger Commercial.

DTZ has hired Roberta Liss to serve as president of its east region. Based in the Washington, D.C. office, where she will serve as managing principal for DTZ's operations for that market, Liss will also be responsible for overseeing business development and client relationships, recruiting and client services across the region's other offices for DTZ.

Liss was most recently executive vice president of leasing and marketing at BECO Management. Before that she was an executive vice president of CBRE and a principal and director of brokerage for Trammell Crow Co. During her 30-year career, Liss has completed more than 6 million square feet in transactions.

Liss is an active member of CREW and a graduate of The Pennsylvania State University College of Engineering, where she earned a degree in architectural engineering.

NAI Robert Lynn has promoted Rick Medinis, SIOR and Tyson Erwin, SIOR (pictured, right) to co-presidents of the firm's industrial division.

Medinis has been with the firm for the entirety of his 22-year career. He currently serves as a...

Erwin broke into the industry as a merger and acquisitions consultant with GaylerSmith Group...

In their new position, the pair will manage the industrial group and will continue to provide brokerage services in the Northwest Dallas market.

Newmark Grubb Knight Frank is expanding into St. Louis via partner Newmark Grubb Zimmer.

Mike Carlson and Kevin McLaughlin have been chosen to lead the office with a combined 25 years of experience as top producers in the local St. Louis market.

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CoStar's People of Note (Mar. 22 - 28)

With an eye toward growing its business in New York City, Melville-based H2M architects + engineers acquired Frank S. Smith, Architect, a Maspeth, Queens-based architectural firm with an additional office in East Northport.

H2M, a multidisciplinary firm with more than 260 professionals in architecture, engineering, environmental services and related fields, bolstered its architectural services with the acquisition of the 21-year-old firm. The majority of Frank S. Smiths projects, which include single-family homes, apartment buildings, commercial and office buildings, and industrial and warehouse spaces, have been in the five boroughs.

The Frank Smith acquisition has immediately strengthened our efforts to expand into New York City, Rich Humann, H2Ms president and CEO, said in a statement. Franks team brings a strong knowledge of the New York City Department of Buildings process and construction logistics process.

Smith and his staff will work out of H2Ms Melville headquarters, in the private sector architecture studio.

In addition to Melville, H2M has offices in White Plains, Albany and New City, plus two in New Jersey.

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H2M acquires Queens architecture firm

NEW YORK, March 17, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- The DisruptCRE: New York Conference will take place March 26th, 2015, from 12:00-7:00 PM, in New York City's Financial District. The event will include networking with world class technology innovators, educational and topical discussions, exhibitor showcase, and a unique pitch segment, where tech companies are challenged to present and debate the merits of their technologies.

Attendees will include thought leaders from corporate real estate, development, architectural design, property management, property services, engineering, venture capital, PR, construction, tech enthusiasts, and many others.

"What makes DisruptCRE the conference of CRE tech conferences," according to John J. Cona, Founder and CEO of F9Analytics, "is the diversity of innovations, the accessibility to the visionaries, and the ability of early adopters to communicate, learn, and explore how these technologies can advance their business."

The Programming consists of 6 disruptive panels/topics. Moderators and Panelists are curated by the DisruptCRE team and content is driven by new innovation, industry trends, and disruptive technologies.

Stephen Hopkins, Organizer of the DisruptCRE events says, "The way the CRE industry currently operates is antiquated. Our presenters will explore how technology is facilitating transformative changes in the future of developing, managing, buying, selling, and financing commercial properties."

The conference closes with a casual "cocktails and nosh" networking event where attendees can re-visit the showcase for networking and demos in a casual atmosphere to engage tech companies, sponsors, VC's, and other real estate industry leaders.

For event information including tickets, visit http://www.disruptcre.com.

To learn more about F9Analytics prior to the event, visit http://www.f9analytics.com.

Panel Sessions include:

Notable Panelists include:

Link:
Technology, Venture Capital & Commercial Real Estate Collide in NYC

Washington, DC (PRWEB) March 17, 2015

Savills Studley, the leading commercial real estate services firm specializing in tenant representation, has relocated its Downtown Washington office to 1201 F Street, NW. To welcome clients and friends to the firms new space, Savills Studley hosted nearly 300 employees and guests at their new 25,000 square foot class-A office space on March 12, 2015.

Savills Studley has earned an outstanding reputation over the course of our nearly 50 years history in Washington and the design of our new space was focused on making sure we continue to deliver exceptional results for every client. From our location at Metro Center which gives us quick access to locations around the city to the mix of collaborative and private spaces that encourage creativity while protecting our clients confidentiality, every decision was about making us better, said Executive Vice President and Co-Regional Branch Manager Tom Fulcher. According to Fulcher, Savills Studley was located in its previous location across the street at 555 13th Street, NW, for 28 years. In that time, the firm has more than doubled its personnel and now employs over 70 people in its downtown DC office and approximately 20 professionals in its Suburban Washington office in Tysons, VA.

The offices were designed by architectural firm Gensler in collaboration with the Savills Studley DC management team.

Savills Studley has represented many of the areas most important organizations in their real estate decisions and is growing in new areas such as structured finance and capital markets to better serve the needs of the firms clients.

The firm is highly regarded in the DC region and supports numerous community organizations on both an individual and corporate level. In 2015, Savills Studley was recognized by The Washington Business Journal as a Best Place to Work for the 11th consecutive year.

About Savills Studley

Savills Studley is the leading commercial real estate services firm specializing in tenant representation. Founded in 1954, the firm pioneered the conflict-free business model of representing only tenants in their commercial real estate transactions. Today, supported by high quality market research and in-depth analysis, Savills Studley provides strategic real estate solutions to organizations across all industries. The firms comprehensive commercial real estate platform includes brokerage, project management, capital markets, consulting and corporate services. With 26 offices in the U.S. and a heritage of innovation, Savills Studley is well known for tenacious client advocacy and exceptional service.

The firm is part of London-headquartered Savills plc, the premier global real estate service provider with over 27,000 professionals and over 600 locations around the world. Savills plc is listed on the London Stock Exchange (SVS.L).

For more information, please visit http://www.savills-studley.com and follow us on Twitter @SavillsStudley and LinkedIn.

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Savills Studleys DC Office Celebrates Expansion with Unveiling of New Strategically Designed Office Space

If you ever decide to walk the length -- and at least part of the breadth -- of Grandview-Woodland and you do it on a winter's day, then it pays to start out with a hearty breakfast. You can get one of those, billed as a ''meat skillet'' and served in the cast iron pan in which it is cooked, which seems both manly and befittingly industrial, arising at the corner of Powell and Commercial, where Kessel&March operates its foodstore/eatery.

Breakfast is served at the headwaters, so to speak, of Commercial Drive, the sinuous soul of Vancouver's east side and, it might be argued, one of the last hold-outs of class and conscience in a city gone mad with glass and nonsense.

Just a few short metres from my two baked eggs, ham, breakfast sausage, potatoes, baked beans, tomato, mushroom and toast is a chain link fence, several garbage cans, surveillance cameras and, on the other side of the fence, on the railway tracks, a rust-brown CN car bearing the emblem of La Commission Canadienne de Bl.

A river's job is to find its way to the sea. Commercial Drive, by contrast, flows up hill, away from the inlet to where the view is still grand but the land less wooded than when the railroad first made its way to Vancouver's shore. The port is all fenced off these days, and some of the near shore industry and chandlery has given way to huge storage lockers because apparently, in the modern economy, once we've offloaded all those goods that arrive from China in containers, our houses are no longer sufficient to accommodate the stuff we buy, so we pack it away back down near its port of entry. Self-storage is the fastest growing segment of the commercial real estate industry. Strange times.

Opposite Kessel&March on Powell is the stirring of an even newer economy, Tesla's Vancouver service centre, itself just metres away from a Hydro substation that hums the tune of a post fossil-fuel world. I've never seen a Tesla actually driven up Commercial Drive, mind you. The east side still inclines more to fixing things than to flashing them about.

Up aways on the corner of Franklin, at Storm Brewing Ltd., brewmaster James Walton is ''renovating'' though it is hard to separate what's new from what's, well, chaotic. Anyway, when an epidemic finally hits our shores, be sure to have some Black Plague Stout on hand. It might not stave off Ebola, but at 8.5 per cent alcohol by volume, drink enough of it and you won't care. Across the street, meanwhile, Sincerity Wholesale Ltd. seems to promise more than it can possibly deliver.

The first major tributary to intersect with Commercial Drive is Hastings Street. Look right to get your first glimpse of distant downtown -- and a foretaste of the eastward creep of developers like Millennium (of Olympic Village fame), who are offering up 82 units in a four-storey condominium development, Bohme, and promising ''a wonderful new neighbourhood of white brick residences, shops and restaurants in the heart of authentic Vancouver.'' I suppose if your idea of bohemianism is to live in a white brick condo on Hastings Street on the site of a previously ''authentic'' car lot, then plunking down a quarter of a million clams on a 500-square-foot box in ''Vancouver's Trendy East Village'' might be just the ticket. Fill your boots, and feed your inner gypsy.

The corner of Commercial and Hastings is also where the proletariat chariot, the No. 20 Victoria bus, turns south and begins its climb past Nick's Spaghetti House, which has fattened many an east side family for nigh on 60 years. In the parking lot a binner gives a friendly wave, while a woman with bright green hair (a real bohemian, perchance?) who lives upstairs between the NGE Convenience Store's 7UP sign and that of a happily revived York Theatre opens the door to admit a friend. Kitty-corner is the Adanac Towers -- at 12 storeys, one of the tallest buildings in the precinct, a modernist concrete tower built in the late 1970s and a precursor, perhaps, to a flood of incoming density. At three or four times the height of most apartment blocks in the area, you would think it would offend the skyscape, but just like the 12-storey Panorama Gardens up on Frances Street, its injury is more in its drab design than its brawn. Adanac Towers looks down on a stream of cyclists hithering and thithering crosstown on one of the east side's most popular bike routes, and it's here that the first of The Drive's S-bends curls up to meet Venables Street.

Just before The Drive straightens out, in the space of half a block, you can get a tattoo, a haircut, your computer repaired, stock up on medical marijuana and -- ''vibes! lubes!'' -- tool up at Womyn's Ware to apply some rotation to your sugar plum. Just around the corner, the delightfully named S&M Auto will rotate your tires, but John Le Van's rubber is strictly for the road. Opposite is Astorino's, the Red Velvet Room and the Ace of Suedes, all due for the chop if developer Daniel Boffo can get his 15-storey mixed-use tower approved, which will rehouse rather than displace the Kettle Friendship Society. Those 15 stories haven't thrilled local heritage advocates, but a well-designed development might just give a welcome fillip to the bottom end of The Drive.

Continued here:
A Venture to the Crossroads of Commercial Drive (in Opinion)