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Charles Morgan was Destin's Business Person of the Year. "This year's winner is synonymous with Destin," Windes said. "Not only is he one of the most successful restaurateurs in Destin, he uses his success to help others in need through many charitable events every year."

The Destin Area Chamber of Commerce ceremonially rolled out the red carpet Thursday night as more than 200 guests gathered at the Emerald Coast Convention Center for the annual Awards and Installation banquet.

Each January, the chamber awards outstanding members of the chamber of commerce and the community with its "most prestigious" awards, including The James D. Neilson, Sr. Chairman's Award for Volunteer Service; The Business Person of the Year; the Ann Gibson Community Service Award; the Paul Woolman Ambassador of the Year Award; and the Retired Military Person of the Year Award.

In addition to honoring those in the community, members of the outgoing board of directors were honored with a plaque for their service, which included Andi Mahoney, Cyndy Thomas, Carey Trotter, Charles Morgan, and Jim Breitenfeld.

Newly installed Executive Committee board members are Chairman Amy Perry, Pleat, Chairman Elect Ken Wampler, Immediate Past Chairman Mary Anne Windes, Treasurer Jonathan Ochs, Communications & Marketing Julie Cotton, Northwest Florida State College; Vice Chairman Community & Economic Development Hayward Dykes, Vice Chairman Membership Development Rebecca Jones, and Vice Chairman Harbor Advisory Board Jami Jones.

Other members of the 2014 Board of Directors include Jeramie Bates, Shaun Eubanks, Steve Jay, Pam Martin, Dave Morrow, Bob Perry, Paul Schreiner, Lockwood Wernet, Most Recent Immediate Past Chairman Ex-Officio Bill Lindsley, Chairmans Appointee Fred Fenn, Chairmans Appointee Michelle Terry, Special Appointee Karen McCarthy, and Special Appointee Kim Wintner.

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Changing of the Chamber: Community service celebrated, new board takes the reins at chamber banquet

A few days ago, I interviewed University of Tennessee professor and poet Erin Smith about her long-running arts project, Sundress Publications.

She founded it in 1999 and has managed it out of Firefly Farms ever since. While such arts communities are not a strange formation to find in Knoxville or in other university towns, Erin Smith wants something more an upcoming installation focused on breaching the schism between Knoxville's gay community in the university and outside it.

We live in a cultural zeitgeist that is being shorn of its homophobia. The arts have always been the vanguard of such movements, and Smith is going to be at the forefront of it.

OUTSpoken performances, including poetry and film, focus on the intersection of art and sexuality that are going to be made part of the publication's oeuvre.

It is going to be an effort toward the unification of a divided subject.

Knoxville's gay population is scattered insofar as its segments do not interact in many formal manners. Town does not meet with gown.

The university's gay population and the town's population can bridge together through art; the arts will be as diverse as its producers and consumers. Don't forget Knoxville can boast of the second largest writer's guild in the South, so its impulse for creativity is already massive.

The arts, of course, are not known for being a source of much wealth creation, especially in depressed economic climates like our own.

Hopefully OUTSpoken will see an audience as large as its ambition and professor Smith and her staff's efforts will be rewarded by recognition.

The importance of the arts coincides with the sociology of its consuming demographic the gay community suffers from some of the highest rates of mental illness as well as creativity. The arts bridge the gulf between performance and life, between recognition and the quietude of solitary existence.

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Opinion: UT professor's artistic, cultural efforts deserve recognition | Column

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Des Moines, Iowa (PRWEB) January 22, 2014

Charrette Venture Group has announced a business plan competition for architects who are considering starting their own design firm and for existing architectural firms that have been in business for five years or less. The first prize winner of the competition will receive $10,000.

Eligible participants must be a licensed architect in the U.S. or Canada, and, if operating an existing design firm, must have been in business for five years or less. Interested architects should register online by March 28, 2013, and an executive summary of their business plan must be submitted by April 25, 2013. The winners will be announced at a special reception in Chicago, Illinois during the American Institute of Architects national convention on June 26, 2013. There is no cost to enter the competition. For detailed rules, the full competition timeline, and additional resources on how to write a business plan, please visit the competition website at http://www.architectbusinessplancompetition.com.

The architecture profession is filled with many talented, creative individuals, and it is a highly entrepreneurial profession with many architects choosing to launch their own firms. However, the importance of entrepreneurship is often times overlooked or understated, said Matt Ostanik, President and Founder, Charrette Venture Group, and himself a registered architect in state of Iowa. The goal of the competition is to encourage more architects to start their own firms and to inspire a broader dialog about the role of entrepreneurship in our profession.

About Charrette Venture Group

Charrette Venture Group, LLC is a consulting firm focused on supporting entrepreneurs in architecture and design.

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Architecture Business Plan Competition Announced

For a third straight year, the vacancy rate of major retail space in the Rochester region remained largely flat a big improvement from a recent five-year stretch that saw the rate grow rapidly.

Commercial real estate brokerage CB Richard Ellis this week put out its 2014 market outlook for the Rochester region. The report looks at the state of and expectations for the commercial, office and industrial real estate markets in Rochester and several surrounding counties.

According to the report, the areas roughly 22.3 million square feet of major retail space retail spaces of 30,000 square feet or more ended 2013 with a vacancy rate of 11.2 percent. That was up just a fraction of a percentage point from 2012 and 2011. Thats down from 2010, when the rate peaked at more than 12 percent and marked the apex of a five-year span that saw the vacancy rate climb steeply from about 8 percent.

The amount of major retail space has been hovering at slightly north of 22 million square feet since 2010. During 2013, the Rochester region saw more than 250,000 square feet of new retail space added, with the biggest drivers of that being the East Avenue Wegmans grocery and the new Van Maur department store at Eastview Mall. Meanwhile, according to CB Richard Ellis, those new spaces were largely offset by the removal of a similar amount of square footage from inventory.

This year is expected to see a number of new major retail spaces open their doors, including the 150,000-square-foot Costco store under construction at East Henrietta and Westfall roads and the University of Rochester College Town development along Mt. Hope Avenue. However, according to CB Richard Ellis projections, Continued stability may be reasonably forecast for inventory and vacancy.

The areas industrial real estate portfolio of roughly 81.7 million square feet (with about a quarter of that Eastman Kodak Co. and Xerox Corp. space) ended 2013 with a vacancy rate of roughly 10.9 percent up about half a percentage point from the year before. However, for industrial space just within Rochester city limits, the vacancy rate was up more than 1 percent in 2013, to 13.2 percent.

Major industrial developments in 2013 included Xerox undertaking a major expansion of a toner plant at its Webster campus and bow hunting and target shooting company Outdoor Group LLC breaking ground on a 70,000-square-foot plant in Henrietta.

The suburban office space market saw a decent 2013, according to CB Richard Ellis, with the vacancy rate there down 1.3 percentage points to 13.8 percent. There is roughly 8.7 million square feet of competitive office space in the areas suburbs. In the citys 7.4 million square feet of competitive office space, the vacancy rate in 2013 was 19 percent down slightly from 2012.

The areas office space supply is going through a big transition, from redevelopment plans for downtown Rochesters Sibley Building that will see some of its empty office space converted into housing to Monroe Community College purchasing more than 500,000 square feet of Kodak headquarters space for its new downtown campus.

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Report: Retail vacancies up slightly in 2013

Two Dallas construction workers were released from the hospital Tuesday after falling from the fourth floor of the Northpoint Crossing Apartments at the corner of University Drive and Texas Avenue, according to safety specialists overseeing the construction site.

Both men were treated for incapacitating injuries. A 35-year-old man was taken to the College Station Medical Center while a 33-year-old was treated at St. Joseph hospital, according to College Station police.

The pair had been on scaffolding installing sheets of siding when they fell just before noon, said Bill Landers, president of Construction Enterprises Inc., the general contractor on site.

Landers said both had been wearing harnesses, according to the supervisor at the site who saw pictures of firefighters cutting harnesses off the men.

The men had been working at the site for about two weeks for a subcontractor from Overland Park, Kan., Landers said.

Construction on the Northpoint Crossing Apartments began in the spring, with Phase 1 expected to be completed in August. The 11.5-acre development will have 603 units, 1,900 bedrooms and retail space.

Tuesday's incident was the fourth construction accident in the Bryan-College Station area since May 2013.

A 49-year-old man died when two shoring panels fell on him while working on a wastewater lift station near the Texas A&M Health Science Center in late May. Four men were injured in June when the steel frame of a barn being built as part of the Texas A&M Equine Complex collapsed. In December, a 25-year-old construction worker died after falling four stories from Kyle Field.

"With the other [construction] accidents in the area, we clamped down on safety," Landers said, adding that his employees receive 30 hours of OSHA training.

Falls are among the top hazards on construction sites, making up almost 36 percent of all construction worker deaths in the U.S. in 2012, according to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration's website.

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Workers released from hospitals hours after falling from construction site

Jan 21, 2014 - 02:22 PM

Work on Trek Apartments, a five-story, mixed-use retail/residential building at the former Cavanaugh block site in downtown Auburn, is progressing rapidly, City Economic Development Manager Doug Lein said today.

Speaking at the Auburn Chamber of Commerces January Business Insider Luncheon, Lein told attendees that the project is moving about three weeks ahead of schedule, according to Landmark Development. The Auburn-based firm broke ground early last October on Trek, which is to be comprised of 128 units of market-rate residential over 12,000 square feet of retail space.

They are currently putting the micro-pilings into the foundation right now, said Lein. They feel that will be done in about two weeks They expect, by the first of March, to be doing all the underground work and getting ready to start pouring concrete. Theyre moving along very, very well.

He added that Landmark currently has two letters of intent from restaurants interested in locating at the retail space on the projects first floor, although nothing has yet been finalized.

Lein also spoke about the pair of neighboring blocks acquired by Seattles Teutsch Partners LLC, which plans to develop the two properties with similar mixed-use retail and residential buildings. Teutsch, in partnership with Pillar Properties and Merrill Gardens retirement communities, is looking to populate the space with a combination of apartments and independent senior living; the exact split, according to Lein, is currently being programmed.

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Portland, OR (PRWEB) January 21, 2014

Portland-based Clearwater Exteriors (Clearwater) today announced that Laurence Meadows will join the company as President and Chief Executive Officer, effective immediately.

Mr. Meadows brings more than 30 years of experience in the specialty contracting industry to Clearwater. He has a proven track record for leading home improvement companies of all sizes, from small start-ups to multi-state operations with more than $30 million in revenues and over 350 employees.

I am incredibly excited to be part of a community that is so passionate about energy efficiency and the entire green movement, Mr. Meadows said. I look forward to leveraging key relationships in manufacturing, banking, and our supply channel partners to bring best-in-class service and the finest products in the industry to the Pacific Northwest, he added.

Mr. Meadows experience and leadership will give Clearwaters strategic marketing platform critical momentum in building its brand in Portland and surrounding metropolitan areas. We will immediately pursue strategic partnerships with local organizations that are aligned with our core values and commitment to the community, Meadows said.

Mr. Meadows has particular expertise in custom windows and siding, and is widely recognized as an industry expert by vendors, lenders and investment funds in the home improvement arena. He has served on the Steering Committee for Harvard Universitys Joint Center for Housing Studies since 2007, and has also served as a member of the GE Money Advisory Board since 2007. Mr. Meadows was also a Finalist for Ernst & Youngs prestigious Entrepreneur of the Year Award in 2004.

ABOUT CLEARWATER EXTERIORS, LLC Portland, Oregon-based Clearwater Exteriors is a specialty contracting business focused on residential retail sales and installation of custom-built high performance replacement windows and maintenance-free insulated replacement siding.

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Clearwater Exteriors Announces Laurence Meadows to Join as CEO