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16-03-2012 15:04 East Leesville Baptist Church Phase 2 New Worship Facility

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ACC EAST LEESVILLE PHASE 2 - Video

HOOVER, Alabama -- A contractor has agreed to pay $76,500 to settle a federal lawsuit filed by a Hoover couple whose lake was damaged by mud flowing from an expansion project at Riverchase United Methodist Church.

U.S. District Judge Karon Bowdre this week approved a consent decree between Randy and Mary Raines Harper and C.E. Huffstutler Contracting LLC., a Blount County company originally hired as the contractor for the church's expansion project.

The consent decree settles the lawsuit filed April 28 by the Harpers. In the suit, the couple contended storm water carried sediment-laden mud from the construction site through two culverts underneath Carl Raines Lake Road onto their property and into their 4-acre lake. The suit said the mud then flowed into an unnamed creek and ultimately deposited into the Cahaba River.

Randy Harper reported the mud flow into his lake to the Alabama Department of Environmental Management, which halted construction March 2011. The order was later lifted.

The church filed its own negligence lawsuit in May in Shelby County Circuit Court against Huffstutler after the church's expansion project experienced problems controlling mud flowing off the site.

Heavy rains apparently overwhelmed the temporary erosion control measures on the site when trees and vegetation were stripped from a 7-acre hillside. That case is still pending.

The church hired a new contractor and the project continues to proceed.

Under terms of the federal court decree, Huffstutler agreed to pay $75,000 to the Harpers for settlement of all claims. The company also will pay the couple $1,500 to cover mediation expenses. The consent decree said the settlement money to be paid by Huffstutler has been pledged through a liability insurance policy.

The U.S. Department of Justice did not object to the federal settlement.

Huffstutler, which has no resources to pay fines or penalties and has stopped all operations except minor tasks necessary to shut the company down, admitted no wrongdoing in settling the claims, according to the court filing. The settlement agreement blocks Huffstutler from engaging in any land-clearing activities at Riverchase United and from discharging any pollutants into any waterways at the church site.

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Contractor settles federal lawsuit over mud runoff from Riverchase United Methodist Church construction site

George Frey / Bloomberg

The City Creek Center, being built across the street from the Mormon Church headquarters in Salt Lake City, features a retractable roof overhead and a 1,200-foot-long man-made creek.

Mall construction has screeched to a near-halt across the country, with stores such as San Francisco's Gap shuttering hundreds of locations.

But in Salt Lake City the future of retail is bright: On Thursday, a 700,000-square-foot mega-mall will open in the city's heart. Construction was funded by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

City Creek Center is the nation's only regional mega-mall slated to open this year, according to the International Council of Shopping Centers, and more than 90 stores and restaurants are moving in. One-third of the retailers are new to Salt Lake City, including Tiffany and Coach. Nordstrom and Macy's are also on board.

Designed by the church's real estate arm, City Creek Center is replete with a retractable sunroof, an artificial creek and fountains that spew fire and water. Apart from elaborate design features, the redevelopment project - estimated by the Mormon-run Deseret News to have cost roughly $1 billion - includes offices, condos, apartments and 5,000 underground parking spots. The mixed-use project is owned and run by mall operator Taubman Centers, which has a long-term lease and revenue-sharing agreement with the LDS Church. Stores will be closed Sundays.

This kind of project isn't new to the Mormon Church; the institution owns many commercial enterprises, including hunting grounds, radio stations, newspapers and insurance companies - not to mention a $1 billion, for-profit cattle-and-citrus ranch in Florida and a Polynesian Cultural Center in Hawaii. Its newest investment will sit directly across the street from the church's monumental Temple and Tabernacle.

Why the big investment in retail?

"These are the two major city blocks that sit across from the headquarters of the Mormon Church and they were poorly designed," says Bill Taubman, chief operating officer of Taubman Centers, who says City Creek has replaced two failing fortress-like shopping centers. "The church ... decided that a major mixed-use project with retail as a centerpiece would be the best way to rejuvenate and stabilize downtown."

In some ways, the Mormon mega-mall investment isn't surprising. The religion's history with department stores dates back to 1868, when Brigham Young, the church's second president, founded Zions Cooperative Mercantile Institution. ZCMI, sometimes referred to as "America's First Department Store," was sold to the May Department Stores Co. (now Macy's) in 1999.

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Mormon Church building mega-mall in Salt Lake City

In my first apartment, my appliance insurance saved me $230 in repairs. Since then I've learned that paying a little more for insurance doesn't only buy me peace of mind; it can actually save me money in the long run. In fact, in one year I spent $374 more in insurance premiums, but saved $3,750 as a direct result of paying more for insurance.

Car Insurance

When an ice storm glazed my neighborhood streets, I was unable to stop my car at a downward stop sign. I hit the Jeep in front of me going at a speed of 15 MPH. Luckily, the Jeep's sturdy bumper incurred no damage, but my heavy SUV's bumper was driven into the radiator, damaging it and other engine components. Repair on my vehicle cost $4,500.

Since I chose to pay $16 more a month for my car insurance, my deductible was set at $1,000 instead of $2,000 (as it had been the year before). This saved me $1,000 outright, in addition to the repair job. And since this was my first claim against my insurance, my premium didn't even go up.

Home Owner's Insurance

After renovating my home, I contacted my home insurance company to increase my coverage. I included the new hardwood floors and basement carpets in the valuation. This increased my money premium payment by $11.

A year later, the water filtration system in my fridge began leaking. Unfortunately, because the floor under the fridge is tilted backwards slightly, the water flowed into the crack between the tile and floor molding, then straight through the wall to the ceiling below. I only detected the leak when a portion of the basement ceiling collapsed.

The repair for the damage came to $5,300. Since I had included all the upgrades in my new home valuation, my insurance covered all my replacements and repairs with comparable materials. I estimate that this saved me $1,800 over and above what my insurance would have paid out without the policy update.

Traveler's Insurance

I like to buy non-refundable airline tickets at least one month before my travel date, as this lowers the price considerably. In case of a last-minute emergency, I also buy traveler's insurance at an average cost of $50. When I came down with stomach flu just before my trip to Spain, I was able to move my flight date by a week without losing my ticket. This saved me $950, since a non-refundable ticket without insurance must be used on the date specified or lost altogether.

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First Person: I Saved $3,750 by Paying More Insurance

by Emily Adams The Daily Home

Construction on Coosa Village Apartments began a few weeks ago in Sylacauga. The complex on 13th Street will house residents age 55 and older. Photo by Bob Crisp/The Daily Home

The future Coosa Village Apartments is on about 15 acres on West 13th Street.

Plans for the 53,588 square-foot complex include 56 one-story, brick units with a layout similar to duplexes.

There will be 25 one-bedroom units, two one-bedroom handicapped units and one one-bedroom unit for the sensory impaired. Plans also include 26 two-bedroom units, one two-bedroom handicapped and one two-bedroom for the sensory impaired.

Each one-bedroom unit will be about 820 square feet, and the two-bedroom apartments will be about 1,000 square feet.

The complex will include a community building, mail center and gazebo, as well as 112 parking spaces for residents and guests.

Coosa Village Apartments, Ltd. chose Sylacauga in response to the citys large population of senior citizens.

A 2010 census from the U.S. Census Bureau showed of 12,749 citizens, 3,746 are at least 55 years old, a number the census said is expected to rise.

Birmingham-based Park Lane Construction is building the complex, which is privately owned by Coosa Village Apartments, Ltd.

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Construction begins on retirement apartments

A huge propaganda campaign is demonising the Syrian government at the behest of Western interests, writes James Petras*

There is clear and overwhelming evidence that the uprising to overthrow President Bashar Al-Assad of Syria is in fact a violent power-grab led by foreign-supported fighters who have killed and wounded thousands of Syrian soldiers, police and civilians, partisans of the government and its peaceful opposition.

The outrage expressed by politicians in the West and the Gulf states and in the mass media about the "killing of peaceful Syrian citizens protesting against injustice" is cynically designed to cover up the documented reports of violent seizures of neighbourhoods, villages and towns by armed bands brandishing machine guns and planting road-side bombs.

The assault on Syria is backed by foreign funds, arms and training. However, due to a lack of domestic support to be successful direct foreign military intervention will be necessary. For this reason, a huge propaganda and diplomatic campaign has been mounted to demonise the legitimate Syrian government. The goal is to impose a puppet regime in Syria and strengthen Western imperialist control in the Middle East. In the short run, this will further isolate Iran in preparation for a military attack by Israel and the US, and in the long run it will eliminate another independent, secular regime friendly to China and Russia.

SERIAL AGGRESSION: The current Western campaign against the independent Al-Assad regime in Syria is part of a series of attacks against pro-democracy movements and independent regimes from North Africa to the Persian Gulf. The imperialist-militarist response to the Egyptian democracy movement that overthrew the Mubarak dictatorship was to back the military junta's seizure of power and its campaign to jail over 10,000 pro- democracy protesters.

Faced with similar mass democratic movements in the Arab world, the Western-backed Gulf dictators crushed the uprisings in Bahrain, Yemen and Saudi Arabia. The assaults extended to the secular government in Libya, where NATO powers launched a massive air and sea bombardment in support of armed bands of mercenaries, thereby destroying Libya's economy and civil society. The unleashing of these armed gangster-mercenaries led to the savaging of urban life in Libya and devastation in the countryside.

The NATO powers eliminated the secular regime of former Libyan leader colonel Gaddafi, along with having him murdered and mutilated by its mercenaries. NATO oversaw the wounding, imprisonment, torture and elimination of tens of thousands of civilian Gaddafi supporters and government workers. It backed the puppet regime as it embarked on a bloody pogrom against Libyan citizens of sub-Saharan African ancestry, as well as sub-Saharan African immigrant workers -- groups that had benefited from Muammar Gaddafi's generous social programmes.

This imperialist policy of ruin and rule in Libya serves as the model for Syria: creating the conditions for a mass uprising led by Muslim fundamentalists, funded and trained by Western and Gulf mercenaries.

FROM DAMASCUS TO TEHRAN: According to the US state department, "the road to Tehran passes through Damascus". Thus, the strategic goal of NATO is to destroy Iran's principal ally in the Middle East. For the Gulf absolutist monarchies, the goal is to replace a secular republic with a theocratic dictatorship. For the Turkish government, the purpose is to foster a regime amenable to the dictates of Ankara's version of Islamist capitalism. For Al-Qaeda and Salafi and Wahabi fundamentalists, a theocratic Sunni regime, cleansed of secular Syrians, Alevis and Christians, will serve as a trampoline for projecting power in the Islamic world. For Israel, a blood-drenched and divided Syria will further ensure its regional hegemony.

It was not without foresight that the Zionist US Senator Joseph Lieberman demanded days after the attacks of 11 September, 2001, that "first we must go after Iran, Iraq and Syria" before considering the actual authors of the deeds.

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A bloody road to Damascus

Cosentino Group, a Spanish-based producer of natural and manufactured countertop material, has seen its product used in such high-profile projects as the Dallas Cowboys and Miami Dolphins football stadiums, Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport and the "Extreme Home Makeover" television show.

The family owned company, which employs 200 people at its North American headquarters in the Houston area, expects to reach a broader group this year. U.S. sales were up 8 percent last year and the latest effort is projected to boost those sales as high as 18 percent a year, to $365 million in 2013.

"We're under big expansion," said Lorenzo Marquez, vice president of marketing for Cosentino North America.

Last year, Cosentino established the Port of Houston as its first North American logistical hub to handle the expected sales increase. North American sales already account for nearly half of the company's revenues.

Cosentino also plans this year to almost double the number of display centers nationwide, at a cost of $31 million. The company already has 12 of these showrooms for builders, trade professionals and other commercial customers in place. Ten more, including one expected to open in Houston in October, are planned this year.

Company officials say these centers are more than distribution facilities. They also feature classrooms and exhibition areas, including fully functioning kitchens that give designers a place to bring in clients for real-world demonstrations.

"We hope to see people doing business in our centers like they do at Starbucks," Marquez said. "More U.S. shops give customers quicker access to product."

He said geography was a primary factor in the company's decision to make Houston home to its logistics office.

"We selected Houston as the location for our first hub because geographically we can coordinate our shipments to fill several locations directly from here and plan our delivery routes better," Marquez said.

In addition to its natural stone products, Cosentino manufactures Silestone and newer products such as Silestone Natural Quartz, with antimicrobial protection, and the Eco line made from 75 percent recycled ceramic, glass and mirror.

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More counter space: Material maker is growing

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- You know pop culture's come a long way when Ellen's coming-out party can be, primarily, a marketing event. But Wall Street still looks like it is far from seeing the earnings potential of gay people. Because on much of the Street, still, people can be openly gay only at risk to their careers.

This is not a pretty story.

In 1994, Mark Anderson, then 32, was hired as a trading assistant for Cantor Fitzgerald, though his background wasn't that of a typical trader. He'd played on the championship UCLA Volleyball Team for four years and majored in history, but never graduated. Since college, he'd been working as an interior decorator. Anderson was looking for a change when he got a call in his West Hollywood apartment from a childhood friend, now a Cantor trader. Anderson was urged to apply for a trading assistant job and after two interviews got the gig. The payoff was potentially huge; million-dollar-a-year traders are not uncommon at Cantor. "If you're not making $500,000 a year, you're fired," says Anderson. "I thought that if I could just make it through the training, I was in." But Anderson didn't take into account the hazing that he'd have to endure. On his second day of work, a lewd picture was posted on the office bulletin board. According to a lawsuit filed with the California Superior Court on March 4, 1996, the photo depicted "a man performing oral sex on another man in front of him while simultaneously being the subject of anal intercourse from another man behind him. [Anderson]'s photograph was superimposed on the man in the middle." Underneath the picture was scrawled a note explaining that Anderson would provide "good service to our bisexual clients." His picture, he says, had been purloined from his new Cantor Fitzgerald ID card. "I tried to rip it down and I was told that if I ripped it down, I was fired," says Anderson. "Those rules were understood there." About three weeks later, while chowing down on a BLT, Anderson sensed a foreign object in his sandwich. He peeled apart the slices of sourdough bread to discover "a pink rubber vagina with hairs on it," he says.

"I don't know if they were pubic hairs or armpit hairs on it, but I threw the whole thing on the ground."

Anderson says that the crowd around him -- including the partners, traders, senior sales staff and Senior Vice President William Rice, head of sales trainees -- all broke out into laughter, and one muttered, "This might be the only time this guy eats pussy." But Anderson stuck through it all. He says he suffered through a phony resume posted in the lunchroom citing his earlier work as "a fluff guy" for the porn producer of Diesel Dicks; the recommended tonsillectomy to make room for more "leading men"; his job as a "boy Friday" for a surfboard tycoon "polishing sticks."

Anderson says he even suffered through the job after a senior partner urinated on him through the cracks of a closed toilet stall.

"Actually, the worst of it was all the spitballs and snot balls they'd shoot at me all day," he says. "It got to a point where my shirt was soaking wet, but if I got up and complained, I'd be fired." Anderson thought his only hope for deliverance was passing his Series 7 brokerage test in the fall of 1994, so he could become a full-fledged member of the trading tribe. "I thought, 'I'll get through this B.S. from these assholes, and then I'll be making the money,'" he says. "I'll suffer for a year and then move on." But as he was preparing for his test, Anderson says that on slow trading days, Rice and other partners would stand in front of him and bet thousands that Anderson would fail. Nonetheless, in December 1994, he passed. But he says the hazing continued unabated. In May of the following year he got a reprieve when he was sent to New York for some training in over-the-counter trading (the Los Angeles office only dealt with listed trades). "The New York office had a different culture," says Anderson. "It was still sick, but not quite so depraved." Anderson was put up in a spacious suite in the Hotel Pennsylvania across from Madison Square Garden. But he found that partners at Cantor's One World Trade Center office on the 104th floor had plans for his hotel room. "In the office one day, a partner introduced me to three girls from Pitt," says Anderson. "He said they were bisexual and they would be staying with me." Anderson says that various partners wined and dined the girls for the next week, taking them to New York hot spots like Tavern on the Green and having sex with them in his hotel room. During this stay, Anderson says he got a call from Rice's assistant. "She said she needed my car keys because they were repainting the garage in our office building," says Anderson. Further, he says, he was asked to stay in New York for an extra week and to meet the office at the big, biennial sales meeting of Cantor Fitzgerald in Dallas.

What followed was truly amazing, even by Cantor standards, and it was all captured on videotape.

As graphically described in an article in Los Angeles magazine, the homemade video shows Rice and senior partner Shawn Blakeslee wearing paper bags over their heads with crudely drawn cartoon faces of a black man with curly hair. "We be doin' dis and shit!" Rice says, mugging for the camera in the Cantor Fitzgerald garage. In the next shot, Rice and Blakeslee are seen driving out of garage in Anderson's silver 1978 Alfa Romeo. The next scene also takes place in the Cantor garage, where senior partner Bill Malcolm is wearing the paper "blackface" and trader Jonathan Blum is in a paper bag styled as the caricature of an Asian face. Then they pan to Anderson's car, which has received a factory paint job -- except that the car is now black and white, like a police cruiser. On the body of the car are bold antigay statements like "Poo Stabber," "Rump Ranger," "Fudge Packed Here" and "1-800 Butt Boy." As the video fades to black, Rice is seen mocking the Hispanic garage attendant who was charged with guarding Anderson's car. At the Dallas sales meeting, with virtually the entire worldwide sales staff and senior management in attendance, Los Angeles says "the tape was introduced as a new training video for desperate young brokers who could obtain business by soliciting the homosexual community of Los Angeles." As the entire room broke out in laughter, Anderson in his assigned seat was blown away.

"They made hundreds of copies of that tape," he says. "And passed them out to everyone, other traders, clients. You know how Wall Street is, everyone's seen this thing."

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'Coming Out' on Wall Street

A blaze caused more than $1 million in damage to a massive North Ogden house on Saturday.

A neighbor called to report smoke coming from a house at 282 E. Lomond View Drive about 4:35 a.m., said North View Fire Chief Dave Wade. The two people living in the house were able to escape and no one was injured.

Wade said he was "pretty sure [the fire] had got a good head start on us before we arrived."

Wade said the roughly 10,000 square-foot house had several additions and the fire did at least an estimated $1 million dollars in damage if not more.

"It is pretty well destroyed," Wade said adding anywhere that didnt have fire damage had smoke or water damage. However, some of the garage and the ATVs and vehicles inside were salvaged.

When fire crews arrived they could only see light smoke coming from the house. As they began to attack the fire, flames went up the inside of the walls and into the attic and continued to spread. Wade said strong gusts of wind "contributed to moving that fire around also."

After about six hours, 20 firefighters from across Weber County were able to contain the fire enough to bring a backhoe in and knock down walls to make sure the fire was out.

"There are so many voids and areas we are still trying to access," Wade said adding the size of the home and dense trees around it made it hard to access. As of 2 p.m. crews were still working to make sure the fire was completely out.

The North View fire marshal and inspector are still investigating the cause of the fire. Wade said they believe the blaze may have started on the main level or in the basement below near the front of the house.

cimaron@sltrib.com

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Fire scolds $1 million in damage to northern Utah home

A roof over a loading dock at the VA Clinic in East Anchorage collapsed on Friday afternoon due to a heavy snow load -- the latest in a string of structures to collapse amid the city's near-record snowfall.

It happened after the winter's first residential roof collapse earlier in the week -- an unoccupied house in Peters Creek -- and as city officials continue to advise homeowners to be mindful of roof loads that grow heavier with each new snowfall.

Their general advice: If the snow is more than 2 feet deep, there might be a problem.

Two workers at the VA Clinic were in the vicinity when the slab slapped down. One had just stepped off the dock and another was still on it. One of them was doused with snow but neither was injured.

"We dodged another bullet," said Jim Stubbs, the lead structural building inspector for the Municipality of Anchorage.

At 4 p.m. Friday, Stubbs and Ron Wilde, also with the city's Building Safety department, stood in front of the loading dock shaking their heads at the surprisingly intact flat surface, about 80 feet long and 16 feet wide. It had flipped to a vertical position against the wall to which it had been attached as neatly as a stored TV tray.

"It just folded up," said Stubbs.

It was the 14th roof collapse to which the department has responded this winter. With a total snowfall within 3 inches of the record for a single winter, roofs have come down on commercial buildings around town and a church auditorium.

The first residential roof collapse was reported on Wednesday evening at a vacant house in Peters Creek. The two-bedroom single-family home at Tundra Rose Avenue near Four Wheel Drive had been for sale for some months and was unoccupied. The Alaska Star reported that entire southern half of the 768-square-foot home was destroyed in the collapse.

"We're fortunate so far that there haven't been any injuries," said Sharen Walsh, the building official for the city. But she's concerned the luck may not hold.

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VA Clinic roof collapse is winter's 14th