Home Builder Developer - Interior Renovation and Design

The city’s Board of Health will consider a 24-hour ban on smoking outdoors on city properties and bar and restaurant patios at a special meeting next Monday.

The Ottawa Board of Health will consider a report that recommends banning smoking on bar and restaurant patios and all municipal properties – including parks, playgrounds, beaches, sports fields, fruit and vegetable markets and outdoor areas around city buildings.

The report comes after Councillor Stephen Blais asked the Board of Health to consider such a ban – but one that would only be in effect before 8 p.m.

“I proposed the 8 p.m. (version of the ban) as kind of a starting point in the conversation to be pragmatic,” said Blais, adding he was keeping the interests of bar and restaurant owners in mind.

After the Ottawa Public Health consulted with bar owners and the public, the city found there is support for a 24-hour ban as long as it is enforced uniformly, said Blais.

“I think the changes are pragmatic and balanced to make sure that Ottawa remains one of the safest places to live and raise a family,” he said.

If council is to give the recommendations final approval, the ban will first be approved by the Board of Health and the Community and Protective Services Committee.

“Everything should in place before the patio season starts in April,” Blais said.

Blais said he expects some smokers to oppose the plan, adding, “You’re never going to please everyone with every decision you make.”

Read more from the original source:
City to consider all-day outdoor smoking ban

KWADUKUZA, South Africa—A Zulu crowd's ululations welcomed Jacob Zuma, president of the Republic of South Africa, back to KwaZulu–Natal, his home province. He had come to tell them of his commitment to bring them, and the rest of the nation, better access to energy—as well as to announce the distribution of solar-powered hot water heaters and LED lighting systems as well as clean-burning cookstoves.

"One of South Africa's major challenges in poor and rural areas is access to energy," Zuma told his constituents at this rally last month, standing on stage with Helen Clark, administrator of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and Kandeh Yumkella, director general of the U.N. Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), who had helped pay for the modern energy devices installed in iLembe District homes, health clinics and schools. "People have to burn wood and coal to get some form of heat but with soot that produces [tuberculosis] and asthma."

And then, as if staged to illustrate the urgency of the need, the tent on the soccer field went dark—the diesel generators powering the lights had stopped.

View a slide show of efforts to alleviate energy poverty in South Africa.

South Africa is hardly the only country launching efforts to redress a lack of access to modern energy, such as electricity. The U.N. has declared 2012 the "year of sustainable energy for all," which in practice means that Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon is starting a concerted effort to extend universal access to "modern energy services" to everyone on the planet by 2030, including the more than a billion people who have no electricity.

On January 16, in a speech to launch the initiative at the World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi, Moon declared, "It is neither just nor sustainable that one person in five lacks access to modern electricity. It is not acceptable that three billion people have to rely on wood, coal, charcoal or animal waste for cooking and heating"—forms of energy that are highly polluting and pose health risks. Recalling how electricity transformed his own young life in South Korea decades ago, he said, "We need to turn on the lights for all households."

"Energy is central to everything we are trying to achieve on the development side of the equation," says Robert Orr, U.N. assistant secretary general for strategic planning and policy coordination. "There are 1.3 billion people who don't have access to [modern] energy. If you hook them up to the most polluting, damaging forms of energy you are doing significant damage to the planet."

One of the U.N.'s first steps will be to craft an "agenda for action," not unlike the Millennium Development Goals, intended to set out measurable steps that would ensure that everyone gets access to modern energy, while also doubling rates of energy efficiency improvement in the developed world and doubling the share of energy derived from renewable sources globally. "With the developments in solar, wind and storage devices, such as batteries, there are a lot more options on the table for powering villages and households," Orr notes.

Africa south of the Sahara is one of the places where energy poverty is greatest. Seventy percent of all households in the vast region lack modern energy technologies, whether electricity or fuels other than wood and dung for cooking fires. Even in the region's richest country—South Africa—roughly 30 percent of households lack access to electricity.

To help extend electricity and other energy services as well as cut down on greenhouse gas emissions from existing electricity producers, Zuma's government launched a renewable energy initiative during the recent climate change conference in Durban. With the help of the U.N. and other international donors, South Africa will develop more wind and solar power. Given South Africa's abundant coal and heavy reliance on the most polluting fossil fuel for modern energy services, the idea is to harness equally abundant sunshine and wind to diversify energy supplies enough to meet the country's commitment under the 2009 Copenhagen Accord to reduce emissions 34 percent by the end of this decade.

In that, South Africa hopes to mimic other African nations that started down this road to renewables earlier, such as Kenya. With the help of the UNDP and U.N. Environmental Programme (UNEP), that East African nation—where only 18 percent of households have access to electricity today—is developing its renewable resources, such as geothermal power in the geologically active Rift Valley, wind farms and solar-powered battery systems in remote villages. "Kenya is on track with investments brought in to produce all its electricity from renewable sources by 2020," Orr says.

But the simple truth is: if the most affluent country in sub-Saharan Africa cannot boost its use of renewables while also extending modern energy access to those who still lack it, what hope do much poorer countries have? "The intervention announced today will ease energy poverty," Zuma said of the U.N.-backed clean energy program, which also saw 500 homes outfitted with solar hot water heaters and 200 homes given LED home lighting systems powered by solar photovoltaics. "Let us change, instead of burning, making more smoke."

That, of course, is easier said than done, particularly when it comes to cooking.

The power to cook
Netherlands-based Philips's smokelessn cookstove looks like it is fashioned from a metal pail that gleams atop a black plastic saucer, albeit a pail with a roaring fire inside it. Tongues of flame lick the top of the combustion chamber where twigs are added or a pot rests—but no smoke wafts out. Wood, dung—the stove can burn "pretty much any biomass," as a suited Philips executive stoking it in KwaDukuza notes during my visit the city formerly known as Stanger. The key to the new cookstoves is gasification—the stove gasifies the biomass of whatever type with heat before burning it. Traditional cookstoves burn the biomass in the pail—and emit clouds of sickening soot in the process. Even worse, most households simply employ an open fire.

But with this new cookstove, any ash settles to the bottom rather than wafting out as smoke. The saucer beneath conceals the stove's secret weapon: a battery-powered electric fan.

Like many developing countries, much of South Africa smells of smoke. The open flame of indoor cooking adds the taste of fire to home-cooked meals for roughly three billion people around the world—as well as killing more than 2.5 million people prematurely via soot, also known as black carbon, inhalation, according to the World Health Organization. Others simply suffer from chronic lung ailments; the soot that escapes into the atmosphere from all these cooking fires is also helping to cook the planet.

The solution has been obvious for decades: cleaner cooking facilities—whether advanced cookstoves, biogas flowing from tanks where microbes digest sewage and trash, or other modern alternatives. But the mismatch between the care or skill needed to tend cookstoves or biodigesters and the daily lives of those who would use them have doomed most initiatives to establish such devices in homes. For example, the technology for solar cookstoves works but the stoves do not function after sunset, when the evening meal is prepared in many countries. Or the price of more advanced stoves, such as those that burn biofuel instead of wood or dung, rapidly outstrip such households' ability to pay.

That hasn't stopped ongoing efforts, such as the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves from the U.S. State Department, which hopes to distribute cookstoves to 100 million households by 2020 (although the design has yet to be decided). Thirty households in KwaDukuza received Philips's stoves as part of the event with President Zuma, and 170 more households got them in the surrounding iLembe district.

The Dutch multinational may also build a factory in the nearby country of Lesotho to produce 300,000 such smokeless cookstoves a year, with funding help from UNIDO. Doing so may help to solve the cost problem for South Africa and other neighboring countries.

The new stoves also cut soot emissions by 90 percent, according to Philips, although it requires electricity to do so. A fan blows air into the combustion chamber, enabling more complete burning that eliminates smoke, but at the cost of requiring a rechargeable battery to power it—and thus the need for an electricity source.

Night light
A satellite photo of Earth during the nighttime reveals large swaths of black across much of the African continent whereas tendrils of light create glowing webs that connect cities and communities in North America or Europe. To light the night, countries such as South Africa need to generate electricity for modern lights to replace kerosene lamps and paraffin.

That is where LED solar lighting systems can play a key role. Such systems, which combine the efficiency of a light-emitting diode with electricity derived from sunlight and stored for the night in small batteries, can turn on the lights in rural households. In addition to avoiding the expense of running lines to conduct electricity to these homes across Africa, such solar-powered solutions would bring modern energy services to the poor without contributing to the greenhouse gas emissions causing climate change.

The hurdle here is simple: cost. Every element of such a system—LEDs, solar panels and batteries—are too expensive for such households to afford on their own. Many people therefore pay (at higher costs per unit of energy) for small increments of kerosene for lamps or buy candles and recharge their now ubiquitous mobile phones from the grid where it is available. U.N. funding helped clear that financial hurdle for the 200 iLembe District households that received such systems.

"The numbers are not going to impress anyone," says Francois d'Adesky, UNIDO's interim representative in South Africa. But the project may be extended to all of KwaZulu–Natal, then all of South Africa, if it proves successful here, because it might then garner World Bank funding. But there is not enough money currently to extend the program to the hundreds of millions more in the rest of Africa and Asia who also lack access to electricity and such lighting—a problem the U.N. declaration of a push for sustainable energy for all aims to solve.

At the same time, there is the problem of cleaning existing electricity sources for those who do enjoy a grid connection. Although Durban's metropolitan electric utility has a wind turbine spinning briskly in the sea breeze blowing over its roof, grid power in South Africa means coal power (as does much of the diesel fuel for trucks and jet fuel for planes)—the dirtiest fossil fuel—and all too often used for things like electrified security fences around homes. Such power is not precluded as part of the new U.N. initiative, although the goal is to ensure that such energy is used for economic development and that environmental consequences, including climate change, "can be managed as best we can," Orr says. "We're not trying to create utopia in 20 years. We will work with the existing [energy] mix and try to move it in a positive direction."

Zuma's rally provides an example: a tall smiling puppet woman with a witch's shoes, striped stockings and a red-brimmed hat with smoke coming out from the top known as Mrs. Coal calls on her equally tall friend—a floppy, green, walking wind-turbine puppet known as Mr. Wind—for help. And for those not lucky enough to be connected to the grid that Mrs. Coal and Mr. Wind can combine to power, the LEDs and the photovoltaic panels that turn sunlight into electricity to power them keep getting cheaper.

Health and education
There is another use for solar power of course—heat. Hence the 19 clinics and two schools getting solar hot water heaters courtesy of UNIDO in iLembe District. The most basic reason to want modern energy services for all—as the U.N. proclaims—is human health.

More than a million children in Africa and Asia die from diarrheal diseases each year, according to the World Health Organization, including hundreds even in relatively prosperous South Africa. The problem is a lack of hygiene.

Something as simple as hot water allows much better hygiene as well as offering hot meals for the poorest students, notes UNIDO's Nokwazi Moyo. "Soft hands, soft hands," the beaming children of Aldinville Senior Primary School in the iLembe District shout out as I tour the grounds. My hands are clean, too, thanks to access to soap and hot water, and that's something the sun can now provide to these children as well, cutting the risk of spreading infection for them and for workers at the 19 local health clinics similarly outfitted. "Kids now have chance to wash hands before lunch, which is hygienic," says Mikhail Evstafyev, a UNIDO spokesman. "It's the same for the clinic."

The generic hot water heaters the project uses are assembled in South Africa from parts made in China, according to Moyo, but so far have not seen wide uptake in the sunny country. Wealthier South Africans' homes are more likely to sport satellite dishes than photovoltaic panels or solar hot water heaters, although the government has established incentives as part of its new renewable energy initiatives.

Each heater can hold as much as 400 liters of hot water, enough for hand-washing and hot meals on even a cloudy day when the sunlight is not strong. And then there's harnessing the sunlight for use at night with the LED solar home-lighting systems handed out to 200 local households.

The vision is to eventually install solar hot water heaters and LED solar home-lighting systems in the same community, as is being done throughout iLembe District. With lights, the Aldinville students can study at night or their mothers can supplement income with such businesses as mobile phone charging from the photovoltaic panels. Multiple forms of new economic development become possible.

That opportunity will be vital because simply providing modern energy—in whatever form—to the poor is not a panacea. "Energy services are often not affordable for the rural and urban poor and, on their own, have little impact," said Martin Krause, leader of UNDP's Asia–Pacific regional climate, environment and energy team, in a statement releasing a report calling for an "Energy Plus" approach, which pairs the delivery of modern energy with measures to generate cash income. "The poor need support to generate income so that energy becomes affordable."

It's not just the poor. For any such sustainable energy efforts to thrive, money will be needed—along with a better understanding of specific communities' energy needs. For example, it may not make sense to build wind farms in Kenya given the fact that most households lack any connection to the electric grid. It may make more sense to set up village-size grids connected to cheap solar panels or mini-hydropower technologies. And cleaner cookstoves may employ technology improvements, but at the hazard of quickly being tossed aside when they cannot be maintained locally at low cost. Finding new sources for the money to make this possible—ideas range from carbon credits to microfinance—remain a key focus of international climate negotiations like those just held in Durban as well as for the Year of Sustainable Energy for All.

Nevertheless, the potential benefits of bringing modern energy to the rest of the world—health improvements, economic development and even environmental remediation—cannot be overlooked. "What a difference bringing energy to our homes means," UNDP Administrator Clark noted at the Zuma rally. "Something like this [project] brings hope and light and heat to not only homes here but right across this great continent of Africa."

Follow Scientific American on Twitter @SciAm and @SciamBlogs. Visit ScientificAmerican.com for the latest in science, health and technology news.
© 2012 ScientificAmerican.com. All rights reserved.

Here is the original post:
Can Cleaner Cooking and Solar Power Help Solve Energy Poverty in Africa? [Slide Show]

12-04-2011 07:54 Find evok, evok furniture, home decor India, modular kitchen India from a wide range of Home.Design and re-redesign your dream spaces with our team of expert interior designers and home decorators.

See the article here:
Home Decor and Interior Design - Evok Outlets - Video

14-10-2010 00:58 JV General Construction,Inc 1553 E. 109th St. Los Angeles, Ca. 90059 License#916852 (323) 821-4239 We are to help with all of your home remodeling JV General Construction, Inc. will help you find the custom design that meets your budget. We are so sure about our service that we offer warranty on all workmanship. Let our licensed contractor #916852 help you out with your remodeling and construction services. 1553 E. 109th St. Los Angeles, Ca. 90059 License#916852 JV General Construction,Inc Serving Inland Empire, Riverside and San Bernardino Counties. SE HABLA ESPAÑOL Visa , Master Card, American Express and Discover accepted. Contractor Construction remodeling Service General Contractor Construction remodeling Service General Contractor Los Angeles Inland Empire and San Bernardino • Remodel your bathroom or kitchen • Basement, attic remodeling and garage finishing • Make the most of your small spaces; shelving and storage • Drywall install, patch, or replace • Painting and wall treatments • Coaching and Rescue; Do It Yourself Projects at a crossroads • General home maintenance; electrical and plumbing Fully Bonded and Insured We offer all General Contractor services including rewiring, repairs and remodeling for residential, industrial, and commercial customers. Let us make your ordinary house a beautiful custom home! Whether you are adding square footage, remodeling the kitchen or bath, creating a backyard oasis with an outdoor fireplace and pergola, or adding a garage ...

More:
Construction remodeling Service General Contractor Los Angeles Inland Empire

LOS ANGELES, Jan. 31, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- IA Interior Architects (IA) is pleased to announce that Kirk Stewart has joined the firm as Project Director. He will be based in Los Angeles.

Kirk has over 20 years of architectural and interior design experience across a variety of markets including Broadcast and Entertainment, K-12 Education, Higher Education, Civic, Corporate, Hospitality, and Retail. His experience ranges from client development and programming to design, project management, and post-construction evaluation. Prior to joining IA, Kirk was the Design Director at WWCOT (currently DLR Group) where he oversaw 160 professionals. He was also a Senior Associate and Project Designer at HLW International's offices in China and the United Kingdom.

"The addition of Kirk Stewart as Project Director to the IA Los Angeles team supports our objective to recruit the best and brightest in our industry to service our clients.  Kirk is an award winning architectural designer with a diverse portfolio in media, entertainment and technology as well as higher education. He offers us an opportunity to further strengthen our bench," said Helen Watts, Managing Principal, Los Angeles.

"I am extremely happy to be working with a firm that has a stellar reputation locally and beyond.  IA attracts high profile clients and produces work at the highest caliber in a congenial environment. I believe the essence of every firm boils down to its people, and upon meeting the leaders and staff at IA, I was convinced that this would be an ideal place for me to grow and to make a contribution," said Kirk Stewart.

Kirk is a Registered Architect in California and New York. His work has been recognized with awards from the Los Angeles Business Council, the American Institute of Architects, and the Society for Environmental Graphic Design.

About IA Interior Architects
Founded in 1984, IA Interior Architects is the first and largest global architectural firm focused exclusively on interior architecture and workplace strategies. IA helps clients in diverse markets worldwide align their business strategies and core values with the dynamic use of space. IA has offices in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, London, Los Angeles, New York, Orange County, Raleigh, San Francisco, Seattle, Silicon Valley, and Washington, DC and has partner affiliates in Europe, Middle East and Africa, Asia and Australia, Canada, and Latin America through the IA Global Alliance. For more information, visit http://www.interiorarchitects.com.

Press Contact:
Sofia Zimmerman
917.579.5702
s.zimmerman@interiorarchitects.com

Read the rest here:
Kirk Stewart Joins IA Interior Architects in Los Angeles

Universal Steel Buildings Construction Division recently announced the supply and construction of two pre-engineered metal buildings to DDM Properties for Jo's Globe Distributing CO, a retail beer distributorship in Morgantown, West Virginia. The project includes the supply and construction of a fifteen hundred square foot building attached to a new five-thousand six-hundred twenty-five square foot building also supplied and constructed by Universal Steel Buildings Construction Division.

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (PRWEB) January 31, 2012

Universal Steel Buildings Construction Division recently announced the supply and construction of two pre-engineered metal buildings to DDM Properties for Jo's Globe Distributing CO, a retail beer distributorship in Morgantown, West Virginia. The project includes the supply and construction of a fifteen hundred square foot building attached to a new five-thousand six-hundred twenty-five square foot building also supplied and constructed by Universal Steel Buildings Construction Division.

The attractive new building has “lightstone” exterior wall sheeting with “fern green” trim, gutters and downspouts. The innovative paint used by Universal Steel Buildings on their Olympia Steel Buildings comes with a forty-year warranty, making for a maintenance-free exterior that never needs painting. This high-technology paint coating is a “cool coating” designed to act as a thermal barrier to reflect the sun’s rays, keeping the insides of metal buildings up to twenty percent cooler and reducing HVAC costs year-round.

“The building is great,” stated Mike Marrara of DDM Properties. “The building has everything we need – office space, cool warehousing for the beer we distribute, easy-access truck bays for loading and unloading the product and a showroom where customers can choose from the many different types of beer and wine that we have on display.” Jo’s Globe Distributing Company is committed to providing outstanding customer service, selection and value. They pride themselves on being a company where customer service means fast, quality service and a friendly attitude. The retail beer distributor’s products include wheat beer, non-alcoholic beer, American and imported beers, wine and other quality products.

“Olympia Steel Buildings can be used for just about anything you need,” explained Jonathan Mass, company Design Estimator. “The quality of the buildings is unbeatable and we’re proud to be supplying them and putting them up. It gives a great sense of satisfaction when you can look at a great looking building and say, we did this, we supplied and put this building up.”

About Olympia Steel Buildings

Olympia Steel Buildings® are supplied by Universal Steel Buildings Corp, an industry leader in pre-engineered steel buildings for over 40 years, and sole supplier of Olympia Steel Buildings® to commercial, industrial, agricultural, residential, government, military and civilian agencies.

Olympia Steel Buildings come with their outstanding weather-resistant PBR roof, or you can opt for their patented Zeus-Shield® standing seam metal roofing system. GSA approved Olympia Steel Buildings set themselves apart by using better materials, better quality control, exceptional customer service and industry-leading warranties, including a 25-year rust through perforation warranty.

###

Jonathan D. Mass, Construction Department Design Estimator
Universal Steel Buildings
(888) 449-7756
Email Information

More here:
Universal Steel Buildings Turnkey Construction Division Supplies Two Metal Buildings To DDM Properties

The developer of the Black Hills Center has reconfigured its site plan so it can offer space for more, smaller retail stores and restaurants around the Walmart under construction at Fifth Street and Catron Boulevard.

THF Realty originally proposed a 27,000-square-foot "mini-anchor" adjacent to a 19,000-square-foot retail strip, all north of Stumer Road and east of the new Walmart.

Now, THF plans to build one 33,900-square-foot strip center with as many as 15 storefronts, said Justin Brockman, who is handling leasing for the property from his Denver office.

"We've gotten overwhelming demand from retailers smaller in size, so we wanted to accommodate them," Brockman said.

About half of the space in the strip center has been committed to, Brockman said, and some tenants might take more than one storefront.

He declined to name any of the signed tenants, but said there would be a mix of new names and second or third locations for businesses already in Rapid City.

Plans for 14 parcels surrounding the city's second Walmart and the strip center haven't changed. Brockman said three parcels in particular have seen interest from tenants. Tenants might include retailers, fast food and full service restaurants, medical offices and hotels. Separately, on land not owned by THF, a bank and a gas station are planned at the corner of Fifth and Catron.

Construction on the strip center will be finished in May or June, giving tenants time to build out their shops so then can be open when Walmart opens in August and be ready for the back-to-school and holiday shopping seasons, Brockman said.

But the entire development could take several years to complete.

"It's important to have the right tenant mix that's going to be a complement to the community and the project. You want to make sure you can accommodate users when they're ready for the site."

He said interest should pick up more now that Walmart itself is under construction.

"We're excited to be doing business in Rapid City, and we are excited to become a part of the community with this project," Brockman said. "We're committed to making the best new retail project in Rapid City."

Contact Barbara Soderlin at 394-8417 or barbara.soderlin@rapidcityjournal.com.

See more here:
Walmart development offers space for more retailers

Newly opened Alma Realty San Miguel offers central Mexico's most comprehensive bilingual realty marketing services for Americans, Canadians and Mexicans looking to buy homes for sale in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, a UNESCO World Heritage Site destination popular with retirees and second home owners.

San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato, Mexico (PRWEB) January 31, 2012

Newly opened Alma Realty San Miguel offers central Mexico's most comprehensive bilingual realty marketing services for Americans, Canadians and Mexicans looking to buy homes for sale in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, a UNESCO World Heritage Site destination popular with retirees and second home owners.

It’s easy to get distracted while looking at homes for sale in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, a UNESCO-designated World Heritage Site—like Florence, Italy—where people from around the world actually live, work, and play.

After all, this village sports 450 years of history etched upon its walls like the lines on a well-loved grandmother, or abuelita: cobblestone-dappled streets that demands a walker’s attention. Color-intense bougainvillea-draped walls of century-old stone. Bells chiming out the hours from 28 different churches, architectural masterpieces all.

But perhaps it’s the multitude of signs that most distract the visitor turned home-shopping dreamer: Casas en Venta en San Miguel—homes for sale in San Miguel. In this buyer’s market, Realtor signs abound on every street, sometimes several on a single home, where no American-style Multi-Listing Service (MLS) exists and exclusive listings are rare.

“I got confused just looking at the homes for sale in San Miguel,” said Daniel Arrowood, a recent visitor from Colorado who owns international properties elsewhere. “Some homes had as many as four different realty signs on the wall. How do I know which realty agency I can trust?”

For the serious home-buyer in San Miguel—whether from Canada or Mexico City—the choices can seem daunting. The village of 85,000 city-residents boasts over 60 realty agencies in most directories, yet many offer little more than a telephone number and a dated web site of musty listings.

Alma Realty San Miguel, the region’s newest real estate agency, aims to bring real estate marketing in San Miguel into the 21st century, making it easier for home buyers to find a dream home in Mexico. Top among their offerings for showing real estate listings in San Miguel is a Quick Response (QR) campaign, common elsewhere in North America, but new to Mexico.

“Without an MLS system here, potential buyers have a hard time researching homes in Mexico,” says Alma Realty San Miguel Partner Gregory R. Gunter. “Our QR campaign provides Alma Realty’s home sellers an advantage by offering serious buyers a tour of the home on a Sunday afternoon—or after hours—when the buyer wants to know about a home immediately.”

As more international visitors travel with their smartphones—including the growing middle class from Mexico City seeking a respite from their big-city life—QR code campaigns ease the process of researching homes for sale in San Miguel while visitors with limited vacation time rush to see alternative listings.

Alma Realty San Miguel also boasts their “Marquee Listings” provide better marketing exposure for home sellers in San Miguel than any other realty agency. “While other agencies simply post listings to their web site,” says Gunter, “we integrate social media in our marketing campaigns, including blogs, Tweets, YouTube posts and international press releases. No other realty agency in central Mexico matches such service.”

And although 21st century marketing sets Alma Realty San Miguel apart from their competitors, it is the firm’s local experience that counts most to neophytes unsure of whom to trust with what will likely be the largest cash transaction of their lives.

Rosewood San Miguel and the internationally-acclaimed boutique Hotel Matilda are among the commercial development sites Alma Realty Partner Ben Calderoni has brokered in his eleven years of experience in San Miguel de Allende. He has also sold homes to numerous residential clients only too happy to provide full-name testimonials—a rarity in the realty industry—on the firm’s new web site, http://www.AlmaRealtySanMiguel.com.

“Being bi-national—Mexican and American—myself,” says Calderoni, “it’s easier to bridge the cultural gap buyers might face doing business here in San Miguel de Allende, whether from Vancouver or Mexico City. We also offer over a decade’s history of safe, secure transactions with our own U.S.-based trust or Stewart Title’s escrow services.”

Ready to join the four million new Boomers expected to make Mexico their next home over the upcoming 15 years? If so, be sure to visit Alma Realty San Miguel and learn how to best search for your new home in San Miguel de Allende.

###

Gregory Gunter

877-878-4141
Email Information

See the original post here:
Finding and Buying a Retirement Home in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico Now Easier in 2012

ATLANTA, Jan. 31, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Applied Software, a leading and nationally recognized Autodesk value-added reseller, announced today that it has hired architectural consultant and project manager Steve Foran, Associate AIA, as Senior Consultant in its BIM Professional Services Consulting Group (APS). In his new role, Foran will provide strategic BIM consulting and advisory services for Applied Software customers.

An architect and project manager with over 15 years experience, Foran has advised Fortune 500 corporations, federal agencies, and higher education and institutional clients by providing leadership in master planning, facility planning and programming, and the development of real estate and sustainable strategies in North America, the United Kingdom and the Far East. A skilled communicator, he has the ability to quickly comprehend a client's challenges and in turn develop actionable strategies that are clear, precise and easy to understand.

"We're pleased to welcome Steve to our BIM consulting group, where he will facilitate the initial visioning and goal-setting work sessions for our clients to ensure all stakeholders are aligned and working toward a common target," said Richard Burroughs, president of Applied Software. "Steve is especially skilled in translating complex information into specific, targeted, measurable outcomes and communicating it to a variety of audiences in a clear and understandable manner."

Prior to joining Applied Software, Foran served as senior consultant and project manager for the Advance Strategies group of the global architectural firm HOK, where he worked with clients in strategic campus master planning, workplace strategy and guidelines, facility planning and change management. Prior to HOK Advance Strategies, he was a project manager for the restoration and preservation of nationally recognized historic structures for Lord, Aeck & Sargent Architects. Foran is an associate member of the American Institute of Architects and a member of the Urban Land Institute. He holds a bachelor's degree in Architecture and a master's degree in City Planning from the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta.

About Applied Software
Applied Software is the Autodesk 2011 Reseller of the Year as well as one of the largest Autodesk resellers in the Southeastern United States. It is one of the nation's leading providers of Building Information Modeling (BIM) services including BIM modeling, analysis, training, integration and mentoring, and provides Digital Prototyping solutions to manufacturers. Since its founding in 1982, Applied Software has helped more than 5,000 commercial, academic and government clients achieve high performance and growth. Applied Software's comprehensive array of solutions and services includes product updates, education and a dedicated staff of sales and services professionals. Applied Software is also a recent recipient of a GSA BIM Services IDIQ Award to provide a comprehensive array of BIM services to the federal government. For further information on Applied Software, visit http://www.asti.com, or call 866-899-2784.

Media Contact:
Jenn Harrison
Carabiner Communications
404.431.3542
jharrison@carabinerpr.com

Read more from the original source:
Applied Software Adds Architectural and Project Management Consultant Steve Foran to BIM Team

This is the second in a three-part series on domestic violence. Names of those abused have been changed.

The children were in bed and Charlotte Carroll was spending Christmas Eve assembling toys by herself. She had no clue where her husband was and didn’t dare ask.

Carroll would not have believed anyone who foretold she would be abused. Yet, she was for two decades. It’s knowledge that now helps her in her present role as director at Restoration of Hope.

Carroll, along with now retired Joyce Stewart, founded Restoration of Hope in 1997 as temporary housing for women and their children who have been victims of domestic violence.

“We give them referrals and options. They have to make the choice (to leave),” Carroll said. “We can’t make them leave. They have to want to better their lives. That’s why it‘s important for women who have been in their situations to be there to explain they are not alone.”

Lisa, an abused woman who sought help at the Stuttgart shelter, said the volunteers became her friends and helped give her hope for the future and regain her self-confidence.

Restoration of Hope is just one in a network of shelters throughout the nation that helps women in transition get to where they need to be. Carroll said they help women both locally and from across the nation get back on their feet once they leave, which includes going to court with them for support.

For Lisa, the non-profit shelter also helped clear any legal issues that occurred since she left her abuser. She said the hardest part once at the shelter was when she began searching for a place of her own and transportation. She was able to find a job after two days at the shelter.
Another important part of the shelter is preparing women to leave an abusive relationship.

“It’s the most dangerous time of the domestic relationship because when the perpetrator realizes she is leaving, they realize all they did before did not work and they will cry, beg and plead for them to come back,” she said. “He will make all types of promises—if drunk, go to AA, will get counseling—all the things she wants to hear and, most times, it will work.”

Carroll, who is the outreach coordinator/child advocator in Prairie County as well, said it works because when abused women leave, they are totally lost since they have not been making decisions or money for themselves. “They have lived in a survival mode,” she said.

The women feel failure at everything. The decision is not aided in the fact that most women in an abusive relationship will typically have three to four children. Carroll said, the perpetrator “will say no one wants you with all these children. He will threaten to call DHS (Department of Human Services) and report the woman as a neglectful mother.” If called, DHS will remove children if domestic abuse is found to be occurring since it is not only dangerous for the child, but a learned behavior.

It’s an experience that Carroll has lived through. The Atlanta, Ga., native began dating her now ex-husband when she was 19-years old. He was controlling, jealous of her relationship with family and friends and would get mad at the smallest things.

Their relationship worsened when he began taking drugs a year after they married. He began punching walls and eventually hitting Carroll and their children. The family moved to Stuttgart in 1976.

At one point, Carroll said she was going to leave and had her stuff already boxed up, however, “he pulled the box out of my hands, pinned me to the wall and said he would kill me.”

“Then he said he would kill himself and ran out the door. I heard a gunshot. It scared me,” she said. “I ran outside and he was standing behind the door laughing.”

She eventually left for good in 1984 with the divorce final in 1985 after her son told her he was learning Tae Kwon Do because “one day his dad was going to push him against the wall one time too many. He was going to be able to defend himself and me.”

It was then that Carroll realized that there would eventually be an altercation between her son and husband that would leave her son hurt, in jail or dead. She stayed with friends and, at one point, hid in a trailer at Reydell so he couldn’t find her. In the following months, she heard it all — he courted, begged and threatened to kill her — before he threatened suicide again over the phone and even shot a gun in a failed attempt to get her home.

He (eventually) called and told me he had left the state because he got drunk one night and decided he was going to climb on the roof and shoot me in the head when I left work, she said. He said only God had stopped him. So he left the state so he wouldn’t do that.
Carroll said he has since died. She and her children have forgiven him especially after learning that he had repented — after his death, they found his Bible open to Psalm 32.

It’s a life lesson that she has shared with fellow domestic violence victims well before the shelter opened. Now, she said her main goal is to give the women the tools they need to help themselves.

“At some point in time, they will get the strength and courage to get out and we want to be there,” she said. “If we only save one out of 14 people here, it will be worth it.”

Restoration of Hope has a hotline, of which the first question asked is “Are you safe?” If they are trying to leave, Carroll said they work with police to help meet the woman safely and take her to the shelter. Once there, the woman is treated for her injuries if needed, advised of the house rules and asked to write an impact statement on what happened to bring her to the shelter.

Carroll said it takes an average of seven tries for a woman to successfully leave, although they gain more knowledge and information of what they need each time. If a woman does go back, Carroll said they make sure she has a safety plan and an emergency plan — have a neighbor or friend call police if they ever see a certain object moved or in sight.

Safety measures are also in place at the shelter, which has had a perpetrator call and threaten them before coming in its parking lot before being scared away. Carroll said they also take each person’s word at face value. If they say they have been abused, they are given help. However, she said it does come out if they are not being truthful or, in fact, are the abusers.

To get help, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1 (800) 799-7233. Locally, those being abused can call the Restoration of Hope Hotline at (870) 672-4341 or toll free at 1 (866) 884-4637.

Here is the original post:
Restoration of Hope gives victims another chance at normal lives