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Busy Plano tollway corner will get huge mixed-use development | Real Estate

Provident Realty and the Baccuses hired O'Brien Architects to design the planned retail, restaurant and office development . "The goal is to create something iconic both architecturally and as a sense of place," said Mick Granlund, vice president at O'Brien Architects. "We have planned the site to incorporate and build upon an existing grove of beautiful trees." Office towers, hotel Early plans include three office towers of eight to 10 floors, a boutique hotel and more than 50, 000 square feet of retail space to be constructed along Spring Creek. "There are a lot of good brands for restaurants and retail that are now highly aware of Legacy, but they couldn't get into that market," Backes said. "We are giving the retailers and restaurants high visibly while still keeping the walkable, urban environment ." The retail buildings will be clustered in a park-like campus just south of the planned high-rises. "We have the capacity t...

Industry applauds new sustainable public housing at Ivanhoe, but is the model sustainable?

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Frasers Property Australia , Citta Property Group and Mission Australia have won the tender for the $2. 2 billion redevelopment of the Ivanhoe public housing estate in Macquarie Park, in north-east Sydney. The project is set to achieve high sustainability outcomes , such as carbon neutral operation , but while the news has been welcomed by many in the property industry , it has also raised questions about just how replicable this model of public housing funding is. The master plan for the 8.2 hectare site will see 259 existing low - density public housing dwellings demolished and replaced with more than 3000 dwellings built by the Aspire consortium, including at least 950 new social housing apartments and 128 affordable rental apartments . A non-government co- educational vertical high school , two 75- place childcare centres , a 120- bed aged care facility , 141 social housing independent living units and 132 private independent living units are also in the plans. Community f...

New book iGen reveals the little-known ways smartphones are changing your kids

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by Jean M. Twenge Jean M. Twenge has been writing about generational differences for 25 years, producing bestsellers like Generation Me and The Narcissism Epidemic . In her latest book, Twenge zeroes in on iGen, the kids born in 1995 and later who have grown up with smartphones, had an Instagram page before they started high school and do not remember a time before the internet. The average teen checks her phone more than 80 times a day. The oldest iGen-ers, as she calls them, were early adolescents when the iPhone was introduced in 2007 and high school students when the iPad entered the market in 2010. Twenge argues the complete dominance of the smartphone among teens has had ripple effects across every area of iGen-er lives, from their social interactions to their mental health. Twenge draws on national surveys of 11 million Americans, conducted since 1960, to reach her conclusions. From about 2012, she started seeing "large, abrupt shifts in teens' behaviour and emoti...

Berkeley school employees could soon be able to rent housing units on district campuses

BUSD discussed the possibility of providing rental housing units to school district employees Wednesday because of Berkeley’s growing housing crisis . The housing proposal falls under Senate Bill 1413, which allows school districts to provide affordable housing to employees in need. The standard cost for the housing is based on the median income in Alameda County, which is less than $100,000 for a four-person household. Executive Director of Facilities Timothy White led the meeting’s discussion about housing and said the goal is to house about 1, 250 district employees . “We are not the only school district that has expressed this interest: San Francisco, Los Angeles, Santa Clara, San Mateo County and even Oakland Unified have all looked into teacher housing,” White said. “There is a healthy debate about the need of employee housing.” White said the proposed sites for the housing units are 1224 University Ave . , 1720 Oregon St., the Berkeley Adult School parking lot and the ...

Lack of Bay Area housing prompts rise in ‘super commuters’

As the housing crisis has grown across California, the state has seen a rise in the number of “super commuters,” residents who commute longer hours to cities starved of affordable housing, including those in the Bay Area. While the number of jobs brought into the Bay Area has grown in recent years, the availability of housing has not matched this increase, according to State Sen. Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley. People working in service-type jobs are not being paid wages that would allow them to afford housing in the cities where they are employed, forcing many to make long commutes to and from work each day, Skinner said. “Those are essential services, but then they’re driven out to living further and further away just to be able to afford somewhere to live,” Skinner said. Census data from 2015 reported San Francisco , Alameda and Contra Costa counties’ average commute times to be 31.7 minutes, 30.7 minutes and 35.3 minutes respectively — an increase from 2010, when the commute times for...

East Chicago residents find it difficult to escape Superfund evacuation order | Indiana

EAST CHICAGO, Ind. – The smell of burning bacon stirred Demetra Turner from her makeshift bed on the floor, a stack of quilts the only padding between her body and the ground. Long gone was her mattress, tossed into a dumpster with her couch, her recliner, her favorite theater chairs , her kids' beds. She had thrown them out on instructions from health officials , who said everything in the West Calumet Housing Complex was poisoned with arsenic and lead. Everyone must move, Mayor Anthony Copeland said last August, because the land was too dangerous to live on. But now it was May, and Turner and her children were still trying to escape. She shuffled past barren walls , packed boxes and cases of bottled water. "Who cooked that bacon?" Turner, 44, asked her 18-year-old son, Jeremiah. He sheepishly replied, "I did." She smiled and shook her head. He was just trying to help, she knew. Her overnight job at a gas station left her exhausted, and everyone in the fami...