Apartment Look

Section of rendering by architect Stephen Jacobs . A proposed five-story mixed use building with 116 apartments and ground-floor restaurant and retail uses on East Main Street and McDermott Avenue won approval of the Riverhead Town Board Tuesday night . In a split 3-1 vote, the board approved a pair of resolutions that simultaneously dispensed with extended environmental review and approved a site plan and special permit for the “ Riverview Lofts ” project proposed by Georgica Green Ventures LLC of Jericho. The actions green-light the construction of the five-story building with 12,623 square feet of first- floor commercial space , 55 on- site parking spaces and four-stories consisting of 116 workforce rental apartments : 31 studio, 37 one-bedroom and 28 two-bedroom units. Councilman Tim Hubbard , without comment, cast the lone vote against both measures. Councilwoman Jodi Giglio , an owner of Summerwind Square — the first mixed-use apartment building built in the downtown dis...

TAMPA — Two years ago, a college sophomore named Nicole Nachtman was marched past cameras into a county jail, accused of murdering her mother and step-father at their Carrollwood home. Prosecutors called the shootings "heinous, atrocious and cruel" and declared that Nachtman acted in a "cold, calculated and premeditated manner." They announced their intent to seek the death penalty. Then, last month, the Hillsborough State Attorney 's Office quietly took capital punishment off the table. What changed? The state attorney . Andrew Warren has withdrawn pursuit of the death penalty in five of 24 cases he inherited when he took over the office in January, after voters ousted longtime state attorney Mark Ober . A sixth defendant avoided death row with a guilty plea. Seventeen of the cases await review . Only once, so far, has Warren affirmed the prior administration's decision to seek death, although he also elected to seek it once in a more recent case. ...

When it comes to condominium development , Cascadia’s two largest cities couldn ’t be more different. Last year nearly 60 percent of new housing starts in the city of Vancouver, BC , were condominiums; meanwhile, Seattle saw no new condominium buildings open . And that’s not changing anytime soon: less than 10 percent of all building slated for downtown Seattle in the next three years will be condos. What’s the difference—why the blossoming of condominium construction in one city and the almost complete dearth in the other? The short answer is economics. In Vancouver, apartments are saddled with an unfavorable tax code , making condos the more lucrative multi- family housing investment even despite high rental demand . In Seattle’s skyrocketing rental market , one that’s climbed even faster than the condo market in recent years, apartment buildings are much more financially attractive, while condos come with bigger risks and, typically, lower returns. Compounding this profit differe...