Apartment Look

I read Michael Nesset ’s article (“The good old days ... were, in ways,” Opinion Exchange, Aug. 13) and was not quite sure how to take it. I, too, grew up in a small town, but my recollections of small-town life in the 1950s and ’60s are not quite so benign or so happy. I, too, remember the soda fountain with the marble-topped bar and daytime baseball games on the radio. I also remember that my hometown was 100 percent white and nearly 100 percent Christian . Needless to say, if you weren’t either of those, you didn’t really belong there, and those who did fit those criteria were eager to let you know that. I think that from the perspective of someone nonwhite or non-Christian, the nostalgia for small-town life is a bad dream. I still see rural areas and small towns maintaining those attitudes, hence the red-blue split between cities and nonurban areas. I can see how the “ make America great again” crowd yearns for the days when white Christian men made the rules and made all of t...

Take a ride on the 8M Metrobus line called Shirley -Duke.But don't expect to find any traces of the old Shirley-Duke -- the notorious, decaying crime- ridden apartment complex that was closed in the late '70s. This is now Foxchase of Alexandria. And, as the trendy Foxchase ads have promised for the past year, it offers "2,113 new leases on living." "That bus is one of the last things left with the Shirley-Duke name," said Leonard Skolnik, property manager of Foxchase, a development that could house 5,000 people, or 5 percent of Alexandria's population. "And I don't think there is anything we can do about that. Though we'd like to . . . ." It has been a year since the first tenants moved into the 87-acre property -- formerly the 200 buildings of the Shirley-Duke and Regina apartments -- between Duke Street and Shirley Highway in the west end of Alexandria. After renovating the interiors of all the buildings, adding balconies to al...

TRENTON -- The year was 1917 and the Roebling complex's Clark Street Rope Shop in Trenton reopened after being gutted by a fire two years earlier. The new building was ultramodern for its day, with steel trusses, fire-resistant materials and massive windows that flooded the space with natural daylight. It's here where the wire used in Charles Lindbergh's Spirit of St. Louis plane was believed to be manufactured. Now, a century later, the building has been reinvented as the Roebling Lofts with 16-to-24-foot ceilings, 10-foot windows and environmentally friendly features . The latest project by Trenton- based HHG Development , it aims to combine the old with the new. "It was always obvious to us that this was the best development site in Trenton," Michael Goldstein, one of the principals, said during a recent building tour . "We've always had our eyes on it." But it wasn't until January 2011 that the county approved a development agreement with HH...

A Cedar Ridge Apartments tenant shows a respirator she claims she sometimes needs due to alleged mold issues at the south Sacramento apartment complex . Code Enforcement is continuing to inspect the complex to determine if there are violations. PHOTO BY MICHAEL MOTT Nancy Avalos watched as her 5- and 8-year-old daughters danced and chased each other. Their laughter filled the living room. “My daughters don’t want to move out,” Avalos said in Spanish. Her voice broke. “I feel like I’ve let them down.” Avalos moved to Cedar Ridge Apartments six years ago. After sharing a living room of an apartment together, the single mother wanted to give her three daughters room to play and moved to a place they could call their own. But now the family is moving out of its two- bedroom apartment , after Avalos’ monthly rent rose from $802 to $1,086. For Avalos and her neighbors, sharp rent and utility bill increases hit the past two months as the property owner, Torrance- based Cedar Ridge Apa...

Outdated and inadequate infrastructure along Woodland’s downtown alleys is jeopardizing development . That’s the conclusion of at least one developer and why city planners are compiling information on the potential square footage for businesses along those alleys and the ability to provide sewer, water and electrical power to them. The alleys: Dead Cat and Dog Gone, parallel Main Street east and west loosely between Fifth Street to Cleveland — with some interruptions for storefronts. They’ve been in existence for more than 100 years. In fact, the recent 125th Anniversary of Woodland’s Great Fire noted that the blaze started in Dead Cat Alley near the Opera House. Because of their age coupled with their width, they lack basic infrastructure services . Dead Cat Alley is infrastructurally better than Dog Gone Alley. It’s wider, for one thing at between 25 and 35 feet depending on the location. It has also been upgraded over the years with new power and cable utilities as businesses...

Cedar Ridge Apartments located in Willington, CT has had reports of discolored water. (Mustafa Mussa/The Daily Campus)" src="src" /> Cedar Ridge Apartments located in Willington, CT has had reports of discolored water. (Mustafa Mussa/The Daily Campus) Residents living in Cedar Ridge Apartments in Willington, including many University of Connecticut students, have seen brown water coming from the faucets of their apartments and have been unable to drink, do laundry, cook or bathe since moving in over a month ago. One resident, Salma Adil Yousif , posted photos from her apartment in the Facebook group “Buy or Sell UConn Tickets ” on Saturday and asked if any other residents had experienced the same thing. The photos show yellow water in the bathtub, sink and toilet as well as sediment left behind after draining them. The photos were accompanied by the caption “If anyone else in Cedar Ridge is living with this sort of bulls—t, please hit me up. I’m about to start s...

Council Member Laurie Cumbo (@cmlauriecumbo) Hundreds of Crown Heights residents and community activists laughed and jeered at a recent community forum as a lanky man wearing a paper mask of Mayor Bill de Blasio joked about bringing affordable housing to their neighborhood. The event was punctuated by moments of levity but mostly dominated by anger from residents who feel their elected representatives have sold out their interests to the real estate industry , with a focus on the proposed redevelopment of the vacant Bedford Union Armory . The de Blasio administration , with a developer, is proposing a combination of affordable and market rate rental apartments , condominium units, and recreation space for the massive site. City Council Member Laurie Cumbo , who represents the district, did not attend the August 2 forum focused on the project -- she was just days from giving birth to a son -- and when representatives of her office tried to speak, they were shouted down. The ev...

The advertisements are everywhere. On television, a sleek black sedan pulls up to a sprawling estate with a rolling green lawn as a mother recounts how Recovery Centers of America saved her child from drugs. On Facebook, radio, highway billboards, and commuter trains, people are urged to call the company’s instantly memorable hot line : 1-800-RECOVERY. The marketing blitz and an infusion of private equity money have helped make Recovery Centers of America into the self-described fastest- growing addiction treatment provider in the country. Launched less than three years ago by a high- end real estate developer , it’s part of a rush of entrepreneurs who see opportunity in the treatment business as the opioid crisis sweeps the country. Advertisement But an investigation by STAT and The Boston Globe has uncovered evidence of shoddy care and turmoil inside the walls of the company’s two Massachusetts treatment centers . This report is based on interviews with more than a dozen fo...