HIGH POINT — The High Point furniture market’s biggest competitor just opened its winter market in Las Vegas. Organizers are still preparing for a week’s worth of events, but one economist still wonders how productive that marked will actually be.

“Las Vegas is a huge selling point, but Las Vegas is also a city that people go to for fun, and so you got to wonder how much serious business is going to be conducted out there,” explained Mark Vitner, a senior economist at Wachovia. Read more…

The interior of the newly restored model of architect Edwin Lutyens original design for Liverpool’s Roman Catholic Cathedral is seen at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool, northern England, January 25, 2007. The model which stands at nearly 13 ft high shows what the building would have looked like had construction gone ahead. If the building been completed it’s dome would have been 510 ft off the ground, more than 60 ft higher than St Peter’s Basillica in Vatican City.

Dan Saxon Palmer, an architect who with his partner, William Krisel, designed Modernist tract homes that provided the building blocks for Southern California’s suburban boom in the 1950s, has died. He was 86.

Palmer, whose work included custom homes, apartments, commercial office buildings and large-scale design projects, died of congestive heart failure Dec. 22 at Saint John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, his wife, Shirley, said. Read more…

A museum visitor walks past the newly restored model of architect Edwin Lutyens original design for Liverpool’s Roman Catholic Cathedral at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool, northern England, January 25, 2007.

The construction of the Rota Judicial Center was completed in September 2005, but it was only recently that it got its furniture, worth $68,000.

Chief Justice Miguel S. Demapan told Saipan Tribune that the furniture were bought from the U.S. mainland using federal funds.
Read more…

Sarawak’s over 250 small- and medium-scale furniture industry players face a shortage of hardwood timber, Assistant Industrial Development Minister, Larry Sng, said Monday.

He said previously the timber for the furniture industry in the state came from Indonesia, Philippines and Sabah but for the last two years, Indonesia had reduced its export.
Read more…

Establishing a regional permitting authority to help Central Louisiana comply with the new, stronger state building code makes sense. We’re glad that the Rapides Area Planning Commission has been awarded $724,000 to do just that.

The new agency will become home for building inspectors who have been certified by the respected International Code Council. They would inspect construction in the Cenla parishes that join the authority, and make sure that it meets sensible standards for a region that gets more than its share of wind, rain, flooding, tornadoes and so on.
Read more…

City Attorney Michael Aguirre asked the U.S. Attorney’s Office Tuesday to prosecute unnamed individuals for failing to halt construction on a 12-story building near San Diego’s Montgomery Field that federal officials have labeled a hazard to airport operations.

Despite a Federal Aviation Administration determination that the building’s height poses a hazard to aircraft landing in bad weather, developer Sunroad Enterprises proceeded with the project, according to Aguirre. Read more…

The consolidation and realignment orders are complete. Now the challenge is to construct the labs, dorms and other buildings in time for a 2011 deadline.

The commander of the unit that operates this sprawling base has the tricky job of coordinating 15 construction projects to house the research programs being moved into Wright-Patterson within five years.

Col. Colleen Ryan, commander of the 88th Air Base Wing, said Wright-Patterson is counting on an appropriation of $260 million for the federal fiscal year that begins Oct. 1 to start the construction of laboratories, offices and residence halls for medical students. The funding would be 78 percent of the overall $335 million that the base expects to pay for the construction needed to have all the programs up and running at Wright-Patterson by Sept. 30, 2011.
Read more…

The shiny new baggage claim facility at the Santa Maria Public Airport isn’t even six months old but officials are already investigating a flaw in the building’s construction.

Cracks that spider web across the 4,100-square-foot building have appeared in the concrete floor. The tiny fissures may be an eyesore but are not a safety hazard, said Airport General Manager Gary Rice.
Read more…