Construction Maison

📅   Thu August 17, 2017 - Northeast Edition #17 ( Massachusetts State Police photo )" src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/editorial.ceg/1000px/s3-35887-waltham5.jpg" /> An aerial view of the fire in Waltham. ( Massachusetts State Police photo ) On July 31, Waltham city councilors voted unanimously to call on the state of Massachusetts to implement tighter restrictions on the size of wood- frame residential buildings after a massive ten- alarm fire destroyed a wooden apartment complex under construction in late July.The fire was the Boston-area's second major wood-frame fire in a month and the fourth since the start of June. The incidents come at a time of increasing concern over the use of combustible building materials in the low- to mid- rise residential building market , as a number of wood- frame apartment complexes have been the site of spectacular fires, most notably in Charlotte, N.C.; Warner Robins, Ga.; Midvale, Utah; Oakland, Calif.; Dorchester, M...

It was the type of celebration that’s become commonplace in the Seaport District . Investors, developers, and other real estate types mingled earlier this summer at a groundbreaking ceremony for Echelon Seaport — $900 million worth of luxury condos and apartments set to rise from a parking lot on Seaport Boulevard. Advertisement Under a big white tent , guests sipped cocktails and listened as Governor Charlie Baker and Boston Mayor Martin J. Walsh touted the glassy, gleaming business district sprouting around them.Away from the festivities, Alex Shing of Los Angeles- based Cottonwood Management — the project’s developer — spoke about the strong interest from investors all over the globe who wanted to buy into Boston’s booming Seaport. Get Talking Points in your inbox: An afternoon recap of the day’s most important business news , delivered weekdays. “This is probably the most valuable piece of dirt in the world,” Shing said. Yet to help finance the project, Cottonwood and its...

“They’re tired of politics as usual,” Sal Albanese, the best chance the Never de Blasio movement has of electing a new mayor, said last night during the first televised debate of the Democratic primary. “It’s always tough to run as a reformer, but I think this time is different.” This time is probably not different. Albanese, a former five- term city councilmember from Brooklyn who is challenging Mayor Bill de Blasio , jabbed and scraped and lashed out at his bête noire during the debate, drawing his share of applause from a sympathetic Upper West Side audience . For watchers of the political scene, there wasn’t much to learn: De Blasio, in Albanese’s eyes, is corrupt; he’s in the pocket of big developers; he’s allowed the city to degenerate into some kind of carnival of woe, but for rich people. De Blasio, who despite his height advantage over Albanese often struggles to be the bigger man, rebutted plenty. His testy side was showing. A progressive Democrat, the first to govern this ...

In the summer of 1995, Doug Robb and his friends snuck into Agoura High School in the middle of the night. Dressed in all black, they found the set of portable stages their alma mater used for its commencement ceremonies and wheeled them through a dirt track and onto the beds of pickup trucks they’d borrowed for the occasion. The next day, they set up the foldout stages in Robb’s parents’ backyard to play their first show as Hoobastank, a metal- influenced band they’d formed about six months prior. Robb eventually returned the stages to the school, but not before using them during a massive rager that attracted teens and 20-somethings from all over the area. Among them were the then-unknown members of Incubus and Linkin Park—bands that, along with Hoobastank, would go on to produce some of the biggest hits of the next century. What could’ve easily been just another house party thrown by bored kids in a wealthy LA suburb turned out to be the beginning of a rock-music scene that was...