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The spec homes have been removed from their slabs at what was supposed to be the I-10 East sales office of the ambitious modular home manufacturing start-up, Premier Designed Homes LLC . Meanwhile, the group's newly built corporate headquarters sits empty in the flood-ravaged former National Finance Center complex in the far reaches of eastern New Orleans. Two months after the company gave away a shotgun home in a publicity gambit at the Gulf Coast Building & Remodeling Expo and boasted of investing $1 billion in two eastern New Orleans factories that would create 2,500 well-paying jobs and crank out 8,000 to 9,000 new homes each year, the project appears to be dead. Whether it was a scam, an ill-fated venture of amateurs that crept prematurely into the public eye , or a grandiose but unrealistic vision remains to be seen.
December is when publications like to forecast upcoming trends for the new year. Mark Nash, author of a number of books on real estate, has come up with some good ones, based on a survey of more than 900 industry professionals. Here's some of the features homeowners should be looking to put in their dwellings in 2007: Upscale garages. "It's no longer the out-of-sight-out-of-mind dumping ground. Today's garage owners want them decked out with cabinet and storage systems, mini-refrigerators, insulation, heating and air conditioning and durable but residential-looking flooring." Man caves and Mom caves. "Personal dedicated space for one person in a household where they can go and work on projects or chill without being disturbed." Two home offices.
(PRWeb) December 11, 2006 -- Stoam gears up for Green! Sustainable and green buildings are rapidly becoming a necessity as many large corporations like Bank of America, Toyota, Goldman Sachs, IBM, and more are striving to push green buildings to the world, according to "Building the Green Way" by Charles Lockwood. Stoam has now launched an answer to this green need by committing to offer its green and sustainable products now to the public, and also to the environment. Stoam's answer to this need are what they call the 3 R's -- Reduce, Reuse, Recycle--to be part of their core values. However, for Stoam to achieve true environmental, social, and economic sustainability, they have broadened their scope of consideration beyond the traditional aspirations to include Reliable and Relieve. .
The heyday of the conglomerate is long past. Despite a thriving nostalgia for the 1970s, the vast and sprawling industrial behemoths that characterized that age have seldom come back into fashion, and never for long. Now the mood has turned so wildly that the clamor is often not only to question the point of conglomerates, but to argue for their break-up. Conglomerates have taken a battering from management theorists, too, with many seeing diversification as a way for managers to build empires rather than a way to create value. And stock markets have taken to imposing a conglomerate discount, forcing firms such as Tyco International (Ticker: TYC) to break themselves up.
The case against conglomerates can be summed up in two words: size and complexity. Size is said to slow down decision-making; complexity to create confusion.
Aruba Networks, the Mobile Edge Company, today announced that Group Lapeyre, a leading manufacturer and distributor of home improvement products in Europe, and a subsidiary of Group Saint Gobain, is expanding its deployment of Aruba's Mobile Edge architecture. While Group Lapeyre has had Aruba's mobility solutions deployed at its headquarters since 2004, the company is now extending this network to the Group's industrial sites, including several factories, warehouses and shipping docks. "As far as we're concerned, Aruba's solutions guarantee the best performance on the market today, incorporating simplified and centralized deployment and management as well as highly evolved security functions such as a stateful firewalls, encryption, authentication and IDS/IPS to meet with even the most rigorous demands," said Patrick Goubin, Group Lapeyre's networks and telecoms manager.
John Serio, who has served as principal of Archbishop Hannan High School since its inception in 1987 and oversaw its reopening on the north shore this fall, will step down at the end of the school year, according to a letter distributed last week to parents. "I just thought it was the right time for me to move on," he said Monday, adding that Hurricane Katrina, which flooded the school's original campus in Meraux and his own home in New Orleans, had no bearing on his decision. Serio helped usher in a new chapter in the school's 20-year history this year, when the Hannan community relocated from its flooded campus to St. Tammany Parish. The temporary Hannan, which is currently housed in modular classrooms at St. Joseph Abbey near Covington, will eventually move to a permanent site in Goodbee, although officials expect it will take several years to build the new campus.
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