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Posted: 6:52 pm Thu, September 1, 2011
By Daily Record Staff
Financing for pinched hotel owners
Choice Hotels International Inc. of Silver Spring, one of the world?s largest hotel franchisors, said a new partnership it has established with Access Point Financial Inc. will provide financing to qualified franchisees of major hotel brands. The first fruits of the relationship will concentrate on providing financing to owners of Sleep Inn hotels for renovation projects to keep their properties competitive. Choice Hotels is the first hospitality franchisor to team up with Access Point Financial and negotiate a formal finance program. Access Point Financial, of Greenwich, Conn., is a full-service lending and advisory platform focused on the hospitality industry.
Emergency housing website available
The Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development is encouraging property owners around the state to list their available rental units on www.mdhousingsearch.org, a bilingual housing locator website and call center to match property owners and prospective renters. The website allows renters to quickly locate appropriate properties for their needs, reducing casual inquiries and saving property owners time and money. In the event of a disaster, the site will be widely promoted, and state and local agencies will use the service to find housing for displaced families.
Large warehouse in North East acquired
Weeks Robinson Properties of Atlanta, a private real estate investment and development company that acquires and develops industrial properties of institutional quality, purchased Trade Center@95, a 600,000-square-foot warehouse and 32 acres of vacant land on Route 40 in North East for about $21 million. The site can be expanded to 1.2 million square feet, said CEO Forrest Robinson. The company is marketing the building to potential logistics tenants, and has seen interest from multiple prospects, Robinson said WR recently raised $150 million in equity to take advantage of opportunities within the depressed real estate market.
BBB: Beware of rogue contractors
The Better Business Bureau | Greater Maryland is cautioning Maryland residents to anticipate a spike in scams by door-to-door ?rogue contractors? who solicit home repair business following an event such as Hurricane Irene. The BBB said it and government agencies frequently receive a high volume of reports of post-disaster rip-offs that come and go following violent weather. Although it may take a while to get service from licensed contractors, ?if you use a rogue, unlicensed contractor, you forfeit significant protections under Maryland state law including bonding and insurance coverage,? the BBB warned.
Hotel REIT to repurchase stock
LaSalle Hotel Properties of Bethesda announced that its Board of Trustees has authorized a share repurchase program to acquire up to $100 million of the company?s common stock. LaSalle Hotel Properties, a real estate investment trust, owns 35 upscale full-service hotels, totaling more than 8,700 guest rooms in 13 markets in nine states and the District of Columbia. The company focuses on owning, redeveloping and repositioning hotels located in urban, resort and convention markets.
Randallstown Walmart gets underway
Public officials and business representatives turned out Tuesday at the Liberty Plaza shopping center in Randallstown, as long-vacant buildings were demolished to make way for a new Walmart Supercenter. The 160,000-square-foot store, which is scheduled to open in fall 2012, will bring 350 new jobs to Randallstown. It will include a full grocery, bakery, deli, pharmacy and outdoor living department. The new building will replace a strip of long-vacant stores at the rear of the shopping center at Liberty and Brenbrook roads. ?Walmart?s confidence in Randallstown will help spur other national stores and restaurants to take a fresh look at the Liberty Road corridor as a great place to do business,? said Baltimore County Executive Kevin Kamenetz, who attended the ceremony.
Development OK?d for 2 West Side sites
The Baltimore Development Corp. said Wednesday it received Board of Estimates approval for two land disposition agreements that will bring separate development projects to areas of Pennsylvania Avenue and Pigtown. In the former, Sphinx Club Complex LLC will acquire five contiguous properties in the 2000 block of Pennsylvania Avenue for a mixed-use project that will include a Negro Baseball League museum and a business incubator. In Pigtown, the city will sell five vacant properties in the 900 block of Washington Boulevard to Historic Pigtown Development II LLC. Developers Neil Katz and Jeffrey Gould plan to build residential units initially and eventually erect a mixed-use retail/residential project.
WRIT buys Olney retail center for $58M
Washington Real Estate Investment Trust of Rockville said it acquired Olney Village Center, a 199,000-square-foot shopping center in Olney, for $58 million. Olney Village Center, anchored by Shoppers Food Warehouse, is 98.7 percent leased to 32 tenants, including national retailers T.J. Maxx, HomeGoods and SunTrust Bank. The property was built in 1979 and renovated in 2003. WRIT assumed a $22.6 million mortgage bearing interest at 6.37 percent per year and maturing in 2023, and funded the remaining $35.4 million with available cash and its line of credit. WRIT is a real estate investment trust that invests in income-producing properties in the Greater Washington metro region.
Construction starts on Choice Hotels HQ
Representatives of Choice Hotels International Inc. and Foulger-Pratt Cos., together with community leaders and state and local officials, were on hand Wednesday at a construction site in Rockville for the groundbreaking of the new Choice Hotels headquarters building. When it is completed in about two years, more than 400 Choice Hotels employees will move to the new 190,907-square-foot, Class A office building. The building, which is being built to LEED Platinum certification standards, will be developed, constructed, owned and managed by the Rockville-based Foulger-Pratt. Choice Hotels has been based in Silver Spring since 1968, where the lease on its current headquarters building expires in 2013.
College of Liberal Arts building?opens at Towson University
Towson University in Baltimore County held formal opening ceremonies Tuesday at the site of the College of Liberal Arts structure on the university?s York Road campus. The College of Liberal Arts facility occupies the former site of the Lida Lee Tall building and is the university?s first entirely new academic structure to be built in 30 years. Site preparation, planning, design and construction of the $148 million project took seven years to complete. The building is LEED silver certified.
Cirdan Group opens Columbia office
Cirdan Group Inc. of Timonium, a project management consulting firm, announced the opening of its second facility in Columbia. The new office will be the principal location for Cirdan Group?s Election Services practice and Business Development operations, along with other customer support activities. The facility features a state-of-the-art training area and will accommodate both field-deployed consultants as well as visiting partners. ?Our new offices will provide increased services, capacity, and easy access for our strategic customers in the mid-Atlantic region,? said Joanne Vatz, Cirdan Group CEO. ?We will continue to run our corporate and business operations from the current site in Timonium.?
Local companies purchase Solo Cup site
Greenberg Gibbons and Vanguard Equities Inc. announced that they have purchased the former Solo Cup manufacturing site in Owings Mills. The local development companies said they will seek approval to redevelop the vacant 52-acre property into an upscale retail destination and gathering place for the community. They said they will unveil a concept plan for the site to the public in mid-October. A representative of the buyers said Solo Cup Co. was the seller. Other details of the purchase, such as financial terms, will not be disclosed at this time, the spokesperson said. Greenberg Gibbons is headquartered in Owings Mills, less than a mile from the Solo Cup site. Vanguard Equities is based in Baltimore.
KLNB selected to find sites?for Hurricane Grill & Wings
KLNB Retail has been selected as the exclusive leasing broker for the regional franchise holder of Hurricane Grill & Wings, a Florida-based fast-casual restaurant that is looking to identify up to 40 new locations within the Maryland, Washington, D.C., and Northern Virginia trade areas. Keith Barnett and Ryan Wilner, principals for KLNB Retail, will oversee the site selection and leasing program for Chitowngus LLC, the franchise entity owned by the father and son team of Glenn and Eric Gustafsson. Each restaurant contains approximately 3,000 to 5,000 square feet of space and employs nearly 50 full and part-time workers. Hurricane Grill & Wings began in Fort Pierce, Fla., in 1995, and has since expanded to nearly 50 locations throughout Arizona, Florida, Michigan, New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania.
LEASES
Merritt Properties LLC reported the following lease transaction:
Ship Rite LLC, a freight forwarding company, leased 1,500 square feet of space at 3601 Commerce Drive, Suite 101, in Halethorpe. Jamie Campbell, Liz Tarran-Jones, Vince Bagli and Steve Shaw handled the transaction on behalf of Merritt Properties.
KISSIMMEE ? As Kattia Graham is quick to note, one of the great things about spending time with your grandparents is the rich wealth of information they have about the family?s history. ?We are big believers in taking as much knowledge and as many of these memories and these histories that our elders hold,? Graham said. ?They are the ones who know more, and have experienced more, and they have a first hand perspective of what?s happening, and how things are happening. I don?t think that compares to what you read in books.? Graham has a particularly strong interest in history ? specifically, Osceola County?s history. She?s the program director at the Osceola County Historical Society, which hopes to unite grandparents and their grandchildren in a day of fun, celebration ? and, yes, a little history, too. The Spence-Lanier Pioneer Village, which the Historical Society runs, will be celebrating Grandparent?s Day on Sunday, Sept. 11 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the village at 750 N. Bass Road in Kissimmee. Grandparents get in free that day with a paid child, and there will be plenty of events to take advantage of ? live music, square dancing, a barbeque, crafts and more. It?s being held in conjunction with National Grandparents Day, which is held on the first Sunday after Labor Day. ?We have been wanting to do this event for quite a while, and this year we were hesitant because it would be on September 11,? said Graham, a reference to the date of the devastating terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington D.C. in 2001. ?But we?re focusing on the positive side of life, and we decided to throw this event anyway,? she added. ?It?s a first time for us.? It makes sense for a historical society to celebrate Grandparent?s Day, she said, because they have so much wonderful knowledge about history ? the history of the region, of the state, and, of course, of their own family. That?s why the historical society plans to bring in volunteers from its genealogy lab to work with the grandparents and kids alike on a unique project that day. ?We have a few volunteers who have done work at our genealogy lab, and they are going to work with the kids on this project,? she said. ?There are going to be a few questions we want them to ask, and we?re going to encourage the kids to ask more and open a dialogue between them and their grandparents. We?re trying to do a family event, and make it very accessible, very affordable, but at the same time one that?s in keeping with our mission of preserving history. We want to call this the Legacy Project, where we teach the kids how to interview their grandparents and create a family history book.? Beyond that history, the day also offers fun for all ages, she added. ?Besides that, we are going to have our musicians,? she said. ?They are volunteers for the society, and they play at all of our events. They have a lot of history in terms of local music, and this is a volunteer run event. ?We?re going to have a few vendors, and everything there will be based on family activities,? she added. ?We?re going to have square dancing, workshops, craft stations, and all kinds of games. We?re also going to have a pioneer portrait with the grandparents and their kids, and the Osceola County Council on Aging will share information on its Meals on Wheels program and Adopt a Grandparent program, and all of our craft stations are based on stuff that will go into the family histories.? ?It sounds really nice, and interesting,? said Carmen Carrasquillo, the chief operations officer at the Council on Aging. ?We collaborate with anybody and all ages here in Osceola County. We do for each other and help each other out.? The Osceola County Historical Society is committed to preserving the county?s history for future generations to enjoy. They have four historic structures that make up the Historic Pioneer Village, including an original Cracker house from 1889. Everything inside the buildings is original to those structures. To learn more about the Historical Society or Grandparents Day, call?????????????407-396-8644??????, email donnita@osceolahistory.org, or log on to www.osceolahistory.org.
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Pregnancy is a life-changing event which in some cases may trigger domestic violence.
It is still widely considered inappropriate in maternity units to inquire about possible domestic violence.
DOMESTIC VIOLENCE can sometimes begin with pregnancy, according to researcher Marianne Notko of the University of Jyv?skyl?. ?It?s alarming that just when one would expect everything to be going well in the relationship, violence can occur.? As several international studies have also shown, pregnancy and childbirth do not provide a guarantee against physical abuse within a relationship.
While carrying out her study, Notko was surprised by the scale of the taboo within the healthcare profession on violence experienced by pregnant women. When carers were asked to distribute questionnaires to expecting mothers on experiences of violence they might have had in an intimate relationship, some of the carers refused. ?They considered it prurient in that phase of a woman?s life,? Notko says. Fears of offending the patient generally turned out to be unwarranted, however ? respondents were usually grateful to have been asked. Victims of violence are given the opportunity to meet with social workers and psychiatric professionals in the hospital.
A difficult phase
The study showed that almost four hundred pregnant women treated at the Central Hospital of Central Finland in Jyv?skyl? have experienced physical abuse within an intimate relationship. Nearly one-third of respondents had experienced kinship violence at some stage in their lives. Of this proportion, a few per cent were ongoing victims of psychological, sexual or other physical violence or other abuse at the time the study was carried out. It was later noticed within the hospital?s gynaecological clinic that more women coming for treatment have experienced violence.
Project manager Minna Juutilainen says that as much as 40 per cent of the women coming for treatment reported having been victim of domestic violence. According to researchers, the onset of violence within a relationship is often related to many conflicting feelings that accompany impending parenthood. The nature of the relationship changes, and having children brings its own tensions. ?Fatherhood can trigger many things relating to the man?s own life that are not very well noticed here. We tend to focus only on the woman?s wellbeing,? Juutilainen explains.
Men often react physically to difficult emotional experiences, and the reaction can sometimes take the form of violence. Violent behaviour within a relationship usually begins suddenly. ?It is rare that violence is present in a relationship from the very beginning.? It is also hard when choosing a partner to assess whether he or she will be violent, as violent partners come from a wide variety of backgrounds. One characteristic that can be a predictor of future problems is a strict conception of gender roles.
Violence and gynaecological disorders
Victims make more frequent use of health services than others.
?Headaches, back pains and even heart problems can be symptoms of the poor state of health and wellbeing associated with victims of domestic violence,? says Adjunct Professor Juha Holma of the University of Jyv?skyl?. Relationship violence has been shown to contribute to an especially large proportion of gynaecological problems, according to Juutilainen.
The study also revealed that care staff are not always able to spot victims of violence as well as they think they are. In many cases, incidents of violence are only revealed by direct questioning.
SAILA KIUTTU ? STT HT LEHTIKUVA - SOILE KALLIO - SARI GUSTAFSSON
MONTERREY, Mexico ? Nuevo Leon state launched a new offensive Wednesday against the proliferation of gambling halls as a top politician's brother was videotaped taking wads of cash inside a casino days before a casino fire killed 52 people.
Nuevo Leon Gov. Rodrigo Medina announced initiatives to ban new betting operations and to better regulate existing ones, as well as a corruption probe into Jonas Larrazabal, brother of Monterrey Mayor Fernando Larrazabalwho was caught on videotape visiting several unidentified casinos and being handed large amounts of money.
The newspaper Reforma, which published the images Wednesday, estimated that one wad of cash passed in a cell phone box was 400,000 pesos ($32,000). Mayor Fernando Larrazabal said that he supports the probe.
"First of all, the people voted for Fernando Larrazabal, and I'm not responsible for my brother's actions," he said. "I will ask the prosecutor to investigate and bring whoever is responsible to justice."
Gunmen entered the Casino Royale in Monterrey last Thursday, spread gasoline and set the building on fire, trapping and asphyxiating dozens of gamblers and employees in what's believed to be a case of extortion. Most of the victims were women playing bingo and slots or lunching that afternoon.
The five suspects arrested so far confessed to being part of the Zetas drug cartel. Authorities says they are searching for seven others, as well as the owner of the casino, who is believed to be in the United States.
It was the worst attack related to drug violence on civilians since President Felipe Calderon launched his crackdown on organized crime in 2006. At least 35,000 people have died in drug violence since then, according to government figures, though other sources put the number at 40,000.
Calderon declared three days of national mourning after the casino attack.
Medina also said he will push for changes in federal law so that no concession is granted for a casino without the approval of state and local authorities.
Larrazabal said the Casino Royale and 12 more of Monterrey's 29 casinos violated municipal laws but were allowed to remain open after obtaining federal court injunctions.
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