Fairfield Connecticut Building Expert Directory

Kiewit Selected for Rebuild of Collapsed Baltimore Bridge

September 02, 2024 — Jim Parsons - Engineering News-Record
Kiewit Infrastructure Co. has been tapped to rebuild Baltimore’s I-695/Francis Scott Key Bridge under a progressive design-build procurement announced Aug. 29 by the Maryland Transportation Authority (MDTA). Work on the expected four-year reconstruction effort is scheduled to begin next year. Reprinted courtesy of Jim Parsons, Engineering News-Record ENR may be contacted at enr@enr.com Read the full story... Read the court decision
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Renters Trading Size for Frills Fuel U.S. Apartment Boom

July 16, 2014 — Prashant Gopal – Bloomberg
Katie Graham is living large. Just in a small apartment. She moved into the new ParkCentral tower in Nashville, Tennessee, for its gym, rooftop deck with heated pool, and the bars and restaurants in the neighborhood below. She didn’t mind the size of the 562-square-foot (52-square-meter) studio. “I just wanted to be in a good area and wanted good amenities, so I wasn’t looking for something huge,” said Graham, 25, who relocated from her hometown in Jackson, Tennessee, two hours away. “I’m by myself and don’t need all that. The bigger the area, the more furniture you have to buy.” Young professionals are paying top-market rents to live in new upscale apartment towers sprouting in Nashville and other downtowns across the country. They’re sacrificing living space for a prime urban location and extras such as cooking classes, dog-wash stations and poolside Wi-Fi. Developers, in the biggest U.S. apartment-construction boom in almost a decade, are shrinking the size of units so they can command luxury rates without narrowing the pool of potential tenants. Read the court decision
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Reprinted courtesy of Prashant Gopal, Bloomberg
Mr. Gopal may be contacted at pgopal2@bloomberg.net

Latosha Ellis Joins The National Black Lawyers Top 40 Under 40

January 20, 2020 — Hunton Insurance Recovery Blog
Latosha M. Ellis, an associate in Hunton Andrews Kurth’s Insurance Coverage Practice, was recently named to The National Black Lawyers Top 40 Under 40 class of 2019. The professional honorary association recognizes attorneys under 40 from each state who demonstrate superior leadership, reputation, influence, stature and profile as a black lawyer. Selection is by invitation only following a multi-phase review process that includes peer nominations and third party research. Read the court decision
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Reprinted courtesy of Hunton Andrews Kurth LLP

What is a Subordination Agreement?

May 06, 2019 — Bremer Whyte Brown & O'Meara LLP
Put simply, a subordination agreement is a legal agreement which establishes one debt as ranking behind another debt in the priority for collecting repayment from a debtor. It is an arrangement that alters the lien position. Without a subordination clause, loans take chronological priority which means that a deed of trust recorded first will be considered senior to all deeds of trusts recorded after. As such, the oldest loan becomes the primary loan, with first call on any proceeds from a sale of a property. However, a subordination agreement acknowledges that one party’s claim or interest is inferior to that of another party in the event that the borrowing entity liquidates its assets. Further, shareholders are subordinate to all creditors. The junior debt is referred to as a “subordinated debt”, and the debt which has a higher claim to any assets is the senior debt. Often, the borrower does not have enough funds to pay all debts, and lower priority debts may receive little or no repayment. For example, if a business has $400,000 in senior debt, $100,000 in subordinated debt, and a total asset value of $420,000, upon liquidation of the company, only the senior debtholder will be paid in full. The remaining $20,000 will be distributed among the subordinated debtholders. Subordinated debts are, therefore, riskier and lenders will require a higher interest rate as compensation. Read the court decision
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Reprinted courtesy of Bremer Whyte Brown & O'Meara LLP

Housing to Top Capital Spending in Next U.S. Growth Leg: Economy

September 24, 2014 — Shobhana Chandra – Bloomberg
Bruce Hottle’s $10,000 computer systems upgrade in February at his Pennsylvania concrete plant may be his last investment for another two years. More than 1,100 miles south in suburban Miami, Maggie Cruz-Ledon and her husband have set a 2015 deadline to buy a house, upping their budget in the process. Hottle’s and Cruz-Ledon’s plans represent a sneak peek into the next leg of the expansion. Housing and business capital spending, two areas closely tied to swings in the world’s largest economy, are poised to diverge as home construction gives growth more of a boost in the long run while investment in new plants and equipment shows less promise, according to economists at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley. Read the court decision
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Reprinted courtesy of Shobhana Chandra, Bloomberg
Ms. Chandra may be contacted schandra1@bloomberg.net

Palm Beach Billionaires’ Fix for Sinking Megamansions: Build Bigger

June 14, 2021 — Prashant Gopal & Amanda L. Gordon - Bloomberg
Thomas Peterffy became one of the world’s richest people by mastering risk on Wall Street. Building his Mediterranean-style mansion seven years ago on a vulnerable stretch of Florida’s Palm Beach Island was a matter of seeing the odds clearly once again. The consequences of climate change will play out over decades, and Peterffy is 76 years old. “I don’t have a care about it at all,” he said over lunch at Mar-a-Lago earlier this year, just down the street from his home. The founder of Interactive Brokers Group has a fortune of more than $21 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. “If something needs to be done to save it,” he added, “it’s not going to be my problem.” The town of Palm Beach is busy adapting to the risks of a warming planet, even if there appear to be fewer worriers among the buyers and speculative builders on the island. Some of the lowest-lying properties in the U.S. are seeing the highest-flying prices. The real estate website Zillow estimates the value of Peterffy’s home at $52 million. This year a new nine-bedroom mansion with toes-in-the-sand views sold to financier Scott Shleifer for a record-breaking price in excess of $122 million. Read the court decision
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Reprinted courtesy of Prashant Gopal & Amanda L. Gordon, Bloomberg

Carbon Sequestration Can Combat Global Warming, Sometimes in Unexpected Ways

April 02, 2024 — Michael S. McDonough, Robert A. James & Amanda G. Halter - Gravel2Gavel Construction & Real Estate Law Blog
Whether by land, by sea or through human innovation, carbon sequestration is likely coming to (or already happening in) a destination near you. As our planet, overdosed on greenhouse gases, battles climate disasters, a logical solution is to simply stop pumping carbon dioxide into the air. Legislation worldwide is aimed at that target, but reducing output alone may not be enough. There are still billions of tons of extra CO2 already in the atmosphere—this crossroads is where sequestration comes into play. Carbon sequestration is exactly what it sounds like—the storage of CO2. Once carbon is sucked out of the air, or in some cases pulled directly from industrial smokestacks, sequestration can be undertaken in a lot of different ways. Carbon storage happens naturally, when forests and oceans absorb and convert CO2 into organic matter, but carbon dioxide can also be artificially injected into deep underground rock formations (or wells), or in some cases technological approaches repurpose carbon into a resource like concrete, or as a catalyst in a closed-loop industrial system. However it’s accomplished, the point of sequestration is to stabilize carbon and ensure it doesn’t creep back into our atmosphere. Researchers, like those at the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, now say that CO2 removal is vital to keeping global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (past that threshold, climate change could reach catastrophic levels). A 2023 University of Oxford study estimated that, currently, about two billion metric tons of carbon dioxide are being removed each year, primarily through land management (i.e., planting trees), and suggested that we need to double that amount to avoid dangerous global warming levels. Reprinted courtesy of Michael S. McDonough, Pillsbury, Robert A. James, Pillsbury and Amanda G. Halter, Pillsbury Mr. McDonough may be contacted at michael.mcdonough@pillsburylaw.com Mr. James may be contacted at rob.james@pillsburylaw.com Ms. Halter may be contacted at amanda.halter@pillsburylaw.com Read the court decision
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A Court-Side Seat: NWP 12 and the Dakota Access Pipeline Easement Get Forced Vacations, while a Potential Violation of the Eighth Amendment Isn’t Going Anywhere

August 10, 2020 — Anthony B. Cavender - Gravel2Gavel
Here’s a report on several new decisions made over the past few days. U.S. SUPREME COURT U.S. Army Corps of Engineers v. Northern Plains Resources Council On July 8, 2020, the Court has issued a partial stay of the decision of the U.S. District Court for Montana, which had held that the nationwide use by the Corps of Engineers of its Nationwide Permit 12 to permit oil and gas pipelines must be vacated because the Corps, when it reissued these permits in 2012, failed to follow the requirements of the Endangered Species Act. The breadth of this ruling seems to have surprised and alarmed many past and perspective permittees of the Corps. The stay will not apply to the ongoing Ninth Circuit litigation. FEDERAL COURTS OF APPEAL Vega, et al. v. Semple (The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit) On June 29, 2020, the court refused to dismiss a putative class action by past and present inmates of Connecticut’s Garner Correctional Institution who alleged that state correctional officials exposed them to excessive amounts of radon gas in violation of the Eighth Amendment. These officials are alleged to have been “deliberately indifferent” to inmate safety. A 1993 Supreme Court decision, Helling v. McKiney, clearly established the law in this area, and the Garner facility opened in 1992. The defense clams of limited immunity as to federal law violations were rejected. Read the court decision
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Reprinted courtesy of Anthony B. Cavender, Pillsbury
Mr. Cavender may be contacted at anthony.cavender@pillsburylaw.com

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