Construction Projects

House-hunters have been peppering the municipal office here for months with calls asking when the townhouses off Route 3 will be built. Now the bulldozers finally are rolling, and a construction boom is under way at the eastern gateway to Chester County. Orleans Builders, based in Bensalem, Bucks County, has taken deposits from 17 buyers since launching sales Aug. 16 at its 103-unit Willistown Chase project on the south side of the highway, also known as West Chester Pike, said sales representative Connie S. Weber.

A Montgomery County man has received an eight-year federal prison sentence for defrauding 39 friends, family members and others of more than $5 million in a Ponzi scheme involving construction projects in the Bahamas and Costa Rica. Edward Ronald Schnable Jr. of Souderton pounced on vulnerable moments in the lives of his victims, including a widow, a retiree with a lump-sum pension, and people with medical problems looking for secure income, according to victims' testimony Thursday at Schnable's sentencing hearing.

At $8.6 billion, it is the largest public-works project in New Jersey history: the building and renovation of hundreds of schools across the state. But the money is quickly being committed to specific projects, and after next year it will likely be tapped out. New construction projects for school districts will be stalled unless billions more dollars are found. Gov. McGreevey recently alarmed urban districts when he suggested they would have to come up with some of the new money.

The school board has approved three questions that will be voted on in a fall bond referendum that could cost taxpayers between $9 million and $18 million for construction projects. Board members unanimously approved Questions 1 and 3, while Question 2 was approved by a 7-2 vote during Thursday night's four-hour school board meeting. Board members Brett Harrison and Christine Schultz voted against Question 2. "I think we had a great discussion, and I feel a sense of progress," said School Board President Pat Haines.

A coalition of 18 Gloucester County school districts today will announce that it is suing the State of New Jersey, contending that the state has failed to provide adequate funding for capital-improvement projects. Led by Washington Township, the largest district in the county, the coalition will address the issue at a news conference this morning in front of the township's high school, which is undergoing a major expansion. For the last five years, the total amount of state payments on local debt service - the mortgage payments on bond issues for building construction and renovations - has been frozen at $69 million, according to the state Department of Education.

To the sound of protests and drum beats that could be heard inside the Prince Music Theater, Gov. Corbett on Tuesday stuck to his message of budget austerity and no-new-taxes in a one-hour question-and-answer session hosted by the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce. Corbett repeated a folksy analogy to the business suit-and-tie audience, saying that state revenue amounted to an eight-inch pizza pie before the 2008 financial crisis. Now, he said, it's a six-inch pie "but with the same mouths to feed.

Parents and students in New Jersey's poorest school districts must hope that a recent appellate court ruling has delivered the momentum needed to jump-start long-delayed school construction projects. While the state has dragged its feet for several years, the districts have been waiting far too long for antiquated buildings to be repaired or replaced. A state appeals court handed the districts a major victory with its recent order that the state must quickly adopt the rules that will determine when the districts can manage their own state-funded construction projects.

Norristown Area School District officials say an ongoing state-level legal battle over wages for public construction projects likely will raise the cost of high-tech improvements and delay work on much-needed electrical work and computer access for district students. Plans to lay computer cables and rewire obsolete school electrical systems - some of which date to early this century - are among nearly $1 billion in government construction projects statewide now on hold until the legal dispute is resolved.

700 union trade workers rally at N.J. Statehouse About 700 union trade workers demonstrated outside the New Jersey Statehouse in Trenton yesterday in support of a bill that would help union contractors compete with non-union companies for government construction projects. The bill, under review by the state Senate Labor Committee, is a priority for unions since the state is about to spend billions on school construction, said state AFL-CIO President Charles Wowkanech.

Manuel Flores noticed the front door of his neighbor's Camden home ajar on Saturday night. He went inside and saw a man on the living-room floor, bleeding from a gunshot wound. The wounded man begged for help and pointed toward the kitchen. In Spanish, he said, "They are over there. " Flores, in an interview Sunday night, said he went to the kitchen and found the bodies of Louis Antonio Narvaez-Betancourt and Jose Ariel Paynes Garcia. "I ran out and I flagged down [an]

To the sound of protests and drum beats that could be heard inside the Prince Music Theater, Gov. Corbett on Tuesday stuck to his message of budget austerity and no-new-taxes in a one-hour question-and-answer session hosted by the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce. Corbett repeated a folksy analogy to the business suit-and-tie audience, saying that state revenue amounted to an eight-inch pizza pie before the 2008 financial crisis. Now, he said, it's a six-inch pie "but with the same mouths to feed.

Parents and students in New Jersey's poorest school districts must hope that a recent appellate court ruling has delivered the momentum needed to jump-start long-delayed school construction projects. While the state has dragged its feet for several years, the districts have been waiting far too long for antiquated buildings to be repaired or replaced. A state appeals court handed the districts a major victory with its recent order that the state must quickly adopt the rules that will determine when the districts can manage their own state-funded construction projects.

Manuel Flores noticed the front door of his neighbor's Camden home ajar on Saturday night. He went inside and saw a man on the living-room floor, bleeding from a gunshot wound. The wounded man begged for help and pointed toward the kitchen. In Spanish, he said, "They are over there. " Flores, in an interview Sunday night, said he went to the kitchen and found the bodies of Louis Antonio Narvaez-Betancourt and Jose Ariel Paynes Garcia. "I ran out and I flagged down [an]

The blueprints for a seniors residential complex in Camden have shown Darrin Ferguson the way toward a career. "I've been unemployed for a while, and just looking at the plans and being out in the field have been great for me," says the father of three, who is shadowing construction-management professionals on the job. Standing in the handsome lobby of the just-finished seniors apartments on Ferry Avenue, Ferguson declares, "This got...

As walk-ups go, the headquarters of Talson Solutions L.L.C. is a cardiac workout: The climb from the doorstep of 306 Market St. to the homey confines of the consulting business Robert S. Bright founded 10 years ago is 64 steps. On his mother's first visit, she had to sit down for a breather partway up, Bright said. Then again, he doesn't make a living as a property scout. His expertise is finding waste and other forms of trouble in construction projects, from cost overruns to fraud.

TRENTON - A major school-construction project in Camden that the state put on hold this year was considered a greater priority by the Schools Development Authority than half of the 10 projects approved to proceed, records released Wednesday show. The proposed Lanning Square school, which is part of the city's largest redevelopment effort and has involved eminent domain, received a score of 6.5 out of 8.5 - better than five projects approved for Paterson, West New York, and Jersey City.

Sure, the economy has been rough on construction workers. But all those idled carpenters, electricians, plumbers, and masons have sidelined another critical component of the building process that never gets much attention: The ceremonial shovel. Never mind the glad-handing elected leaders and corporate executives - it's the shovel that's the star of the show at groundbreakings. How else are the featured guests supposed to hoist dirt to officially launch a project? But with little being built since the recession's ignoble debut in December 2007, groundbreakings have been rare events.

Eight local school districts will be among 25 statewide that will ask voters to approve $440 million in school construction projects tomorrow, according to the New Jersey School Boards Association. Many of the bond referendums, if passed, would fund energy-saving initiatives. Of the $440 million requested, more than $157 million would qualify for state reimbursement. Four Burlington County districts have referendums. In Hainesport Township, $9.6 million with a possible $3.9 million state reimbursement is sought for Hainesport School renovations including the roof, fire systems, heating and air-conditioning, and windows and doors.

Bernard J. Bonner, 70, of Collegeville, a construction-firm vice president, died of a brain tumor Saturday at the Neighborhood Hospice in West Chester. Since 1983, Mr. Bonner had worked for Danella Companies Inc., most recently at its Plymouth Meeting office, as vice president of operations. His son, Andrew, said that Mr. Bonner oversaw Danella's construction projects in locations such as New Jersey, New York, and Ohio. Born in Philadelphia, Mr. Bonner was a 1956 graduate of Springfield Township High School in Montgomery County and earned his degree in English from Franklin and Marshall College in 1962.