The lure of Terrell Hills

For years, many builders and homeowners in Terrell Hills have been tearing down old houses and building the latest in McMansions.

Though that has slowed down somewhat, the neighborhood in central San Antonio is still attracting homeowners, provided they can afford the oversized lots and high-end houses.

“Terrell Hills is an upscale neighborhood,” said Deborah Myers, owner of Deborah Myers Real Estate. “A lot of the old ranch-style homes have been bulldozed and mansions have been built.”

She said the average home costs about $200 per square foot. And with oversized lots — most are over 1/3-acre — many of the homes are in the 4,000- to 6,000-square-foot range.

Terrell Hills is more than its own neighborhood. It's actually its own city, and has about 1,900 homes.

“Our house is only about five years old, so that's one thing I like,” said Brooke Rogers, a real estate agent with the Phyllis Browning Co. who has lived in Terrell Hills about two years. “But you also get the benefit of older homes and mature trees.”

Not all of the homes are brand new. Some of the biggest mansions were built 30-40 years ago. Most of them have been remodeled extensively on the inside, though.

“I think if anything, homeowners are remodeling where they are living now,” rather than tearing down houses all together, said Corie Boldt, a real estate agent with Rubiola Mortgage & Realty Co.

Some might say the teardowns got a bit out of control.

“The city did pass some building restrictions which I think was a good thing in terms of keeping new construction at the right size and keeping the look and the feel of the neighborhood,” Rogers said.

When executives from AT&T moved to Dallas, a number of them left homes in Terrell Hills for sale, which has boosted the number on the market.

“When they left we had a large inventory, so as a result buyers have been quite selective in the properties they're looking at,” Myers said.

That's not to say there is a large inventory. It's about 50 homes, or around an eight-month inventory, Boldt said.

And prices haven't been hurt in the neighborhood. Actually, it's quite the opposite.

So far this year, 52 homes have sold in Terrell Heights at a median price of $465,000, according to the San Antonio Board of Realtors. That's compared with 42 homes sold at a median price of $361,525 during the same time in 2008.

Most of Terrell Hills is in the Alamo Heights Independent School District. And as one of the city's most highly regarded districts, the neighborhood is a hit for families, which also keeps the home prices stable, Myers said.

“All the kids grow up together and all the parents are really involved,” she said.

But because the prices in Terrell Hills are higher, most of the homeowners aren't first-time owners, and are “more seasoned buyers,” Myers said.

As its own city, Terrell Hills also has its own fire and police departments devoted solely to its residents.

“I feel really safe and I think that's one of the biggest selling points,” Rogers said.

If you can't afford a Terrell Hills mansion, though, part of the neighborhood actually is in the Northeast Independent School District, and homes there tend to be a bit more affordable.

Terrell Heights is also an adjacent neighborhood where homes tend to be smaller and prices tend to be lower.

The median sales price for the 20 homes sold in Terrell Heights so far this year has been $192,600.

“That's an interesting neighborhood, those are smaller homes that average about 1,500 square feet,” Myers said. “It's just a really nice, quaint neighborhood that's more for a starter family and maybe the first-time buyer.”

And as if the neighborhood needed any more stimulation, all the growth at Fort Sam Houston, particularly the medical growth, is right in Terrell Hills' backyard.

“We butt up to Harry Wurzbach, so I think all of the medical stuff moving into Fort Sam is going to be wonderful for the area,” Rogers said

By Creighton A. Welch - Express-News
http://www.mysanantonio.com/business/The_lure_of_Terrell_Hills.html

Real Estate - NY gov: We could build at WTC without developer

NEW YORK – New York Gov. David Paterson gave World Trade Center site developer Larry Silverstein an ultimatum Monday in prolonged talks over his lease to build three planned office towers, saying ground zero rebuilding could go ahead without him if necessary.

In a letter that outlined parts of old offers of partial financing for two of the towers, Paterson pressed the two sides to meet this week to work on resolving the dispute.

But the governor said he had told the site's owner, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, to start drawing up new plans so the agency could finish rebuilding the Sept. 11 memorial and other public projects regardless whether Silverstein completes his buildings.

"This will ensure that, should you and the Port Authority not be able to reach an agreement, the site will no longer be subject to the fate of the real estate market or these negotiations," Paterson wrote.

Silverstein's camp expressed doubt that the governor's move would help, and Mayor Michael Bloomberg's administration and state Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver said it would hurt.

"From the beginning, we've said both parties would have to compromise to avoid stalemate and further delays on the site," Bloomberg spokesman Andrew Brent said. "Unfortunately, today's proposal doesn't achieve that and would move us in the wrong direction."

The agency and Silverstein have negotiated for months — with Silverstein threatening to seek arbitration and interventions from top state lawmakers and meetings convened by Bloomberg going nowhere.

Silverstein has asked the Port Authority to guarantee more than $3 billion in financing to build two of his planned towers. He has been unable to obtain private financing in the tight real estate market and has said the agency has delayed his construction schedule by falling behind on projects — including a vast, winged transit hub designed by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava — that surround his.

Janno Lieber, who heads trade center construction for Silverstein, echoed those complaints Monday. He said Paterson's "ideas will not likely put us on a path" to building the two towers.

The agency has agreed to back one tower currently under construction and put up some money for a second tower, but only if Silverstein comes up with more than $600 million first.

The Port Authority has said that putting up more for the private venture would siphon money from other key projects, such as improvements to LaGuardia Airport and a new rail tunnel serving Pennsylvania Station.

The towers and the agency's projects are intertwined through underground utility infrastructure, as well as a vehicle security center, train tracks and streets that would connect the office towers and the memorial.

The Port Authority didn't immediately have cost estimates or a timetable for reconfiguring the plans to disentangle its projects from Silverstein's.

"We appreciate the governor's leadership in working to reach a solution that both protects public resources and ensures the public projects keep moving forward," agency spokesman Stephen Sigmund said.

But Silver, who tried to broker an end to the stalemate more than a month ago, said he feared the governor's proposal would spur "yet another standstill at the World Trade Center site and many more years of delay."

Paterson echoed much of the Port Authority's position, though he said he deliberately avoided specific numbers to allow for negotiation. He added that he would ask the Port Authority to waive millions of dollars a month in rent on the second and third towers "until the market returns" to build them.

The governor asked both sides to meet Wednesday and give him a progress report Aug. 12.

By JENNIFER PELTZ, Associated Press Writer

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090803/ap_on_re_us/us_attacks_redevelopment

China seals off NW town as plague kills 2nd man

BEIJING – China locked down a remote farming town after two people died and 10 more were sickened with pneumonic plague, a lung infection that can kill a human in 24 hours if left untreated.

Police set up checkpoints around Ziketan in northwestern Qinghai province, where townspeople reached by The Associated Press by phone Monday said the streets were largely deserted and most shops shut.

Authorities urged anyone who had visited the town of 10,000 people since mid-July and has developed a cough or fever to seek hospital treatment.

On Sunday, a 37-year-old man identified only as Danzin became the second reported fatality from the outbreak. He lived next door to the first, a 32-year-old herder. The 10 sickened, mostly relatives of the herder, were undergoing isolated treatment in hospital, the local health bureau said.

The World Health Organization office in China said it was in close contact with Chinese health authorities and that measures taken so far to treat and quarantine sickened people were appropriate. It did not comment on the move to seal off the town.

"This form of pneumonic plague is probably the least common but the most severe," said WHO's spokeswoman in China, Vivian Tan. "It has a very high fatality rate and generally spreads quite easily. So we're certainly concerned about the situation."

In Ziketan, authorities have said homes and shops should be disinfected, and residents should wear masks when they go out, said a food seller surnamed Han who runs a stall at the Crystal Alley Market. Around 80 percent of the town's shops were closed on Monday, Han said, and prices of disinfectants and some vegetables have already tripled.

"People are so scared. There are few people on the streets," Han said by telephone. "There are police guarding the quarantine center at the township hospital but not on the streets."

According to WHO, pneumonic plague is one of the deadliest infectious diseases, capable of killing humans within 24 hours of infection. It is spread through the air and can be passed from person to person through coughing.

The Web site of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control says people infected must be given antibiotics within 24 hours of first showing symptoms, while people who have had direct contact with those infected can protect themselves by taking antibiotics for seven days.

A woman who lives in Ziketan, who refused to give her name when reached by telephone, said county officials distributed flyers and made television and radio announcements on how to prevent infection. The woman said police checkpoints were set up in a 17-mile (28-kilometer) radius around Ziketan and residents were not allowed to leave.

The situation in Ziketan was stable, said an official surnamed Wang at the local disease control center, who added the measures taken were "scientific, orderly, effective and in accordance with the law."

Officials refused to give further details about the situation or say how the herder was first infected.

Pneumonic plague is caused by the same bacteria that causes bubonic plague — the Black Death that killed an estimated 25 million people in Europe during the Middle Ages. Bubonic plague is usually transmitted by flea bites.

Pneumonic plague occurs when the bacteria infects the lungs, or after complications from bubonic plague that goes untreated.

People infected with the plague usually experience flu-like symptoms including fever, chills, muscle aches, vomiting and nausea, after an incubation period of 3-7 days. If treated early with antibiotics, plague is curable.

Since 2001, the WHO has reported six plague outbreaks, though some may go unreported because they often happen in remote areas. Between 1998 and 2008, nearly 24,000 cases have been reported, including about 2,000 deaths, in Africa, Asia, the Americas and eastern Europe. Most of the world's cases are in Africa.

A 2006 WHO report from an international meeting on plague cited a Chinese government disease expert as saying that most cases of the plague in China's northwest occur when hunters are contaminated while skinning infected animals. The expert said at the time that due to the region's remoteness, the disease killed more than half the infected people.

The report also said that since the 1990s, there was a rise in plague cases in humans — from fewer than 10 in the 1980s to nearly 100 cases in 1996 and 254 in 2000. Official statistics posted on the Health Ministry's Web site showed no cases of plague last year and the previous year.

In 2004, eight villagers in Qinghai died of plague, most of them infected after killing or eating wild marmots, which are relatives of gophers and prairie dogs. Marmots live in the grasslands of China's northwest and Mongolia, where villagers often hunt them for meat.

WHO spokeswoman Tan said China was no stranger to dealing with the plague.

"In cases like this, we encourage the authorities to identify cases, to investigate any suspicious symptoms among close contacts and to treat confirmed cases as soon as possible. So far, they have done exactly that," Tan said. "There have been sporadic cases reported around the country in the last few years so the authorities do have the experience to deal with this."

By GILLIAN WONG, Associated Press Writer

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090803/ap_on_re_as/as_china_plague

Discovery - Scientists uncover lost Venetian city

Venice, the floating city, owes a curious debt to Attila the Hun. " The Scourge of God" sent the Venetians fleeing in 452 A.D. from their city, Altinum, to found Venice deep in the marshes on the edge of the Adriatic.

But despite the best efforts of Attila (and the Venetians, who carted away the stones of their sacked home to build Venice), archaeologists have mapped the lost city, detailed in the current Science.

"Now we have a rather unique opportunity of finding an abandoned Roman city," study lead author Paoli Mozzi of Italy's Padua University told Science. "Now we can really start to make some kinds of reasoning about the way the city lived."

A combination of drought and aerial photography in July of 2007 conspired to reveal the location of Altinum, reports the team. Infrared images showed how drought affected corn and soybean crops growing over the site, in turn revealing the streets, buildings and even the large canal that once ran through the middle of the vanquished city. Cut through the 10-foot rise of the town, the canal was a surprise, Mozzi says, suggesting Altinum was a mini-Venice before Venice.

"The right constellation of circumstances — a site that has not been settled since Late Antiquity, and a severe drought — have combined to enable these particularly illuminating photographs to be taken and interpreted," says Harvard classicist Kathleen Coleman. "Altinum was one of the most important cities in northern Italy because of its strategic position as a hub where routes over the Alps, around the top of the Adriatic, and down the eastern seaboard intersected."

FIND MORE STORIES IN: Italy | Venice | Adriatic Sea | Padua | Martial | Attila the Hun

The city flourished "throughout the period of the Roman Empire, and it must have been very prosperous, since the Latin poet Martial mentions that the villas along its waterfront were as beautiful as the famed resort of Baiae on the Bay of Naples," near Pompeii, Coleman says. "It was also thought until recently that its marshy site meant that it didn't need any walls, but now we can see a substantial wall along its northwest boundary."

An Italian tribe, the Veneti, settled the city around 500 B.C., and by 131 B.C., when one of Rome's famous roads, the Via Annia, reached the city, it had become part of the Roman Republic. "With a size comparable to Pompeii, Altinum is the only large Roman city in Northern Italy and one of the few in Europe that has not been buried by medieval and modern cities," the study says. After the city's sack, the Venetians moved to islands just north of modern Venice.

Along with the surprising canal, other monumental structures visible from the mapping effort include a Roman theater, Odeon for musical performance, amphitheater, forum with shops and basilica for legal matters. Archaeologists will consider targeted excavations of the important sites from the maps, Mozzi suggests.

Although archaeologists study ancient riddles, they aren't averse to modern methods to make discoveries, turning to chemistry, carbon dating, satellite and aerial photos to make advances in recent decades, such as the map of Altinum.

Even Attila the Hun could appreciate that idea. The legendary warlord embraced new siege engines to scourge Europe during his reign, which ended in 453 A.D., one year after the sack of Altinum.

By Dan Vergano, USA TODAY

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/columnist/vergano/2009-08-01-roman-city_N.htm?se=yahoorefer