Apartment Choice

Drawing the lines in battle over space By Jeff Simms Scenic Hudson is hoping to nearly double the parking at the base of Mount Beacon to ease congestion at one of the Highlands’ most popular hiking spots . Meanwhile, the Beacon City Council and a developer clashed over who should provide spaces for a new 24- unit apartment building on Main Street. Mount Beacon Representatives from Scenic Hudson appeared before the Planning Board earlier this month to discuss plans to expand the lot at the park from 40 spaces to 77. The project, if approved, would be completed this winter, said Meg Rasmussen, a park planner for the nonprofit conservation group . It would involve moving the Howland Avenue lot entrance farther away from Route 9D and turning it into an exit. Cars routinely line Howland on holidays and weekends when the park’s lot is full. An overflow area north of the lot will be off-limits (it was recently determined to be wetlands), while the existing lot will be widened and orien...

The Olathe City Council on Tuesday approved rezoning 27 acres at the southwest corner of 119 th Street and Pflumm Road for a 240- unit apartment complex . The 6-1 vote came after almost a dozen neighbors spoke against the project and dozens more wrote letters and emails to the city voicing their own opposition. But while the residents were unable to scuttle the project itself, they were able to persuade the council to ax plans to connect 123 rd Street through the development to Pflumm Road as planned, a move they warned would have dumped fast-moving traffic on the doorstep of Heatherstone Elementary School . “If we are going to make considerations and alterations to the infrastructure of our city based on residents that are not here in these apartments now, I plead with you to protect the citizens that are here and living in this neighborhood now,” said Tim Laughlin, who lives across the street from the school. The thin strip of land has sat unused since being rezoned in 2001 and ...

A state tax credit that is helping riverside restorations of historic properties in Aurora and Elgin now is set to last through 2021 after Gov. Bruce Rauner approved an extension Friday afternoon . The River Edge Redevelopment Zone Historic Tax Credit program had been set to expire Dec. 31 after lawmakers last year granted it a one- year extension . advertisement But Rauner, while visiting Aurora University on Friday, signed a bill sponsored by several suburban legislators to keep it going another four years. Aurora officials said Mayor Richard Irvin had lobbied for the bill in Springfield and welcomed the signing of it as positive economic news for the city. In the City of Lights, the tax credit has given $3 million toward a $20 million project to revamp the former St. Charles Hospital into senior housing. Officials might also use it to turn the Hotel Arthur and Stanley Furniture buildings into...

On Aug. 9, 2007, Lansing police discovered the beaten body of 46-year-old Debra Renfors in her apartment in the 1000 block of North Washington Street . Renfors was the third woman to be bludgeoned to death in the city in two weeks, and a grim reality was beginning to set in. Det. Sgt. Joey Dionise confronted Captain Ray Hall , giving voice to a fear that had been bubbling for days. “Captain,” Dionise said, ”We have a serial killer. Years later, Hall still remembers the “sinking feeling” that accompanied that moment. Ten years ago this month, Lansing was in the grip of a killer who preyed on single women, using whatever was convenient to murder them, and, in some instances, sexually assaulting them. Before police caught him, he had killed five women in just over four weeks. A sixth woman would survive. Matthew Emmanuel Macon , then 27, was eventually convicted of two of the murders, and the assault of the surviving victim. When detectives got Macon in an interview room, it would take ...

Elected officials are calling for the authorities to investigate the manager of a local condominium for harassing residents. " /> 47-55 39th Place View Full Caption SUNNYSIDE — Elected officials are calling for authorities to investigate the manager of a condominium for harassing residents — threatening them and monitoring their personal lives, as well as plastering the building's lobby with pro-gun posters, pictures of Hitler and Mussolini and other images they say are offensive. City Councilman Jimmy Van Bramer and State Sen. Michael Gianaris want the state Attorney General 's Office to look into Neal Milano, a board member and property manager at the building on 39th Place and 48th Avenue, where they say he's been terrorizing his neighbors. This includes threatening them with fines or eviction if they do something he doesn't like, residents say, as well as decorating the lobby with a bizarre collage that includes images of infamous dictators , a ...

When American doctor Stephen Yoon thinks of North Korea, he does not think of ballistic missile tests or the threat of nuclear war. He remembers instead a 10-year-old girl with cerebral palsy, who suffered from spastic quadriplegia that made her unable to stand or sit. Five years ago, she went to Yoon's developmental-disability program at Pyongyang Medical University Hospital , where she received treatments from Yoon and his team of local doctors. After almost a year of exercise therapy and some surgeries, she walked out of the hospital on her own. The event was heralded in North Korean state media as a national victory, but it received no notice in the U.S., where few people even know about the roughly 200 Americans like Yoon who work and live under the rule of Kim Jong Un. Carefully monitored by the regime, they have come and gone for years, doing educational, medical or infrastructural work, and sometimes raising families in a nation that has been officially at war with the ...