Envy Apartment

The long retail spine of Sydney Road, Brunswick, just north of Melbourne's CBD, was once a prosperous trading outpost on the way to the goldfields. These days it's a bohemian mix of variety stores, op shops, halal butchers and Lebanese bakeries. Take a side street to the west, however, and a different picture emerges. Sandwiched between Sydney Road and the Upfield train line is an area undergoing rapid and widespread transformation. Light industry is fast being replaced by mid- rise apartment buildings , their inhabitants attracted by the short commute into town and cheaper prices than in the city's south-east. The quality of these units is, on the whole, depressingly bad; think poor ventilation and bedrooms that "borrow" natural light (a weasel word for being dark and windowless). The occasional jazzy façade tries feebly to make up for otherwise cheap construction amid a chorus of greys. At ground level, carpark roller doors alternate with mean pocket garden...

CLEVELAND, Ohio - One of downtown Cleveland 's worst eyesores finally changed hands Monday , after years of court fights and false redevelopment starts . Alto Partners bought the long- vacant John Hartness Brown complex on Euclid Avenue for $9.1 million, in a deal that sprang from a messy foreclosure fight . The developer, a relative newcomer to the Cleveland real estate market , expects to fill the buildings with apartments, a hotel, retail and parking. Construction could start during the first few months of 2018. Stretching from 1001-1101 Euclid Ave., the John Hartness Brown complex spans three addresses and five facades on north side of the street. Thanks to troubled ownership, financial hurdles and lingering fallout from the Great Recession, the property has languished despite the surge in downtown living and the trend of turning historic buildings into housing and hotels. Alto will be the third developer in a decade to attempt a revival of the block. A rendering shows what ...

Just a couple of miles from the Mexican border, where approximately 200, 000 immigrants illegally cross every year, 14-year-old Guatemalan Byron Raxcaco came face-to-face with reality of life on this nearly 2,000 mile border. A local drug lord demanded that Raxcaco and his chaperone pay $800 for safe passage across the border, where criminal gangs ferry humans and drugs across daily, and where police presence is almost non-existent, he said in an interview with AL.com. Poor and desperate to reach the U.S., Raxcaco was detained in a hotel in the Mexican region of Senora for a day until his aunt in Semmes, Alabama, gathered the money for the drug lord. After paying up, Raxcaco was released and free to start a new life in the United States.  He approached a border patrol post , told them he was an unaccompanied minor and asked for political asylum. In the four years since crossing the border, he has moved in with his aunt, enrolled in school, learned English, and got himself a girlfri...