Building Industry

U.S. Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt announced Wednesday that he will ask a federal district judge to keep the California gnatcatcher on the threatened species list while he provides evidence that he says will prove the tiny songbird should remain protected. In a statement eagerly applauded by conservationists, Babbitt made clear that he is committed to keeping both the songbird and its nesting grounds safe.

The future of California's heartland was unveiled the other night--a bold blueprint for growth torn right from the pages of postwar Los Angeles. It envisions a Fresno with 1 million people and paving over 16,000 acres of farmland in the next 25 years, raising the possibility of no more raisins in Raisin City. But there is one small hitch: Fresno sits on an aquifer tainted with pesticides, a legacy of its farming past.

Francis Sullivan has been a part of the building industry for nearly 30 years, and never, he says with a shake of his head, have times been this bad. "I've been through four building recessions, and I think this one is going to be the worst." But Sullivan, founder and president of Sullivan Concrete Textures in Costa Mesa, is a survivor.

This lakeside hamlet is about as remote as you can get in Southern California and still have plumbing and pavement. Nestled on the western shore of the Salton Sea, the town doesn't have a supermarket or movie theater or drugstore. But it has as many as 250 homes for sale, most of them newly built -- a huge supply for a place with just 1,440 people. When real estate values began soaring a few years ago, builders flocked here.

In an era dominated by real estate investment trusts and powerful institutional investors, some old-school independent real estate developers have found sanctuary in the offbeat, the risky and the complicated. Projects that would scare off most corporate real estate types are catnip to Ezralow Co., a fourth-generation family business that has quietly grown to become one of the largest niche players in Southern California.

The construction site on the hill is a major aggravation to the neighborhood. Trucks and tractors come and go, moving dirt around the huge lot. The noise is loud and constant. Mud and debris collect in ditches out on the street. And a final insult: The construction company has hung a banner with its name writ large between two poles about 20 feet above the driveway entrance -- the kind of sign that more often says "Welcome to Camp Minnehaha."

Los Angeles officials on Friday banned tall retaining walls that dot the city's canyon communities from Woodland Hills to Mount Washington, with critics calling the massive bulkheads "the hillside strangler." City Council members said the oversized concrete walls that loom over neighboring homes are wrecking the rustic feel of the city's canyons and hillsides.

Shortly after his release from prison four years ago, Julio Silva entered the apprenticeship program in the Ironworkers Union Local 433 in La Palma. To his alarm, he learned that ironworkers called all first-year apprentices "punk." He had been an East Los Angeles gang member, a drug user, and a car burglar in and out of jail. In that world, a "punk" was someone's prison sex slave. But Silva tried not to let it bother him. The more he worked at his new job, the more his skills improved.

Hammering out a solution to early morning construction noise in residential neighborhoods could be as easy as nailing up a new notice at building sites, Los Angeles officials told homeowners Friday.

Giant home builder Pulte Homes Inc. agreed Wednesday to buy rival Centex Corp. for $1.3 billion in a move that could spur more mergers in an industry decimated by the housing slump and the reeling overall economy. The stock transaction would make Pulte the biggest home builder in the country with a presence in more than half the states, including Dallas-based Centex's sizable land holdings in Texas and the Carolinas.