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House approves $600 million for border: How will it be spent?
About half the money in the House plan goes toward 1,500 new border personnel. Not in the plan: money for any border fences. President Obama could sign a version of the bill in September.

Los Angeles
Just what does $600 million buy for border security these days – and is it more money the US needs to help tackle illegal immigration?

Billions for a US-Mexico border fence, but is it doing any good?
Janet Napolitano halts funding for virtual border fence
As Senate breaks for recess, House seethes over unfinished business
Half of the funds approved Tuesday by the US House after weeks of political back-and-forth will pay for 1,500 new border agents. Another chunk – nearly $200 million – goes to the Justice Department-supported efforts of the US Marshals and other law enforcement agencies. Two surveillance drones ring up another $32 million.

The payout the House authorized Tuesday is an answer to President Obama's request that more be done to help secure the southern border, but it also represents a shift in strategy – a return to more traditional security techniques for the border.

IN PICTURES: The scene at the US/Mexico border

In March, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano froze funding for a "virtual fence" begun under President Bush in 2006. The string of towers was intended to catch illegal border-crossers using cameras, radar, and ground sensors, but it was "plagued with cost overruns and missed deadlines," Secretary Napolitano said. The program had burned through some $2.4 billion between 2005 and 2009.

Border patrol officials expressed frustration at the technology, and wished for more personnel. “We already detect more traffic of illegals than we can apprehend, so we feel the money is better spent putting more boots on the ground than in looking at more technology," National Border Patrol Council president T.J. Bonner told the Monitor in March.

Another border security measure with a high price tag but not many supporters: the 600 miles of fence erected along the border since 2005. A 2009 Government Accountability Office audit found that the fence – still unfinished – had cost $2.4 billion to build, and would require another $6.5 billion to maintain over the next 20 years.

Mr. Obama's answer was to send National Guard troops to the border to bolster intelligence and surveillance in May. At the time, Arizona Sen. John McCain (R) said the troops – and the proposed payout – were appreciated, but “simply not enough.”
by: csmonitor.com

The package approved Tuesday is an addition to this. It funds 1,000 new border patrol agents, 250 customs and border protection officers at points of entry along the border, and 250 special immigration enforcement agents, investigators, and intelligence analysts, Reuters reported. Funding for the package would come from raised visa application fees for certain companies that bring workers to the US.

Vacations and technicalities got in the way of the bill. The appropriations package, which passed easily Tuesday in a voice vote, was held up in Congress for weeks. An identical version of the bill passed the Senate before its summer recess, but had to be sent back to the House because of an arcane law that says appropriations bills must originate there.

Unless the bill is passed on "consent" by party leaders, it must wait until Sept. 13 when the Senate returns from its summer recess before it can be sent to Obama.

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2010/0810/House-approves-600-milli...

By Katherine McIntire Peters
kpeters@govexec.com
Government Executive August 1, 2010

Huntsville, Ala., is becoming the center of gravity for key agencies.

Harvey Player never intended to move to Alabama. When he and his colleagues at the Missile Defense Agency learned in 2005 that a base closure commission recommended the agency move

most of its operations from the Washington suburbs to Redstone Arsenal, an Army installation in North Alabama, they were stunned.

For Player, a retired Army colonel and special assistant to the executive director at MDA, Alabama didn't evoke friendly images. An African-American and native Texan, his thoughts ran more to the bloody civil rights struggles in Selma and Birmingham than to Southern hospitality and sweet tea. He came of age in the 1960s, served in Vietnam, went to Officer Candidate School and pinned on his Army 2nd lieutenant bars in 1967 as the service and the country were roiled by war and racial strife.

"It provided some impressions," Player says. "When you talk about moving to Alabama, did I really want to do that?" He didn't think so. But when MDA Executive Director David Altwegg asked him to give it some thought, he did. Player and his wife, who hails from Jackson, Ala., an hour north of the Gulf Coast, planned to retire in a few years and wanted to move back to the South, although they thought Austin, Texas, or Charlotte, N.C., would be their destination.

In spring 2006, they decided to check out Huntsville, near the Tennessee border, where the Appalachian Mountains dissolve into rolling foothills. They ate in a variety of restaurants, spent some time at the visitors center, and talked to as many people and saw as much as possible in a week's time. They were surprised to discover that dozens of international corporations have significant business operations in Huntsville and the city hosts a range of cultural events. Their consensus: "We figured this would be all right. Whether it's permanent or not, we could decide that later," Player says. They sold their home in Stafford, Va., and in October 2006 moved to Alabama, where Player exchanged his 90-minute Virginia commute for a 10-minute drive to Redstone Arsenal from a new custom-built home.

"There's a difference between northern Alabama and the more rural south," Player says. "The area is very high tech, it's very integrated in terms of people from all walks of life." Four years after the move, Player says, "The only regret I have is we didn't make the decision to move to Huntsville sooner."

Rocket City

Historically an agricultural center, Huntsville once held the distinction of being the Watercress Capital of the World, says Ethan Hadley, vice president of economic development at the Huntsville/Madison County Chamber of Commerce. But for decades now, anyone familiar with U.S. space operations and history has known Huntsville as Rocket City. It's where the Army eventually moved Wernher von Braun, the pre-eminent German rocket scientist who surrendered to U.S. troops at the end of World War II, to work on the service's ballistic missile program in 1950. Von Braun and a cadre of his top engineers were formative forces in the U.S. civilian space program.

When President Eisenhower created NASA and the Marshall Space Flight Center at Redstone Arsenal in 1960, von Braun became its first director.

Over time, Redstone Arsenal expanded as a number of NASA and military aviation, space and missile organizations migrated to Huntsville, including the Defense Intelligence Agency's Missile and Space Intelligence Center, the Army Space and Missile Defense Command, and its Aviation and Missile Command. Other federal operations have taken root as well, including the FBI's Hazardous Devices School and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives' National Center for Explosive Training and Research.

The expansion accelerated with the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure Commission's recommendations. In part to disperse critical defense operations away from the national capital region, a prime terrorist target, the commission directed the removal of nearly 5,000 federal jobs from the Washington metropolitan area to Redstone - mostly professional and senior civilian positions at the Missile Defense Agency and the Army Materiel Command, as well as some subordinate organizations.

"We had no hint we were going to play a dominate role in the 2005 BRAC effort," says MDA's Altwegg. The move is logical, he says, in that it co-locates MDA with the Army's Space and Missile Defense Command. To date, the agency has transferred 1,800 of an eventual 2,248 positions, mostly government civilians and contractor support positions. Altwegg estimates between 15 percent and 20 percent of employees actually will make the transition. MDA will fill the remaining positions with new hires.

Huntsville already has the highest concentration of degreed engineers in the nation. When all the BRAC transfers are completed by Sept. 15, 2011, it will have a significant concentration of senior federal personnel as well.

"The 2005 BRAC represents the largest economic development announcement in Alabama history," says Hadley, who notes that half the Army's weapons procurement budget is spent through Redstone. Not only are thousands of new, high-paying federal jobs coming to Huntsville - by the Chamber's count, a dozen general officers and 119 members of the Senior Executive Service will call North Alabama home as a result of BRAC - the move has spawned a $500 million construction boom for new federal facilities.

What's more, significant contractor expansion under way at nearby Cummings Research Park is accompanying the new government activity. Companies such as Boeing, Dynetics, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and SAIC are adding hundreds of local jobs as they expand operations in the region. Not all the growth is government-related, however, Hadley says. The federal sector represents about half the local economy, a balance civic leaders want to maintain.

An 'Intense Period'

All the BRAC movements are putting a lot of stress on military organizations already overwhelmed by expanding missions. Nowhere is that more evident than at the Army Materiel Command, which is moving its entire headquarters from Fort Belvoir, Va., to Redstone Arsenal just as its workforce handles some of the most complex logistical operations in recent history - withdrawing an array of equipment from Iraq and deploying more to Afghanistan.

"We developed a phased transition timeline," says Katharine Kelley, chief program manager of AMC's BRAC division. Since 2007, just over 420 personnel have moved from Belvoir to Huntsville. Another 610 to 620 positions will move by the end of this year. While there are drawbacks to transitioning over a multiyear period, there are benefits as well, she says. The schedule allows AMC time to complete a new headquarters building at Redstone Arsenal before the move, and it allows employees to consider whether they want to make the move. There have been surprising benefits as well: The snowstorm that shuttered the Washington metropolitan area in February for a week was barely felt at AMC operations worldwide, because the Huntsville office was able to pick up the slack.

The transition also complicates the workload at a difficult time, however. New employees are being hired in Huntsville to replace people still working in Virginia; key people in Virginia are training colleagues to take over their jobs when they eventually leave the agency. And many are undecided about their future with AMC.

"If you've got a function that is one [employee] deep, that becomes very important, and we have a fair amount of that across the command," says Kelley. "There are certainly areas where we've got three or four people with the same skill set, but there are also areas where we've got [one person with a unique skill]. What's important? Do we try to keep this person on and hedge the bet that they'll stay, or do we try to find that skill? There are many people right now who are really shouldering double burdens. As good as the phased move is, it has ramifications, and one of the ramifications is that existing employees are really [carrying enormous workloads].

"We are the drawdown effort for Iraq. Everything that is coming back from Iraq, everything that needs to get reset, everything that needs to get fixed, inventoried, cataloged and moved back - that is our core business. The [operating tempo] with that and with BRAC [means] this is definitely an intense period right now. You have to really watch that burden you're putting on employees. Everybody's got a burnout point," she adds.

Mary Quinn, AMC's assistant deputy chief of staff for civilian personnel, says the transition is particularly complicated because it affects mostly civilian employees, many of whom have lived for decades in the Washington area. The agency is trying to accommodate individuals' needs to the extent possible, whether they plan to move to Huntsville, or are looking for other jobs in the Washington area. "They're all important," Quinn says. "We've got to make sure we balance everything."

Unlike most military personnel, civilians generally are not used to moving on a regular basis. What's more, the transition was announced just before the bottom fell out of the real estate market, making it financially difficult, if not impossible, for some employees to even consider moving if they owe more on their homes than they could recoup in a sale, Quinn says.

AMC leaders estimate 25 percent to 30 percent of employees actually will move to Alabama when the transition is completed next summer. The others will retire, look for work outside government, or seek new jobs through a priority placement program to remain in the Washington area.

"The dance at the moment is making sure this next 13 months goes lock, stock with the plan," says Kelley. "The plan will work, but the plan has very little flex. If anything starts to get out of line, we have got to get back on track quickly."

The 'BRAC People'

Mike Edwards was one of the first AMC employees to make the move. "I grew up in Northern Virginia. All my family is still there," he says. Still, when AMC leaders asked the program manager to join the transition team as the lead engineer for the new facility in Huntsville, it didn't take his wife and him long to decide to head south.

"I was 16 miles from work. On a good day - and I mean a good day - it would take me an hour and a half" to get to Fort Belvoir from the family home near Potomac Mills, he says. "Now I'm 23 miles away and it takes me half an hour to get to work."

Edwards, who boasts having the first AMC BRAC baby in Huntsville (his wife was pregnant when they moved), says he has no regrets. The Friday he and his wife were scheduled to fly to Huntsville on a house-hunting trip in 2006 their plane was delayed, causing them to miss an appointment with a school principal in a district they were considering moving to. To their astonishment, the principal and a teacher offered to meet them on Saturday to give them a tour of the school and to discuss the education program. "That really impressed us. My wife is a teacher by training and that was important," he says.

As pioneers of sorts, Edwards and other early arrivals have been able to help their colleagues back in Virginia weigh the pros and cons of moving and avoiding a few pitfalls. For example, Edwards discovered that when signing up for utilities in Alabama, it's useful to have a letter of recommendation from your previous utility provider in Virginia, otherwise you could find yourself putting down a sizable deposit before you can turn on the lights.

As chief of the AMC Transition Team, Thomas Vajentic also was an early arrival in Huntsville. The former Army officer is a veteran of military moves, but he was struck by the outreach his family received from local citizens. "I remember the first time I got a haircut. The first time I went to the grocery store. Everywhere we went it was, 'Are you one of the BRAC people? Welcome to Huntsville,' " he says.

Jennifer Koury, program manager for the Missile Defense Agency's airborne infrared sensors program, had a similar experience. "We were looking for a church, and everywhere people would ask, 'Are you one of the BRAC families? Welcome,' " she says. "I'm not sure everyone knew what BRAC stood for, but they certainly knew we were coming."

Vajentic and other transplants say the Tennessee Valley BRAC Committee has been outstanding in helping the new arrivals. When some AMC employees had trouble finding doctors in the area, Vajentic took the issue to the committee and they set up a teleconference with executives from the three local hospitals to discuss it. As a result, the medical community established a toll-free phone number new arrivals can call to receive the latest information about available doctors.

According to Vajentic, when a small group from AMC visited the area to look for homes, Loren Traylor, vice president of investor relations at the Huntsville Chamber of Commerce and a member of the BRAC committee, arranged a van tour of local school districts so they could meet with education officials.

Schools and medical care are top priorities for most people, Vajentic says. Both have exceeded expectations, he adds, noting he's had three back surgeries since moving to Huntsville.

"The school system here is fantastic. We hadn't expected that," says MDA's Koury, who moved from McLean, Va., in 2007. "My little boy was in private school in Virginia, and when we got here he was behind some of the public school kids. I was floored."

Koury and her husband, then an executive at a technology company in Rockville, Md., never thought they'd move to Alabama, she says. They'd lived in Northern Virginia more than 19 years and considered it home.

But when they learned that her job was being transferred to Huntsville, they decided they'd at least consider it. "I came home after the announcement and said, 'What do you think?' He's from Boston. He said, 'Oh no. I can't imagine.' I said we should probably just go look, and he agreed.

"We came down here and we were both really surprised. It's just beautiful and the people are so friendly. The community was great, the workforce was wonderful. There are a lot of high-tech companies here, and he was impressed," she says. They decided the shorter commute and greater buying power would improve their quality of life. Her husband traded his executive position for a more flexible consulting position in the company.

"We still work long hours here, but it takes a lot less effort. I go to my son's ballgames. We know all our neighbors," says Koury. "I just love it here. We're outdoorsy people, and there's a tremendous amount of hiking and bicycling here.

"When we moved here, we said we can always go back [if it doesn't work out]," she adds. "But I don't think either one of us would go back now."

www.CommercialProperrtyDirectory.com

Northport hotel may be built by late 2011
By Lydia Seabol Avant Staff Writer
Published: Sunday, August 8, 2010 at 3:30 a.m.

A Hampton Inn and Suites is being planned for the site of the old cotton gin at the end of Main Avenue in Northport.

NORTHPORT | A 107-room hotel on Northport’s riverfront could be completed by the end of next year.

The Hampton Inn and Suites hotel, which was anounced earlier this year, is planned for the old gin site property at the end of Main Avenue in downtown Northport. The project is in the design process, said developer Todd Palmer. Although no construction date has been set, once construction begins it will likely be done within a year.

“So far, the interior design is about 20 percent complete, the architectual design about 75 percent done,” Palmer said.

Palmer said he hopes that construciton will begin later this year.

Originally, there were plans of two restaurants and possibly retail on the site with the hotel, but because of parking, those plans were

scrapped. There will be retail shops across the street and toward downtown, but none on the hotel site, Palmer said.

Unlike previous plans for the area, the Hampton Inn will not have parking underneath the structure. Instead, fill dirt will be used to elevate the site about 7 feet, allowing the hotel to be level with the levee and giving rooms and conference spaces a view of the river.

“There is some extensive sitework that has to be done,” Palmer said. “We are working with the (U.S. Army Corps of Engineers) now, and we believe that any dirt that is added will strengthen the levee, not weaken it.”

But the levee is something else the developers are having to work around. Any construction on the site must be approved by the Corps of Engineers because of its proximity to the levee, which was built in the 1990s to prevent flooding in the area. The Corps of Engineers has an easement on the levee, and nothing can be built on it or immediately next to it, Palmer said.

The hotel is planned to be built about 55 feet from the levee, although plans could change. A 3,000-square-foot meeting space, which will have an entrance independent of the hotel, will have a wide view of the Black Warrior River, Palmer said.

Exterior drawings of the new hotel feature some brick siding and a three-color paint scheme. But the exterior plans also could be changed and will be completed later, Palmer said. Before construction can begin, the city of Northport also must approve of the design plans since the hotel is in the heart of the riverfront and is in an area that is included in the city’s downtown and riverfront master plan.

“As always, there are processes and procedures this kind of development has to go through before construction can begin,” said City Councilman Jay Logan, who represents part of the downtown and riverfront area.

“We want this project to complement the downtown area’s strong points, and also want it to be a catalyst for future development. It would be great if this could get more momentum going for other projects in the area.”

Last year, Palmer and his business partner, Danny Butler, appeared before the Northport Redevelopment Authority with a proposal to develop a 16.9-acre, city-owned site on the west side of the trestle, adjacent to the hotel site.

Those plans included a hotel, a restaurant and multi- and single-family housing.

The price tag for that project would be about $70 million.

The Northport Redevelopment Authority gave the city permission to negotiate the sale of the property to Palmer and Butler, although no progress has been made since.

“That property is not a priority right now,” Palmer said.

“The priority is getting a groundbreaking on this hotel.”

Reach Lydia Seabol Avant at 205-722-0222 or lydia.seabolavant@tuscaloosanews.com.

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According to DNC spokesman Hari Sevugan, these Democratic leaders, “will present the American people a handy 10-point blueprint for how the Republican-Tea Party would govern, based on actual positions taken and held by Republican-Tea Party members.” The blueprint includes repealing the health-care law, privatizing or phasing out Social Security, extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, repealing financial reform and abolishing the Education and Energy Departments.

http://www.pensitoreview.com/2010/07/28/republican%E2%80%93tea-party-con...

The income distribution of the United States is far more unequal than most people realize. In fact it is so lopsided, it is hard to represent on a single graph. For more see http://www.lcurve.org.

The US population is represented along the length of the football field, arranged in order of income.

Median US family income (the family at the 50 yard line) is ~$40,000 (a stack of $100 bills 1.6 inches high.)

--The family on the 95 yard line earns about $100,000 per year, a stack of $100 bills about 4 inches high.

--At the 99 yard line the income is about $300,000, a stack of $100 bills about a foot high.

--The curve reaches $1 million (a 40 inch high stack of $100 bills) one foot from the goal line.

--From there it keeps going up...it goes up 50 km (~30 miles) on this scale!

The four large trusses in the great are complete and the rustic look came out great.

There are two bedrooms a media room and an excerise room on the second floor.    I faux painted all the trim there, the crown, baseboard, window and door trim, also 7 doors.  The doors are an extra foot taller than your normal door.  Its painted like the ceiling in the great room.

trim 

doors

The human population growth of the last century has been truly phenomenal. It required only 40 years after 1950 for the population to double from 2.5 billion to 5 billion. This doubling time is less than the average human lifetime. The world population passed 6 billion just before the end of the 20th century. Present estimates are for the population to reach 8-12 billion before the end of the 21st century. During each lecture hour, more than 10,000 new people enter the world, a rate of ~3 per second!

Of the 6 billion people, about half live in poverty and at least one fifth are severely undernourished. The rest live out their lives in comparative comfort and health.

http://www.globalchange.umich.edu/globalchange2/current/lectures/human_p...

To all my well meaning friends that suggest we keep the Bush tax cuts. To those that think increased taxes are passed to consumers and to those who think that tax cuts to the rich will create jobs, I hope these links help you to understand. The reason our recovery is slow is because business is holding money or investing it overseas

Giving the largest share of a tax cut to rich people who are most likely to save a great deal of it is not a very intelligent thing to do when the economy is struggling to pull out of a recession. The result has been a sputtering and long overdue 'recovery' that has created far fewer jobs than almost any economic recovery in American economic history in spite of the added benefit of historically low interest rates.

by James Kroeger

http://nontrivialpursuits.org/economic_stimulus.htm and then read this:

http://nontrivialpursuits.org/collectivist_schemes.htm

Published: Monday, July 19, 2010, 4:02 PM
Kenneth Kesner, The Huntsville Times (AL.com)

RaytheonRaytheon announced today it will build a 70,000-square-foot facility on Redstone Arsenal for integration and production of its Standard Missile-3 and SM-6, creating about 300 new jobs.
HUNTSVILLE, AL -- Raytheon's announcement this morning that it will locate a 70,000-square-foot missile production facility on Redstone Arsenal makes this "a great day for Huntsville," said Mayor Tommy Battle, adding that the plant should also benefit other Tennessee Valley communities.

Ground is to be broken later this year for the plant, to be located at the site of the former Morton Thiokol facility on the south end of the Arsenal. It will eventually employ about 300 people and is to be built in two phases, each tied to production contracts for the company's Standard Missile-3 and Standard Missile-6.

Share The Huntsville area is well known for what Battle called "laptop" work: software development, research, engineering and the like. The Raytheon plant will bring more highly-trained manufacturing positions.

"These 300 jobs are manufacturing/production type jobs," he said. "It helps us with a different skill set that we are always going after."

Huntsville is becoming a sort of "Center of Excellence" for missile production and refurbishment or "reset" of equipment brought in from the field and prepared for deployment elsewhere, Battle said. Local companies are already involved in this work, particularly with the major upgrade of Apache helicopters and other Army gear coming from Iraq and destined for elsewhere.

"There were a number of states that were under consideration by Raytheon for this facility," said Brian Hilson, president of the Huntsville/Madison County Chamber of Commerce. "We feel very fortunate to get it, and especially proud that it's coming here at a time when our economy is hurting and any community needs 300 jobs. But these are 300 outstanding jobs from both the manufacturing and design and engineering standpoints.

"In short, this is a world-class facility at what we think is a world-class community and we're very proud to get it."

Hiring is expected to begin sometime next year. Alabama Industrial Development Training will be providing recruitment screening and pre-employment training, Hilson said.

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Published: Tuesday, July 20, 2010, 5:30 AM
Michael Tomberlin -- The Birmingham News (AL.com)

Birmingham's office and industrial buildings finished the second quarter with more space being leased than vacated, a positive sign that an economic recovery could be hitting home in commercial real estate.
However, sublease space remained a drag on the metro area's industrial and office space in the second quarter, slowing the recovery in the two important real estate sectors.

Still, industry observers are taking note of the 20,580 square feet net gain in office occupancy and 24,970 square feet net gain in industrial occupancy for the quarter as a significant sign.

"For the first time, there was some positive absorption," said Bill Pradat, president at EGS. "While it wasn't a large amount of square footage, it was positive."

Despite filling some vacancies in both during the quarter those numbers hide the large amount of space that existing tenants are trying to lease to someone else, often at deep discounts.

Birmingham ended the quarter with an occupancy rate of 90.3 percent overall in the office market and 80.5 percent in the industrial market, however, neither number includes sublease space which is technically leased but is on the market by the tenants.

In the industrial market, for instance, another 60,000 square feet of sublease space during the quarter brought the total industrial sublease space in Birmingham to 675,032 and would drop the overall occupancy to 75.8 percent if it was included. When you add in the sublease space on the office side, the occupancy drops from 90.3 percent to just over 85 percent.

The good news:

But the quarter did bring some good news with several significant leases, including:

>> TSF Sportswear LLC leased 66,000 square feet in Oxmoor South Industrial Park.

>> Triton Stone leased 50,000 square feet in the Continental Gin building.

>> Magma Granite Corp. leased 21,400 square feet at 1301 First Ave. South.

>> Dynamic Tower Services leased 6,975 square feet in Cahaba Valley Business Park.

>> SNL Distribution Services leased 5,000 square feet in the Birmingham Food Terminal.

>> Synovus Mortgage leased 31,874 square feet in Lakeshore Park Plaza.

>> Capital Strategies Group leased 9,729 square feet in the Shades Cahaba office building.

>> HP Hotels Management leased 5,032 square feet in Chase Corporate Center.

>> Fuston, Petway & French leased 4,080 square feet in the Luckie Building.

The quarter also saw some property sales, include Nextran's $1.16 million purchase of a 31,000-square-foot building at 3101 Messer-Airport Highway, Infinity Property & Casualty Corp.'s $16.1 million purchase of the 111,600-square-foot former Vesta Insurance building and NuTech Medical's $3.7 million purchase of the 28,000-square-foot McCrory Building Co. building.

In the office market, second quarter occupancy rates ran as high as 94.1 percent in the Midtown area that includes Homewood, Mountain Brook and Vestavia Hills to a low of 79.4 percent in the Hoover/Riverchase area. Birmingham office rental rates for top tier space averaged $21.18 per square foot per year, with Midtown fetching the highest average of $22.12 per square foot per year and Hoover Riverchase the lowest at $18.90 per square foot per year.

On the industrial side, the eastern part of the market that includes the Pinson, Roebuck, Trussville, Leeds and Moody areas had the highest occupancy rate of 86.6 percent while the southwestern part of the market with areas such as Hueytown, Bessemer and McCalla had the lowest with 64.3 percent.

Pradat said while brokers always hope for a large headquarters or some other sizable user to come in and take large chunks of the empty space, the reality is that in the current economy, small and incremental deals will likely be the norm in the near future.

"No wow! deal has popped up in recent memory," he said.

Pradat said that this point in 2010 is a marked improvement over where things were a year ago. "There is certainly improved activity," Pradat said. "It's better than this time last year."

Join the conversation by clicking to comment or e-mail Tomberlin at mtomberlin@bhamnews.com.

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